*Before reading this, please read this, if you have not already done so.*

Mr. Turner,

I'm sorry your son can't eat rib-eye steak anymore.

You see, in the household I was fortunate enough to grow up in, a rib-eye steak would be considered a reward. Meaning, there would have to be grounds of something good or positive that I had to have done to deserve such a delicacy. But that's just it, your son didn't do something good or positive. Then again, I don't know what you deem to be good or positive. For all I know, maybe you just didn't get around to teaching your son that assaulting a girl behind a dumpster while she is intoxicated and unconscious is wrong. I don't know how things work in your household — which is probably why I can't imagine a boy growing up in a home where he is taught that alcohol is to blame for his actions, not his own conscience.

In your letter, you go on and on about what your son has learned from the incident and where he got his set of values, going into detail about the things he was involved in as a kid, teen and even as a college student. But what every parent knows is that in many ways, a child is a reflection of the parents who raised them. I'm not calling you a bad parent. I understand that you love your son and you're just trying to protect him. But what about the victim's parents? They didn't even have the chance to protect her from your son, to protect her from something that every parent deems unthinkable and unimaginable (despite statistics suggesting that one in five girls will experience sexual assault during college).

The truth is, your son deserves to pay for what he did — certainly for longer than his six-month sentence. He took something away from the victim that she can never get back. He made her feel as though her body is no longer her own. How devastating is that? Imagine yourself as the victim's father. How would you be able to live knowing that her assailant got off with such a lenient sentence. Sure, you're happy that it was your son that got off easy, but keep in mind that his white privilege is likely the only reason for this leniency. If your son was anything else besides a white, Ivy league, All-American swimmer, he might not have been so lucky.

You maintain that incarceration was not the proper sentence for Brock simply due to the fact that you believe that it would be "a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action." Twenty minutes of action? That 20 minutes of action is called rape. There is no "steep price" to pay for rape. Rape is most definitely punishable by law and has sent many men to jail consequently. And what you may have failed to recognize is that while your son will forever try to forget those "20 minutes of action," the victim will always be forced to remember them. Your letter goes as far as to attempt to gain pity on your son's behalf. but the only pity I have for your son is that he was not taught right from wrong.

When it comes down to it, you and your son can blame it on distance from home and the binge-drinking culture of college all you want, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of boys in college manage to get drunk, at schools far from their respective homes, without assaulting girls behind dumpsters. Most boys would stop as soon as they realize she's too drunk or unconscious, but I guess your son isn't like most boys.

That's why you need to stop painting him as the victim. Stop justifying his actions as if he doesn't deserve how this will impact his life after college and beyond. Because the bottom line is that the second that your son realized that she wasn't OK, he should've gotten help. But he didn't, and here we are.

Don't devalue the victim's story by playing the "she had too much to drink" card, that's getting pretty old. Maybe this will end up affecting Brock for the rest of his life but good, it should. To defend him by saying that he won't learn anything from being behind bars, that incarceration is not the right form of punishment and that community service is a better alternative, does nothing but speak volumes as to the character that your son has developed for himself. If you're not ashamed of your son, you should at least be ashamed of yourself. A boy's greatest influence is his father, remember that.

So I'm sorry your son can't eat rib-eye steak anymore. But the second he treated that girl like a piece of meat on that fateful night of Jan. 17, 2015, a whole lot of other girls lost their appetite.

Respectfully,

A forever afraid college girl