Was The Stanford Rapist Actually A Rapist?

On January 18, 2015, Stanford University student Brock Turner allegedly raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Turner was found guilty on three counts of sexual assault and was sentenced to just six months of jail time and three years probation in June of this year. Turner was facing up to ten years behind bars.

After the victim, who has remained anonymous thus far, released a gut-wrenching letter she wrote to her alleged attacker via Buzzfeed on June 3, 2016, just one day after the sentencing, there was no escaping the controversial case. The “Stanford rape case,” as it’s been dubbed, gained incredible media attention, with an almost-unanimous enraged public outcry over Turner’s short sentence, many even petitioning for the case’s judge, Aaron Persky, to be recalled.

But is Turner actually a “rapist?”

Technically, no. Although sexual assault and rape are often conflated, even by FBI measurements, Turner committed sexual assault, not rape.

As reported by The Guardian, the three charges Brock was convicted for were “assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.”

The victim, who cannot remember the incident due to her intoxication, gave her testimony in court of what she learned of the attack:

Never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us even speaking, a back rub. One more time, in public news, I learned that my ass and vagina were completely exposed outside, my breasts had been groped, fingers had been jabbed inside me along with pine needles and debris, my bare skin and head had been rubbing against the ground behind a dumpster, while an erect freshman was humping my half naked, unconscious body. But I don’t remember, so how do I prove I didn’t like it.

Concerning Turner’s guilt of sexual assault, here’s the most damning evidence: Turner was seen by two witnesses, Stanford graduate students Peter Jonsson and Carl Fredrik Arndt. They saw him sexually involved with the victim while she appeared to be motionless. Turner took off running after the two boys yelled over to him. Jonsson and Fredrik eventually caught Turner and held him down for ten minutes before the police arrived on scene. The Huffington Post reports:

Just before 1 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2015, Jonsson and Arndt were riding their bikes along a path near the Kappa Alpha fraternity. Jonsson told the cops that movement by a dumpster caught his eye, and he saw a guy on top of a female who was lying on her back, according to a police report.

At first, Jonsson and Arndt assumed the interaction was consensual. But Jonsson said he noticed that the female wasn’t moving as he peddled by. “Something seemed weird,” he told police, because the woman appeared to be unconscious.

Jonsson and Arndt approached the dumpster and yelled “Hey” to the guy who was later revealed to be Turner. He took off running, according to the police report. Jonsson realized the woman was passed out and chased after Turner, eventually catching and tripping him, the police report said.

Officers responded to a call about an unconscious female near the Kappa Alpha fraternity about 10 minutes later, according to the report, and found Jonsson and Arndt holding Turner on the ground.

The victim was found by police officers unconscious and with three times the driving legal limit of alcohol in her bloodstream.

According to Turner, who was also intoxicated at the time of the incident, he and the victim were reportedly engaging in consensual sexual acts, at least at the start. Turner claims that the victim was rubbing his back during the acts; at some point the victim became unconscious, something the Stanford student claims not to have noticed. Turner’s instinct to take off running when he noticed that the two witnesses saw him seems to suggest otherwise.

Turner maintains that he was only looking to “hook up” and not cause harm.

A childhood friend of Turner’s, Leslie Rasmussen, wrote a letter in defense of Turner’s actions to Judge Persky. Rasmussen argues that this was a case of two drunken young adults engaging in a regrettable action. But, she argues, Turner is not a “rapist” in the traditional sense, but only painted into one by the public because of “political correctness.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next 10+ years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him. I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists,” wrote Rasmussen.

“This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot,” she continued. “That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgment.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next 10+ years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him.”

Leslie Rasmussen

Turner did not commit technical rape as the public has conflated, but he did indeed engage in sexual activity with a young women who was unable to consent. He was charged with sexual assault, as he should have been. And the public’s rage over the short sentence is not unjustified.

But, should the public also be enraged at the “hook up” culture currently consuming our college campuses? Is it too taboo to acknowledge and address the problem which helped to enable this horrific situation without being accused of “victim blaming?”

This article has been updated.