CommentsTHIS IS WHAT I KNOW--Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky is in the hot seat for his light sentencing of former Stanford student Brock Turner (Photo above left). The now 20-year old Turner was found guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated woman with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious woman with a foreign object; two formal rape charges under California law were dropped during preliminary hearings. The judge had the leeway to sentence Turner for up to 14 years but chose the six month sentence because the judge wrote, a longer sentence might “have a severe impact on him.” Judge Persky’s sentence and sentiments have riled the over 370,000 who have signed at least one online recall petition.
On January 17, 2015, two Swedish grad students, Carl-Frederik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, bicycling past the scene, witnessed Turner as he sexually assaulted the partially clothed woman behind a dumpster. When the two men realized the woman wasn’t moving, they stepped in. Turner tried to leave the scene but Arndt and Jonsson tackled him and held him down until the police arrived.
What has shaken me to the core has been the cavalier responses of both Turner and his father, who laments his son won’t be enjoying his favorite ribeye steaks or breaking his swimming records just because of “twenty minutes of action.” Turner himself has focused on the dangers of “intoxication and promiscuity.” In a letter in support of Turner, his friend blamed the conviction on “political correctness,” stealing a page from the Trump playbook.
Turner seems to express no remorse for his actions; he and his father are more concerned about how the sentence impacts his life going forward. I can understand in some part a parent’s instinct to protect their children but we also have an obligation to raise our children to be accountable and empathetic. Turner was 18 at the time of the rape and a drunken stupor is not an excuse to rape an unconscious victim behind a dumpster.
Rape is a pervasive problem on college campuses, despite an overall downturn in rape during the last 20 years. According to Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), “11.2 percent of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation (among all graduate and undergraduate students.)” Among graduate and professional students, 8.8 percent of females and 2.2 percent of males experience rape or sexual assault. The statistics are even more grim among undergraduates, with 23.1 percent of females and 5.4 percent of males experiencing rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation.
Female students (18-24) are three times as likely as the general population of women to be victims of rape and sexual assault. 18 to 24 year old women who are not students are four times as likely to be victims of rape or sexual assault.
Blaming sexual assaults on “the influence of alcohol and the party culture” is unacceptable but endemic of our societal need to finger point instead of accepting accountability. For many, intoxication muddies the waters. We remind our daughters and students to watch out for each other, avoid being alone with men or accepting a drink; we even warn them not to put down their water bottles. While we want our daughters to be safe, we tend to blame victims who might not have heeded our advice.
As an incoming freshman at Vanderbilt University c. 1980s, we were taught at a dorm meeting how to carry our keys to fend off an attacker and how to use our elbows and knees to temporarily paralyze or knock the wind out of an assailant, who we assumed would lunge at us from the bushes. We called upon campus security to escort us after dark; we carried pepper spray. We never thought we’d be slipped a roofie at a party or that a fellow student might rape us if we had a few too many drinks.
We can advise kids not to binge drink and to avoid becoming so blitzed that you’re not in control but if they don’t regard that advice, that doesn’t leave a rapist free to assault an unconscious or drunk woman or man. If we forget to set the alarm, does that mean a thief should just be able to walk in and take what he wants?
In his letter to the court, Brock Turner references just how much he has lost because of the trial. He blames his actions on alcohol and peer pressure, claiming that college culture is what got him into this “mess.” Never once does he point to the fact that he chose to sexually assault an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. His only crime was being caught.
It’s too easy to blame other people instead of accepting you (or your son) committed rape. When Turner’s childhood friend blames political correctness for the sexual assault charges, she’s buying into the idea that we’re all too thin-skinned and easily offended. Anyone who cares about campus rape of an unconscious woman who cannot give consent is just too “PC.”
Brock Turner will serve his sentence. Hopefully, he will one day acknowledge that he raped an unconscious woman and it wasn’t a case of “promiscuity while under the influence.” Perhaps the victim will create meaning from the tragedy and teach others about her experience.
Turner’s rape of an unconscious woman is a cautionary tale on so many levels. Binge drinking at a frat party is not an admissible defense for rape. We need to be accountable for our actions and to model that accountability for young people. Whether it’s a presidential candidate, a man convicted of felony sexual assault, or his father, blaming someone or something else for his actions is unconditionally unacceptable. That goes double for the uninformed and the ignorant who excuse this kind of redirected blame pointing.
(Beth Cone Kramer is a successful Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)
-cw
Stanford Rape Case: Brock Turner and the Culture of Blame
