Americans are outraged after a California judge sentenced a Stanford student to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious young woman.
Signs of a crime had first been discovered one night in January 2015, when two Stanford University graduate students biking across campus spotted a young man thrusting himself on top of an unconscious, half-naked young woman’s body behind a dumpster.
By March 2016, 20-year-old former Stanford University swimmer Brock Allen Turner was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault: of the intent to rape an unconscious and intoxicated person, penetrating an unconscious person, and penetrating an intoxicated person.
Turner’s punishment, finalized Thursday, consisting of “probation” and six months in county jail, was blasted by the public as far too lenient. Prosecutors had originally asked that Turner be sentenced to six years in jail for the assault. Turner faced a maximum 14-year-sentence.
The Thursday sentence was followed by the public release of two controversial letters about the case: one was a heart-wrenching account of what had happened by the victim herself, and the other was a letter from Turner’s father dismissing his son’s crime as “20 minutes of action.”
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky said Turner was still young and lacked a criminal history, and that a longer prison sentence in addition to him already having to register as a sex offender would have been too severe.
“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” Persky told the court. “I think he will not be a danger to others.”
In a letter, Turner’s father protested the trial had caused his son’s “every waking moment” to be “consumed with worry, anxiety, fear, and depression.” He mused about his son’s aspirations as a future Olympics champion and said his son’s life was affected to the point he was having trouble eating his favorite food– steak.
“Compare the problems associated with not eating your favorite food to being sexually assaulted,” Stanford Professor Michele Landis Dauber fired on CNN Monday at Turner’s dad and defense attorney, who claimed the victim had consented to being penetrated by their defendant and even “liked it.”
Dan Turner wrote his son “will never be his happy go lucky (sic) self with that easy-going personality and welcoming smile.”
Stanford University released a statement yesterday defending how it had handled the case, claiming it had done “everything within its power to assure that justice was served.”
Once Stanford learned the identity of the young woman involved, the university reached out confidentially to offer her support and to tell her the steps we were taking. In less than two weeks after the incident, Stanford had conducted an investigation and banned Turner from setting foot on campus — as a student or otherwise. This is the harshest sanction that a university can impose on a student.
The public is not pleased with this justification of what it sees as lenient sentencing for the wreckage of a young woman’s life.
A petition was created and circulated online and by this morning, 191,000 people had signed a letter demanding the recall of the judge for failing “to see that the fact that Brock Turner is a white male star athlete at a prestigious university does not entitle him to leniency. He also failed to send the message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class, race, gender or other factors. Please help rectify this travesty to justice.”
The victim, in her letter, expressed disappointment with Turner’s “gentle” sentence and anger that he had still denied sexually assaulting her. She claimed she had found out about the details of her own assault by reading the news, before she had even told her parents that she had been penetrated by a stranger.
The following is a video of CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield reading excerpts from the victim’s agonizing 12-page letter, directed at the defendant:
The full copy of the victim’s letter can be found here.
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