Brock Turner Is A Garbage Human
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Brock Turner Is A Garbage Human

As if you needed more of a reason...

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Brock Turner Is A Garbage Human
Wikimedia Commons

Nobody can really get my blood boiling like Brock Turner. If you haven’t heard about him, this story is about to ruin your day and your outlook on the world. That someone as disgusting and privileged as Brock Turner can get away with what he’s done with, essentially, nothing more than a slap on the wrist really makes me angry at humanity. But if we stop bringing attention to it, then the world could become safer for more scumbags like Turner.

As a brief recap, before getting into the real shitshow, back in June of 2016, the story of an anonymous woman being raped in January of 2015 during a Stanford party went viral. However, the reasons why this story went viral wasn’t just because of the details which were revealed about that night. The first reason the story blew up was that when media outlets began writing about it, instead of posting the stories with Brock’s mugshot, they posted it with a nice photo of him smiling, as well as mentioning his accomplishments as an “All American swimmer” at Stanford University. Needless to say, people were disgusted at how this story was covered, portraying Turner as this poor young guy who made one bad mistake. Obviously, no one is going to give one shit about your freaking swimming career after you’ve committed one of the worst crimes against another human being.

The second reason was the victim’s open letter to Turner which she read in court while on trial. The anonymous woman detailed what happened to her the next day, after she woke up in a hospital, not being able to remember anything:

The next thing I remember I was in a gurney. I had dried blood and bandages on the backs of my hands and elbow. I thought maybe I had fallen and was in an admin office on campus. I was very calm and wondering where my sister was. A deputy explained I had been assaulted. I still remained calm, assured he was speaking to the wrong person. I knew no one at this party. When I was finally allowed to use the restroom, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to pull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my hands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was nothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my vagina and anything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced. I still don’t have the words for that feeling.

Having read this article now three times, once when the news first broke and now twice for this article, I can’t even begin to imagine how terrifying it must’ve been to be this woman. She also mentioned she was going to the party with her younger sister while she was visiting: the woman was twenty-three at the time and she knew she would be the oldest one there. She was more worried about her younger sister than anything else and so shell-shocked by what she was told that when she saw how scared and sad her sister was, she "[instinctively] and immediately, [she] wanted to take away her pain " (BuzzFeed). She couldn't really even wrap her own brain around what had happened to her, so she decided to keep silent about it and suffer alone for the first year.

The victim herself was even shocked there was going to be a trial: “I thought there’s no way this is going to trial, there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught. He’s going to settle, formally apologize, and we will both move on." Those witnesses the victim is referring to are the two Swedish, Stanford University students who happened to be biking by the scene of the crime and helped capture Turner for the police to arrest. However, because Turner wanted so badly “to convince the world he had simply been confused”, he ended up hiring “a powerful attorney, expert witnesses, [and] private investigators." Instead of accepting the fact he had committed a crime—one of the worst crimes you could commit to another human being—Turner was going to do everything to get himself out of it.

The third reason was due to a letter Turner’s father wrote to the court. And if your blood isn’t boiling now, get ready for a real class act from Dan Freaking Turner:



Now, if you missed it, Mr. Turner referred to his son’s crime of sexual assault and rape as a mere “20 minutes of action” and that his son “only eats to exist” and “[his] every waking minute is consumed with worry, anxiety, fear, and depression." Yeah, so after reading that BS, go back and read how the victim dealt with everyone in the year it took for Turner to finally be brought to court.

The fourth and final reason this story got so much attention was in concerns of the Judge’s decision, Aaron Persky, to only sentence Turner to six months in county jail as well as three years of probation as opposed to the maximum fourteen years in prison. And, why, do you ask did the Judge decide to assign such a menial sentence to Turner? Well, not just because of the riveting letter Turner’s father wrote, but also because Judge Persky believed sending Turner to prison "would have a severe impact on him." Well, if winding up in a real prison would damage Turner so much, imagine what the victim had to go through and is still going through.

Despite a lot of people demanding for Judge Persky to be removed from the trial and a lot of petitions going around and being signed by numerous people, the sentence for Turner was carried out and he was released from county jail on September 2, 2016, a mere three out of his six-month conviction. You’d think we wouldn’t have to hear anything more about his infuriating trial or him as a person.

But, no. Of course not. Once again, Brock Freaking Turner is back again in the news, and for reasons even more infuriating than his original trial.

This past weekend, it was announced Turner and his attorney will be filing an appeal with the Santa Clara County stating that Turner “did not get a fair trial for several reasons, including the exclusion of testimony by character witnesses who spoke of his swimming career and his performance in school and attested to his honesty." The appeal, of which consisted of 172 pages, spent sixty of them detailing how the victim, now referred to as Emily Doe, was extremely intoxicated. Another point the appeal makes note of is that Turner has a problem with the use of the word “dumpster” that was used throughout the trial. Part of the original story that was so disgusting was that the rape took place behind a dumpster and that Turner and Doe were both discovered behind the dumpster by the two eyewitnesses who were the Stanford students riding by on their bikes. But, with the appeal, Turner’s attorney says “the use of the phrase ‘implied an intent on the appellant’s part to shield’ his activities from others and ‘implied moral depravity, callousness, and culpability on the appellant’s part because of the inherent connotations of filth, garbage, detritus and criminal activity frequently generally associated with Dumpsters.’"

This is actually from the appeal. Turner and his genius attorney don’t want the word “dumpster” to be associated with Turner’s case. Seriously.

Another gem to this current story on Turner is what his legal adviser, John Tompkins, said when asked about the appeal: “‘What we are saying is that what happened is not a crime’ […] It happened, but it was not anywhere close to a crime.’” That’s right. Brock Turner, who was convicted of “[three] felony counts[—]assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person, and penetration of an unconscious person”, who only served three months out of his six-month sentence versus a maximum of fourteen years in state prison, who is now a registered sex offender in his hometown of Ohio, is going to court again to say he did not commit a crime.

Having spent pretty much my whole day researching this story to get the facts right and reading anything and everything about this horrible man, it has taken all my willpower not to punch a hole in my wall. With everything that’s been coming out in Hollywood in terms of the MeToo movement, you’d think we wouldn’t have to hear anything more about Brock Turner. If anything else, we’d just be hearing of him having to spend more time in jail for what he’s done. This is exactly why anyone is afraid of coming forward about their experiences with sexual assault or rape. Because people like Brock Turner try to turn everything back on the victim: about how they drank too much, how they were dressed (that was actually one of the questions Emily Doe was asked during the trial), and others that shift blame from the real monster to their victims. It makes me so angry someone like Brock Turner can really exist in our world. The fact he was actually found guilty and the fact there were eyewitnesses who detained him until officers were able to get to the scene should be reason enough to send this disgusting, horrible man to prison for the maximum sentence. But here we are, learning about how Brock Turner wants better justice for him, a registered sex offender, instead of the woman who was the victim of the crime.

As Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber put it, “[this] sentence is making all women at Stanford less safe because it’s sending the message to women students ‘if this happens to you, you’re on your own.’” And while Dauber is correct, it affects women everywhere, people everywhere who have been the victims of sexual assault. People like Brock Turner are all too prevalent in our world today, especially with what’s been happening recently in Hollywood. Brock Turner proves the point that these monsters will stop at nothing to save themselves, despite what they so clearly did. The world has truly become a much scarier place for women and other victims alike. But hopefully, voices like our own will be enough to silence the monsters and bring about the justice the victims so greatly deserve.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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