Dear Judge Aaron Persky,

You do not know me but I know of you. You recently used your own personal bias as an influence on your sentencing of an accused, fully and unanimously convicted rapist. You are a cis-gendered, heterosexual white man in a position of power. You had it all going for you until you made one mistake. You pissed off every man, woman, and child who has been personally affected by, knows someone who has been affected by, or stands up against sexual assault. We will not stand for this miscarriage of justice.

I am sure that something like this has happened many times before. The white college athlete is the All-American kid. He stands for everything good in this country, right? Why would anyone want to convict someone like that? I’ll tell you why, because he committed a crime and was found guilty by a unanimous jury of his peers in court. There were witnesses who caught him. He attempted to flee the scene. There is clear evidence of trauma to the victim who was found completely unconscious by the men who stopped this heinous act. The facts are clear and prevalent and the maximum penalty he faced for committing these atrocities was 14 years in prison and you had the gall to give him six months with probation.

The most likely demographic to commit rape are white males. Yet the stereotype that people associate with rape is usually black males. It seems that the racism of our ancestors has become so deeply ingrained in our society that we cannot look at actual facts. I ask you this Judge Persky, would you have been worried about the impact of a black student who didn’t attend your alma mater? Were you more concerned for the reputation of your school and its athletic program than justice for a rape victim? I’m pretty sure you are hurting, not helping, Stanford University by allowing a convicted rapist to walk around campus again in six months. Where does your bias end?

Rape is one of the most unreported crimes in the United States. Most rapists walk free because their victims are too terrified to face their accusers in court. When going through the process of filing a lawsuit against a rapist, the victim is repeatedly asked to re-live every last detail of what was done to him or her. Nothing is off limits. Questions are repeated by different people and the trauma is re-experienced each time. There are no words for the pain that is inflicted on the victim and their family and friends through this process. Still, some do decide to go through this and then people like you think that the person who caused all this pain and suffering should be treated with leniency because of the affect facing justice may have on him or her.

It seems like you had a lot of sympathy towards the attacker and put a lot of thought into his wellbeing post trial. Did you by any chance think of the victim in the same regards? When you made a mockery of her trauma by letting her rapist off easy, did you think about how that made her feel? You diminished her life worth. You placed your concern for the attacker and convicted rapist over his victim and that is unforgivable.

We live in a flawed justice system there is no denying that. People are placed on the sex offenders registry for unknowingly having consensual sex with a minor who lied about their age. People lie and they ruin other people’s lives. Brock Turner lied under oath when he said that the sexual activity between him and his victim was consensual, but thankfully the jury unanimously saw that he was guilty. This was supposed to be a victory. This was a young woman’s chance to take some power back from the man who took it from her. She may never be the same again and still you let a rapist off easy because he is a fast swimmer. You, Judge Persky, are a flaw in the justice system.

My friends are scared to walk outside at night. I accompany my friends while they go get gas because they are afraid that someone like Brock Tucker may try to ruin their lives. I didn’t fully understand this until I went to college and saw the fear my female friends had for walking home alone. Every two minutes an American citizen is sexually assaulted, according to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network and only 6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators spend time in jail for this. This is why my friends are afraid. The justice system is the place we turn to to protect us from these atrocities, but, when it comes to rape, our system has failed.

Judge Persky, you were handed a case. The facts were laid clear in front of you and a jury passed a verdict. Brock Turner’s achievements, athleticism, and past had nothing to do with what he did. Yet you took into consideration all of his seemingly fine qualities to justify your sentencing. Those were not facts of the case. The fact that he is a top athlete should have changed nothing about how you punished him for hurting another human being the way he did. To put it plainly, you screwed up. I think it is clear that you have no right to hold your position of authority anymore. There are multiple petitions going around the internet asking for your removal. I’d like to think that maybe you would take it upon yourself to step down of your own accord and acknowledge your mistakes. Yet I doubt you will.

And now I’d like to address the other readers of this letter. If you or a loved one has dealt with sexual assault please call the sexual assault hotline at 800-656-HOPE. It is free and completely confidential and can help you get the aid you need. You can also visit RAINN.org for more information on sexual assault and to learn how you can help make a difference. It is time for justice system to hear that we will not stand for anything like this to happen again.

Best wishes to all,

Wes Peddycord