Brock Turner was sentenced 3 months ago for 3 felony counts, and has now been released. Put lightly, this outrages a lot of people. When you can and will get more time being caught with weed, something that truly has no effect on anyone else, yet you will get more time for it than for taking someone's sense of peace, most people feel there is something seriously wrong.
It was around October 2005, after school. It was sort of rainy and cold, a normal Michigan fall day. I was wearing a pink sweater and jeans. I managed to lock myself out of my apartment and decided with my best friend to take advantage of that and go to an old friend's house to say goodbye since he was moving across the country. Now when I say old friend, know that he was 5 years older than me. I was a freshman in high school when I met him, and of course I thought he was amazing at one point, but he was always all over all the other girls. So I had moved on and went and found a boyfriend. Now did I have any business having anything to do with a 19-year-old? No, definitely not. But he was a friend, or so I thought.
When we got there his mom and grandma were downstairs. My friend, him and I went upstairs and started watching TV. We could tell right away something was off. It was uncomfortable. So we said okay we were going to get going, mind you I was late getting home, I had no way of calling my mom unless I told her where I was. Not happening. I still don't know how things twisted into what they did but the next thing I remember he is holding me down on his bed. My friend has this terrified look on her face as she's standing on the stairs threatening to go get his Mom and Grandma. He is angry I have a boyfriend, he said I came there for something more. He gets mad basically shoves us down the stairs and tells us to go die in more or less words. Sorry I pushed back as much of this as possible. I had to.
Given how much I saw him as he lived a couple blocks away, you would think I would have said something. Anything. But I didn't. I stayed quiet. When my mom grounded me a few days later after seeing the hickey, she thought it was from my boyfriend. My boyfriend said he believed me but let's be honest would you if you were him? A man sexually assaulted me, and I did nothing. I didn't feel like anyone would believe me. I knew I was considered "boy crazy" and it would look bad on me to even try. Not to mention he had a huge family, and I knew someone would retaliate. He wasn't exactly a civil human being when angry.
The last time I saw him was on a city bus. He called me a whore, hoe, said that I wanted him and he didn't want me. It was the worst ride of my life. As if pulling me off the street to a hidden away corner in a doorway all the times before that wasn't bad enough. He just had to remain in power, he had to feel my fear. He is currently on the sex offenders list for one or two other people now. He has done more to other women as well, but they feared speaking up as well, for the same reasons. I wish I had said something more than ever at this point. Every time I think about it. I could've saved everyone if I did something more. My voice mattered.
I feel as though once you take someone's peace of mind, you don't deserve to know freedom anymore. We don't know what that is, so why do you? Why do you get to walk free without thinking twice what city you are in, or what streets you go down? Or what you wear? Or how you present yourself? Or who you flirt with? Or what you do? How is any of this fair to me to have to do?
11 years later and I sit here watching Brock Turner being released and it reminds me of why I never spoke up. It reminds me why I kept quiet, why so many women just don't speak up. My experience to some doesn't deserve a second look. Yeah he held me down, yeah he stopped me from leaving when I wanted to, but he didn't rape me so it would've been looked over. That's the problem.
Brock Turner is no victim. The only thing he would've gotten during his jail stay was his karma. Sexual predators should never be released. Ever. When they get out the most they have are housing regulations, and no social media accounts, which they do anyway. They have ways to do it again. We have to change this. We have to stop having the people who make victims, be seen as victims themselves. We have to raise our daughters to feel that they never blame themselves. We need our daughters to know that if they walk down the street naked, if anyone attempts to do anything to them, that it is not their fault. These people prey on the weak, they feed off of fear, and then they relax off their charming personality after the fact.
