CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault. If you would like to talk to a counsellor about rape, sexual assault or domestic violence, give the people over at 1800 RESPECT a call on 1800 737 732.
If you’ve missed the story so far, last week former Stanford University student Brock Allen Turner, 20, was sentenced to six-months jail for the sexual assault of a woman in 2015.
His extremely lenient sentence – which fell far short of the six year sentence prosecutors were seeking – caused widespread outrage and condemnation, which only increased ten-fold when a letter from his dad, Dan Turner, went viral, in which he referred to his son’s sexual assault of an unconscious woman as “20 minutes of action”.
#brockturner father: son not “violent” only got “20 mins of action” shouldn’t have to go to prison. @thehuntinground pic.twitter.com/IFECJs687b
— Michele Dauber (@mldauber) June 5, 2016
Following the widespread media coverage, Stanford University has now issued a statement defending their actions in this case, and praising the two Swedish students who came across the assault taking place and prevented it from going any further. (They also held down Turner until the police arrived. Bloody champs.)
“Stanford urges its students to do the right thing and intervene and we are proud of our students for stopping this incident. Many other student witnesses cooperated in the investigation. 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.
“There has been a significant amount of misinformation circulating about Stanford’s role. In this case, Stanford University, its students, its police and its staff members did everything they could. Stanford University takes the issue of sexual assault extremely seriously and has been a national leader in taking concrete steps to implement prevention programs, to train students on the importance of bystander intervention, to provide support to students who may experience sexual assault and to assure that cases are handled fairly and justly.
“This was a horrible incident, and we understand the anger and deep emotion it has generated. There is still much work to be done, not just here, but everywhere, to create a culture that does not tolerate sexual violence in any form and a judicial system that deals appropriately with sexual assault cases.”
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office has also now released Turner’s mugshot, after (again) widespread criticism that it hadn’t done so already.
Until now, any media outlets that wished to publish his photo were only able to use the suited, ‘star-athlete’ ones that were provided, feeding in to the on-going narrative of the trial that Turner, a former champion swimmer with Olympic ambitions, couldn’t possibly be capable of committing sexual assault.
“I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is
not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while
you are the All-American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so
much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, who waited a year to figure
out if I was worth something.”
You can read her letter in full here, but please be warned that it is as confronting as it is important.
Photo: Facebook / Stanford University.
