The article and letter that the victim in the Stanford rape case read to her attacker went viral about a week ago. I remember I was sitting on my couch and scrolling through Buzzfeed when the red and black text screamed at me to open the article.
As I read the articles, like many readers, I was infuriated (I still am). Infuriated that it happened, infuriated that, despite overwhelming evidence, he got only got six months, and infuriated that it mattered he was an athlete. After the Buzzfeed article, I looked around the internet for more information. In the past week, I've read a handful of articles that agree how despicable the situation is. I found out that the judge who gave the sentence is a Stanford alumna. I even screenshotted some of the comments I saw on the articles.
Here's one of my favorite comments of the ones I read
I also read what the assaulter's father wrote about his son's "20 minutes of action" and "steak". Cue some other meninist bullshit. I watched a satirical and pointing video by the Onion. I discovered why the victim chose to stay anonymous. "[She is] every woman." She is taking a stand as a woman who deserves to be heard, for all the women who deserve to be heard.
The thing about this case is that it is "the Stanford rape case". This case has received so much publicity, and a big part of it is because the crime took place at Stanford. The scene painted is so awful, so it's very difficult to imagine and believe that similar crimes take place. But it does. It happens a lot. As a female college student, I'm coming to terms with the fact that 25 percent of college women are victims of sexual assault during their academic careers. It's 2016 and every two minutes an American is sexually assaulted. Those statistics only include reported cases; who knows how many other cases go undocumented. In general, on campus efforts to reduce sexual assault are less than stellar, but are really the effective way to reach out to students. Notable anti-sexual assault student run movements have been started at University of Virginia and Syracuse University. Still, the stories shared by rape victims scare me and make me like I need to take a self-defense class or buy pepper spray. As if there's something I could do, or any victim could do, to prevent these vicious crimes from being committed. There is not. Clothing, location, blood alcohol content, and all the other supposed "factors" in rape cases are ridiculously irrelevant. The offender is always the one who needs to be and always should be held accountable for the crime committed. No means no, every time. Lying unconscious and not being able to answer especially means no. I could keep going, and keep explaining the details that many other articles do, but I shouldn't have to. There's no more explaining left for me to do.
Here's where you can sign a petition to remove the judge.
