Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you'll recognize the name Brock Turner. On the off chance that you haven't heard of him, I'll refresh your memory.

Brock Turner was a collegiate swimmer for Stanford when he was accused of rape. All of the evidence pointed to him and the powerful testimony of the victim ignited rage all across the country. But, Mr. Turner never admitted to his crimes and he stated the entire debacle was simply the result of "party culture," promiscuity and alcohol abuse. And people actually defended him.

You would think the judge would at least punish him accordingly, so that justice would be served. But he didn't. Instead, he sentenced Turner to a mere six months in prison because of all the emotional trauma and stress that Turner went through over the course of the trial. I guess getting away with rape is a very grueling process?

Anyways, on top of all this injustice, Turner only served half of his sentence and was recently released on account of his good behavior. Oh, the irony.

But, the best part is, Turner intends to host talks on high school and college campuses across the country where he will discuss the dangers of "party culture," promiscuity and alcohol abuse.

So basically, he wants to go all around America to perpetuate a rape culture mentality by victim-blaming. Because, obviously, it wasn't his fault. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and decided to force an unconscious girl to have sex with him.

It was her fault for getting too drunk. She probably should have been wearing more clothes too, right? We need to teach people to try harder to not get raped instead of teaching people not to rape, right? Unfortunately, these are two, very real pools of thought, in regards to sexual assault, and they are absolutely appalling.

When sexual assault occurs, it is not because the victim's shorts were too short, because he or she had too much to drink or even because the assailant had too much to drink. Just like when murder occurs, it is not the fault of the murder weapon. Sexual assault happens when people make terrible decisions and although those decisions may not attest to the standard character of the assailant, they can ruin the victims' lives. The victims deserve justice and anything less is pure disrespect for their rights as human beings.

Sexual assault is very real, very prevalent and it needs to be taken very seriously. These victims go through an unfathomable amount of both physical and emotional damage and they are far too often treated as if their situation doesn't matter or that it was probably their fault since they were leading the guy on. This is absolutely unacceptable.

But until the justice system starts treating rape and sexual assault like they treat other violent crimes and until they drastically increase the severity of punishments for sexual assault offenders, people will continue to be on the defense as they go through their everyday lives. They will continue to wonder if their justice system will defend them to the full extent of the law, like it's supposed to. And rapists will continue to walk and live among us without our knowledge. Maybe they'll even continue to sexually assault others to get what they want, since the justice system has taught them that the repercussions for their actions are not that severe, if there are any at all.

It is an absolute disgrace that we live in a society where rapists get speaking tours.