Stanford rapist’s dad said son should only get probation for ‘20 minutes of action’
Brock Turner, a promising athlete on Stanford University’s swim team, was sentenced to 6 months in jail after being found guilty of 3 sexual assault counts in March. His father’s statement asking for leniency during the sentencing has now surfaced after the victim’s statement, which was also read in court, got published and subsequently went viral.
Via The Stanford Daily:
Turner was arrested Jan. 18, 2015, after two graduate students found him on top of an unconscious woman outside Kappa Alpha fraternity at approximately 1 a.m. Turner subsequently withdrew from Stanford. On March 30, a jury found Turner guilty on three felony counts: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, sexual penetration of an intoxicated person and sexual penetration of an unconscious person. Turner faced a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
The 6-month sentence was decried as too lenient by District Attorney Jeff Rosen, “The punishment does not fit the crime. The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim’s ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape.”
The unnamed 23-year-old victim read a lengthy letter to her attacker that was shared by BuzzFeed. It reads in part:
You are guilty. Twelve jurors convicted you guilty of three felony counts beyond reasonable doubt, that’s twelve votes per count, thirty six yeses confirming guilt, that’s one hundred percent, unanimous guilt. And I thought finally it is over, finally he will own up to what he did, truly apologize, we will both move on and get better. Then I read your statement.
If you are hoping that one of my organs will implode from anger and I will die, I’m almost there. You are very close. This is not a story of another drunk college hookup with poor decision making. Assault is not an accident. Somehow, you still don’t get it. Somehow, you still sound confused.
Michelle Dauber, a law professor at Stanford and (via Jezebel) “one of the driving forces behind the university’s new policies concerning punitive measures in regards to sexual assault on campus,” shared the statement that Dan Turner, the father of Brock Turner, read in court as he pleaded for his son to only receive probation.
Dauber underlined in red a passage in which Dan Turner described the sexual assault as “20 minutes of action.”
In addition to the 6-month sentence, Brock Turner must also serve 3 years of probation and register as a convicted sex offender for the rest of his life.
