I want to start this article with a possible trigger warning for anyone who has experienced sexual harassment or things of it's nature. I appreciate all the people that take the time to read my articles and would hate for anyone to get hurt by my writing. So if you're still reading, here's what I'm here to talk about.
We see it over and over again with the stories that surface of women being sexual harassed or assaulted. While there are so many people that support the victims and recognize these acts as wrong there are still an absurd amount of people that try to justify these actions. Brock Turner the Stanford University student who sexually assaulted an unconscious girl on the school's campus, served just 3 months where he was released because of good behavior. For a crime like the one he committed, the minimum sentence is at least 2 years. Now although I am a Law and Order: SVU junky, I am no criminal justice expert here, but this just seems completely unfair to the victim known as, Emily Doe. His story was all over the news and social media, yet the one thing that stuck with me was what his dad said, "That's a steep price to pay for only 20 minutes of action." Rape Culture is here and it's real. Whether it was 5 seconds or 20 minutes, this sort of defending and cushioning of sexual assault is what makes the offender think they did nothing wrong.
Now, I am about to get a little personal. When I was in just the 2nd grade, that's right 2nd grade, I experienced what I didn't realize at the time was sexual harassment. I lived in Queens, New York and went to a public school right up the block from my house. One day, a boy were going to call Greg, started following me around. Each day it progressed to something more, invasive.
"Hey Krista, what kind of underwear are you wearing today? Come on show me."
There were many other crude things that I don't want to get into, but encounters like this went on for a few weeks. My teachers did nothing. One day my teacher had me go to the office to send a discipline home for Greg and he chased me all the way down 4 flights of stairs to the office and back to my classroom again. He was so mad that he got in trouble for doing something dumb, he had me in the choke hold in the middle of class. Long story short, I got free and when I picked up a chair to defend myself that was the only time it seemed that my teacher cared. I told my parents and they went up to the school to talk to my principal, her exact words were:
"There's nothing we can do, it's not our job to keep your child safe."
My parents pulled me out of the school until something was done... My point of explaining this is that, there has to come a point where boys are truly reprimanded for things like this or they grow up to be a Brock Turner. Too often parents, teachers, peers, and even the justice system look over behavior like this and sometimes it's too late. I am thankful that my experience was nothing more than what it was. Saying that the girl or woman asked for it because she was intoxicated or was dressed a certain way is sorry....BULLSHIT. I was asking for an education not to be sexually harassed at 7 years old. Just because Emily Doe had to much to drink did not give Brock Turner a right to use her body as he pleased.
How anyone could sit and tell someone that they deserved such a heinous act because of the clothes they wore or because they were out at a place they "shouldn't" have been is disgusting. I think it's time that the justice system take these matters seriously and punish the perpetrator properly. Because it's what's right and I think the victim deserves to know that they're attacker isn't able to live a normal life alongside them.
When do the excuses stop and the justice start ?
