Most of us know Brock Turner's name by now. Some people may only recognize him as the Stanford rapist, the boy who sexually assaulted an unconscious girl behind a dumpster and tried to run when he was caught in the act. He was the boy the media billed as a “talented swimmer” whose career was ruined instead of as a criminal. He was the boy whose father lamented over his lost appetite and how he would never again be his “happy go-lucky” self because he had such a “steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.” He was the boy who listened to the woman he assaulted read a 12 page letter about how much he’d emotionally destroyed her, and had the gall to claim that she’d liked it. He was the boy who was facing up to 14 years in prison for what he’d done, and who was instead sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation because the judge was worried that prison would “have a severe impact” on him.
Now this boy, this rapist, is being released three months early.
What kind of message are we trying to send to victims of sexual assault here? What are we saying to the people out there who are taken advantage of, abused, and have vital pieces of themselves stolen because of another person’s selfishness? How can we as Americans, as a supposedly free and just country, look rape survivors in the eye and claim that we support them when we punish their abusers with little more than a judicial slap on the wrist?
How must that young woman feel knowing that Brock Turner only served half his sentence and is now walking free, while she has to carry the mental wounds he inflicted upon her forever?
And what about potential abusers who see cases like Turner’s? How are we supposed to prevent rape when the most a rapist can expect if they get caught is a quick time out before being sent on their merry way after a bout of "good behavior?" What about the women who are afraid to go walking in their neighborhoods alone, who are taught that every man they come across is a possible threat? The girls who are given pepper spray and stun guns by their mothers “just in case?” Our judicial system clearly isn’t taking rape seriously, so why would future rapists?
There is nothing just about this decision. As a fellow Odyssey writer, Catie Blackwell, stated in her letter to Brock Turner’s father, Turner’s miniscule six month sentence was “an insult to every victim of sexual assault in America.” Releasing Turner halfway through that sentence is just pouring more salt all over those victims’ wounds. Rape survivors suffer much more from “20 minutes of action” than their rapists ever will. Their lives are turned completely upside down, and they’re left with scars that will never truly fade, no matter how much time they have to heal or how hard they work to set their worlds right again. Once a person is victimized, there is no going back. Why should rapists get off with a bit of jail time and a warning when survivors have to carry their pain with them everywhere they go?
Brock Turner robbed a young woman of everything she had just because she happened to be there, and yet he’s being released before his punishment has truly even begun. In light of this case, it seems there’s one question we should be asking our judicial system:
Whose side are you really on, the victims’ or the rapists’?
