The infamous Brock Turner was released from Santa Clara County Jail early this past Friday. It is said that his six-month jail sentence was cut in half due to “good behavior”. It is important to remember that he was only serving six months in jail when he was convicted of: assault with the intent to commit rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual penetration of an intoxicated person. In the prosecutor’s opinion, these acts should have landed him six years in prison, if not more. The fact that Turner’s original sentence did not even reach a year, and the fact that his current sentence was reduced to half, is injustice. It is unjust not only for his victim, but other victims of rape and sexual assault as well.
It is irrelevant that Turner was a collegiate athlete at a prestigious university. What is relevant was that he forced himself on top and inside of an unconscious woman, therefore making him a rapist. The reason Brock Turner is able to get away with just a slap on the wrist is due to rape culture and white privilege. During Turner’s trial, his family made a ‘Brock Turner Family Support Page’. One of the posts on the page was an inherent message stating at one point that Turner, “…is not a monster [but] had a momentary lapse of judgment…” The post is paired with a picture that reads, “It is every parent’s responsibility to teach their daughter about the dangers of excessive drinking.” This “support page” was trying to turn Turner into the victim. In this specific post, the family was indirectly stating that rape is merely a consequence of excessive drinking, making it the victim’s fault. The support page has been taken down.
White privilege exists and Brock Turner is a living example of it, and yes, the case would have been dealt with differently if Turner were a person of color. Last year Corey Batey, an African-American collegiate athlete, was found guilty of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery. Unlike Turner, Batey was sentenced to prison for a minimum of fifteen to twenty-five years. Both men are malevolent. The problem is that only one rapist actually paid the consequence for his vulgar actions. In Shaun King’s article for nydailynews.com, he brings up the fact that, “black men are given prison sentences 20% longer than white men for the exact same crimes. Cory Batey's minimum possible prison sentence, though, is actually 3,000% longer than what Brock Turner was given for a comparable crime”.
Stanford University is trying to help the situation by banning hard alcohol at parties. This new policy is directed towards undergrad students. Hard alcohol is a substance that contains 20% alcohol by volume or 40 proof. This policy does not fully ban all types of alcohol from the campus. While it could be a step in the right direction, it does not mean it is the ultimate solution. Almost a year ago, StartClass.com "compiled a list of colleges that had the most reported forcible sexual assaults on campus per 1,000 students from 2003 to 2013…” StartClass.com was able to obtain this information due to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crimes Statistics Act, which requires “all colleges and universities that receive federal financial aid to keep and disclose information regarding crime on or near their respective campuses”.
Stanford University makes the cut at number fourteen on the list, out of twenty-five schools, with 241 forcible on-campus sex offenses. Keep in mind that not all offenses are reported by the victims. Though the university is not number one on the list, a student or family members of that student would hope that the university would not place at all. Perhaps the next policy that the university should impose is a mandatory class on consent. This would be an ideal way to inform students about mixing alcohol and sex. Being intoxicated impairs one’s judgment. Therefore, and by law, not allowing a “yes” to sex actually count as a definite “yes”. A class of this sort could have helped Turner in his situation because in his statement he mentions how he and the victim stumbled and fell onto the ground while walking back to his room (as if that were not enough indication to not proceed) and how he never took his location of where he was committing the sexual act into consideration.
Brock Turner is out of jail early and there are two “decent” outcomes that stem from his crime. The first decent outcome is that he will have to register as a sex offender; it will follow him for the rest of his life. This is positive news considering that at the start of his trial it was unclear if he would have to register. The second decent outcome is that California State lawmakers passed Bill AB 2888. The bill was influenced by the Stanford rape case and makes a prison sentence mandatory for certain sexual assaults. Assemblyman Bill Dodd (D-Napa) said it best when he stated, “If we let a rapist off with probation and little jail time, we re-victimize the victim, we dissuade other victims from coming forward and we send a message that sexual assault of an incapacitated victim is just no big deal.”
Unfortunately anything that occurred cannot be undone because it is in the past. What we can do now is hope. We can hope that the victim somehow overcomes the traumatic experience. We can hope that parents and schools correctly educate the young on consent, and we can hope that future rapists are rightfully convicted.
