Six months. 24 weeks. 185 days. One half of a year. The amount of time between Christmas break and summer vacation. The amount of time to wait for your favorite TV show to come back on. The amount of time to wait between your learner’s permit and your license, or…
The amount of time Brock Turner will spend in a county jail for raping an unconscious woman.
At this point, I am sure that most of you heard of this tragedy and therefore I won’t infuriate you all over again by recapping the events….I won’t waste my time talking about a privileged piece of crap… instead I am here to address the monster himself….I am here to speak directly to you, Mr. Brock Turner.
Brock, I am sure you were a wonderful student and athlete. However, you were not a wonderful student and athlete who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were not a wonderful student and athlete who consumed too much alcohol and made a mistake… You are no longer a wonderful student and athlete, you are a rapist.
You sat through months of trials, a jury unanimously agreeing that you sexually assaulted this woman, you looked your victim square in the eye while she told you that you took advantage of her unconscious body, you physically damaged her and mentally broke her but you still weren’t man enough to own up to what you did. After all of that, all you can confess to is “drinking too much”? Really?
I hear stories about rapes and sexual assaults way too often. Each time that I do, it breaks my heart for the girl who is traumatized for life; it sickens me that there are people in the world doing such evil things, and it infuriates me that it’s 2016 and people still try to place the blame on the helpless woman. However, when I read that your father referred to the violent assault of an unconscious woman as “20 minutes of action” for his son, I felt way beyond these emotions. I will never understand what was going through your mind on the night of this incident and I will never understand what was going through your father’s mind when he spoke these words. I will never understand how you mistook an unconscious body as you violated it for “liking it.” I don’t know if I really want to understand this insanity that inhibits your brain. With your picture plastered all over social media as a rapist those “20 minutes of action” will probably be the only “action” you get for the rest of your life. No one wants a rapist as a student, a worker, a swimmer, a friend, and certainly not a husband.
You want the world to feel sorry for you because you’re a good swimmer. Because swimming a mile in x amount of time cancels out taking advantage of a 22-year-old woman behind a dumpster, right? I hate to break your heart Brock, but the world will never know you as a good swimmer, as an American Olympian. The world will know you as a monster, a rapist; and rightfully so.
Do you think this woman will ever be able to have sex with her someday-husband without the memory of you raping her tainting every experience? Will she ever be able to drink at a party with her friends again without being petrified of ending up molested behind a dumpster? Do you think this woman will ever be able to sleep peacefully at night without remembering waking up in a hospital with bruises inside and outside of her body? While you can no longer eat your favorite snacks, this woman can no longer live her life without the memory of you poisoning every inch of her.
You caused a woman to not want her own body anymore, to be afraid of everything and lose the independence she was proud of. She will forever question her own sanity and hesitate to trust any male that comes into her life. You traumatized another human being for “20 minutes of action.” You viciously, heartlessly, and unrelentingly ripped a woman’s happiness and comfortableness right from her…. but we should feel sorry for you because you no longer like to eat steak, right?
Go to hell Mr. Brock Turner.
Sincerely,
One woman standing in solidarity against you
