Former Stanford University student Brock Turner was found guilty Thursday for sexually assaulting an intoxicated, unconscious woman at a campus fraternity party last year. He was sentenced to six months in a county jail with probation, a ruling state officials argued was too lenient for the violent crime. Now, Turner’s father, Dan, has reportedly written a letter in opposition to his son’s sentence, blaming the case for damaging Brock’s “happy go lucky” nature and loss of appetite.
“Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist,” Dan Turner reportedly writes. “These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways.”
The letter was posted on Twitter by Michele Dauber, the Stanford law professor who helped draft new university procedures for penalizing sexual violence.
Prior to his January 2015 arrest, Turner was on Stanford’s Varsity swim team — one of the best in the country. Many believed he was on a clear path to the Olympics. But this changed after the 20-year-old man was found “thrusting” on top of an unconscious woman on the ground outside a fraternity house party. Turner testified that the 22-year-old woman had given her consent, but she had no recollection of the interaction. Both were highly intoxicated.
The woman wrote in a letter to the judge that she was forced to answer questions about her sexual history and what she was wearing, questions that have plagued countless victims of sexual assault and rape. Turner’s father only extended this narrative in his letter.
“[His sentence] is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life,” according to the letter posted by Dauber. It adds that Brock had “never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th.”
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“He will never be his happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile,” he continued. “His every waking minute is consumed with worry, anxiety, fear, and depression.” If those statements sound familiar, it is because they reflect what the victim described in court.
Dan lamented that his son would never be able to achieve his goals because of the sentencing—yes, the six-month sentencing. “His life will never be one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve.”
Indeed, Dan finds the six-month-long jail sentence, one that will most likely be reduced to three months on account of good behavior, too harsh for his son’s crime. “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life,” he wrote.
I want to laugh at the ridiculousness so bad, but the injustice and observation of blatant entitlement won't allow me to.
