I Hope The World Knows Your Face

I am enraged and disgusted. After all this woman has gone through, Brock Allen Turner is only serving 6 months in jail. FOR RAPING SOMEONE.

6 months. 6. Months.

In case some of you have forgotten how short of a time period that was… New years eve was 6 months ago…and yet feels like yesterday… boy did that fly by. Brock’s sentence is shorter than a University semester. How deserving.

I have read the victim’s statement and wanted to cry/throw up. While sympathizing for her, it just brings upon a dark feeling inside reading it. I have caught myself in the past year saying “I don’t want to go out tonight partying. What if I get too drunk? I would rather just not be put in that situation”. Why should I have to worry that someone will rape me? Maybe because Judges like Judge Aaron Persky sympathize more for the defendant than the victim.

It kills me reading her statement knowing that she had full intentions of staying in and just going to sleep, but wanted to innocently spend a night out with her sister in town. She didn’t know in that moment, while her family surrounded her, while most likely laughing and agreeing to go out and have some fun, that she would be found raped behind a dumpster later that night.

Her poor parents, having a new born daughter over 20 years ago and being so proud, wondering how she will turn out like, if she will finish school, find love, and one day get married, like every parent hopes. They just want her to be happy. I’m sure when she was little, they never looked at her in the sandbox thinking “hopefully no one rapes her!”. That shouldn’t cross their mind. No one wants to think that. No one wants that to happen. No one should rape.

And what about you Brock Turner? What made you do this? Were you just raised to a point where your parents never said no to you? To a point where you got everything you wanted? Well news flash: you can’t have everything you want. You can’t have a woman’s body without consent. I don’t know how you got into Stanford without even knowing the basic concept of YES or NO, which in this case, a passed out woman would be a NO. Perhaps Stanford should include a testing portion about consent on their admission test.

What went through your mind before it happened? Did you look at her and decide you were going to be a monster right there and then? You, in that moment, violated a young woman’s body, ruined her trust and destroyed her sense of self worth. You lack empathy, you lack emotion and you should not be going to jail for only 6 months. You should feel the pain that you gave this woman, but of course you won’t because that would have “too severe of am impact on you”. Not like being raped didn’t have a severe impact on the victim or anything. What you did cannot be undone. And for anyone saying she shouldn’t have gotten that drunk, you are an embarrassment. She could have gotten raped in her sleep at home by an intruder, doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have slept. By telling a girl to not get too drunk, to not go out late, etc, you’re really only telling her to let HIM rape someone else.

This sentence is an embarrassment for victims of sexual assault everywhere, and I hope it does not discourage other victims from coming out about their attacks. I just hope Judge Aaron Persky could realize this.

But finally, Brock Turner..

I hope the world knows your face. I hope a good woman never loves the monster you are. I hope your parents sit there and think about what could have happened to you while growing up that made you behave this way, instead of complaining that you haven’t had your 9oz Sirloin in the past few weeks. And finally, I hope you get better. Mentally. I hope you never make someone suffer this way again.