Last week, Brock Turner was released from jail after just three months of incarceration.
If you haven't heard, Brock Turner is a former college student who assaulted an unconscious young woman outside, behind a dumpster, in the middle of winter. If the word "assault" isn't strong enough to convince you that he needed a longer sentence (and it should), consult the details. He was (laughably) sentenced to six months in jail. Mull over that for a minute. For the sake of comparison, a 24-year-old named Clarence Aaron was sentenced to three life terms for simply introducing two big-time cocaine dealers to one another. Now, drugs are serious and should be taken as such, but try and convince me that Aaron deserved more jail time than a rapist, an attacker, an assailant—I dare you.
I'm livid that Brock Turner was released. I'm not the only one, either. AD Jeff Rosen was quoted on his displeasure for the results of the conviction, saying, "The punishment does not fit the crime. The predatory offender has failed to take responsibility, failed to show remorse and failed to tell the truth. The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim’s ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape.” Here's what really gets me, though:
While Brock Turner walks free this evening, my roommate and I will walk across campus, close together, back to our dorm, pepper spray clutched tightly in our hands. We have been taught the truth: it is not safe for women to walk in the dark at night.
While Brock Turner goes to sleep in his own bed tonight, dozens of women will be assaulted across the United States at the same time. Their fear will not be enough to protect them from the hundreds of men that have learned that their punishment will be minimal if any. Brock's release affirms a culture that teaches women to be afraid and teaches men that as long as they are decorated athletes, their offenses will be met with minimal, if any, punishment.
While Brock Turner returns to a life changed only by his own actions, a young woman will toss and turn in bed tonight, tormented by the knowledge that her attacker is walking the streets once again. Through no choice of her own, she will never again get to live without the images in her mind of Brock Turner over her, violating her right to be a safe on a college campus.
It makes me sick to my stomach that Brock Turner got to leave prison, because the prison he put that woman in is one that she will never get to leave. I am sick of living under a judicial system that decides the well-being of a criminal is more important than public safety. I'm sick of living in a country that jails people longer for tax fraud than it does for rape. It makes me sick.
It's unacceptable, America. End of story.
