We were all outraged when Stanford rapist Brock Turner was released from jail after serving only three months for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Sadly, nothing in our justice system has changed. Last April, Massachusetts teen David Becker was brought to court for sexually assaulting two unconscious girls at a high school party. Despite the indisputable evidence that he had committed a crime, Judge Thomas Estes decided that he deserved no more than two years probation. If he successfully completes his probation, he won’t even have to register as a sex offender.
The judge’s reasoning? He didn’t want to impede on Becker’s college experience.
There are many things about this case that anger me. First and foremost, it hasn’t received nearly as much media attention as the Brock Turner case. Just by typing in the letter “B” on Google, you’ll automatically see “Brock Turner” pop up in the search results. That’s not the case with David Becker, even though his acts were equally reprehensible and depraved. Second, it silences the female victims of rape that feel like they cannot report these crimes and expose the perpetrator. How can we expect women to report rape if they know they will lose the court battle? In our justice system, if you are a white male who is a good athlete, you already have the advantage in court, no matter how much evidence there is to incriminate you. Third, the fact that he won’t have to register as a sex offender deeply disturbs me. He essentially got off scot-free. He won’t have to report his criminal history in the future, which has the potential of putting other female victims in danger. We have a right to know if someone is a sex offender, and Judge Estes denied us that right when he declared that his criminal record would be expunged. The media has also done an atrocious job of reporting the case. CBS News reported in August that “An 18-year old former high school star athlete accused of raping and sexually assaulting two unconscious classmates in April will serve two years of probation.”
There are so many things wrong with this statement. First of all, this sentence is describing the rapist as a “high school star athlete” and the article later elaborates that he played three sports in high school. Meanwhile, the victims are reduced to nothing more than “unconscious classmates”. The fact that he played sports in high school has absolutely nothing to do with what he did that night. It was completely unnecessary for the paper to include that fact. Right off the bat, the article attempts to make Becker look like a good person while dehumanizing the victims into nothing more than background characters. When has it ever been acceptable to endorse rape culture in a reputable news organization? The truth of the matter is that rape culture exists, and it has permeated the media, the justice system, and nearly every aspect of our society.
We saw rape culture in what happened in that courtroom. The judge knew the exact details of what happened and decided that Becker didn’t deserve to go to jail. Becker’s lawyer, Thomas Rooke, said that his client could now “look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register as a sex offender.” Becker shouldn’t be looking forward to anything but a prison cell in a state penitentiary. Why should he have a productive life while the girls he raped are left to deal with the trauma of what happened for the rest of their lives? Why does the justice system care more about the damages being done to the rapist rather than to the actual victims of the crime? All of this is tied back to rape culture. Becker’s lawyer described the incident as “one mistake at one moment on one night which was clouded with alcohol.” This wasn’t just “one mistake”, as the lawyer so trivially put it. These were two crimes, not mistakes. A mistake is drinking too much or saying something embarrassing. Sexual assault and rape are not simple mistakes, regardless of whether or not they are premeditated. These are felony crimes that require a prison sentence. Period. There is no reason to argue the case any further. However, our justice system and our society thinks that alcohol erases all accountability for a person’s actions, provided they are white, wealthy, and good at sports. Rape culture doesn’t mean people walking around openly gloating about rape; rape culture is that guy on your college campus who raped a girl at a party and still goes to class every day, with a bright future ahead of him.
