Stanford sexual assault accused Brock Turner is now a textbook example for rape
When the law does not serve the people, justice — on rare occasions — takes a different course. That’s what happened when Brock Allen Turner, a Stanford University student-athlete, who was given a controversial, bare minimum sentence for sexual assault by a US court, became a textbook example for rape itself, with his mugshot appearing next to the definition of the crime in a university's curriculum. The case "People of the State of California v Brock Allen Turner" can be considered a watershed moment in American legal history, not because this was a landmark judgment, but the lack of it that speaks volumes of the legal system's apathy for gendered crimes. So, why is a photo inside a textbook being treated as a victory?
In January 2015, Turner, a former Stanford University student, sexually assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.
Turner’s case drew the world's attention for two reasons: One, because the assaulter gave victim-shaming men a brand new excuse for rape and sexual assaulter – party culture. In his statement, Turner refused to acknowledge that he had sexually assaulted a woman, despite being found guilty of felony, and pinned blame on the “party culture” of “drinking” prevalent on campus. “I’ve been shattered by the party culture and risk taking behaviour that I briefly experienced in my four months at school. I’ve lost my chance to swim in the Olympics,” he told the judge in a letter.
Two, a callous verdict given by the judge, in what was a proven case of sexual assault. Despite being found guilty of three counts of sexual assault — assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating a woman with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious woman with a foreign object — the star athlete was sentenced to no more than six months in prison.
According to US county judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Turner to just six months of prison for the crime, the short sentence was justified because he felt that Brock Turner had shown sufficient remorse in his statement – in which he blamed parties for the rape he committed.
"And so you have Mr Turner expressing remorse, which I think, subjectively, is genuine, and [the survivor] not seeing that as a genuine expression of remorse because he never says, 'I did this. I knew how drunk you were, I knew how out of it you were and I did it anyway,'" Persky said.
Most repugnantly, Turner didn't even have to serve the entirety of the sentence. He was released three months after serving barely half of an abysmally short sentence.
The law clearly failed the survivor. But in one textbook describing rape, identifying and qualifying Turner as a rapist, justice prevailed.
In what can only be termed justice by the book, Brock Turner — sexual assaulter, rapist, and the man who blamed his feral actions on parties and alcohol — has been immortalised as a rapist.
Introduction to Criminal Justice: Systems, Diversity, and Change 2nd Edition, a textbook published in January 2017 by Callie Marie Rennison – a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado – and Mary J Dodge, features under the definition of “rape” the mugshot of Brock Turner. Students enrolled in Washington State University's criminal justice 101 class use the textbook.
The caption under Turner's photograph reads, “Brock Turner, a Stanford student who raped and assaulted an unconscious female college student behind a dumpster at a fraternity party, was recently released from jail after serving only three months. Some are shocked at how short this sentence is. Others who are more familiar with the way sexual violence has been handled in the criminal justice system are shocked that he was found guilty and served any time at all. What do you think?”
Rennison, through her book, attempts to change the dialogue about the victims of the crime as well as its perpetrators within the criminal justice community. She says, “Existing criminal justice books have focused on three elements: cops, courts and corrections. They speak little about victims, reflecting how they have effectively been in the shadows of our criminal justice system. In our book, victims are front and centre with equal emphasis as cops, courts and corrections. This is the way it should be.”
The Brock Turner case, despite a conviction, was a failure of law. The reason why Turner received a paltry six-month sentence can be linked to the colour of his skin, even in 21st century United States. Turner is a white male, and was a student-star athlete at an Ivy League institution. A black or a brown student in his shoes would have received none of the judge’s empathy, and a harsh sentence.
Ken White, in his piece in Mimesis Law, elaborates this very notion:
Judge Aaron Persky empathised with Brock Allen Turner and could easily imagine what it would be like to lose sports fame (as Persky enjoyed), to lose a Sanford education (as Persky enjoyed), to lose the sort of easy success and high regard that a young, reasonably affluent Stanford graduate (like Persky was) can expect as a matter of right. Judge Persky could easily imagine how dramatically different a state prison is from Stanford frat parties, and how calamitous was Turner’s fall. That’s how Judge Persky convinced himself to hand such a ludicrously light sentence for such a grotesque violation of another human being.”
But most people fed into the criminal justice system aren’t champion athletes with Stanford scholarships. Most aren’t even high school graduates. Most are people who have lived lives that are alien and inscrutable to someone successful enough to become a judge. Judges might be able to empathise with having to quit their beloved college, but how many can empathise with a defendant who lost a minimum-wage job because they couldn’t make bail?
How many can empathise with someone more likely to sleep by a dumpster than exit a frat party next to one? They can conceive of the humiliation of being on the sex offender registry after getting into an elite university, but can they conceive of the humiliation of being stopped, frisked, detained, and beaten with impunity because of the colour of their skin? Experience teaches that the answer is usually no.
That white privilege is what saved Turner from a fair sentence is not just a hypothesis, it is fair judgment.
In 2016, Kyle Vo, an Asian-American freshman, who faced charges very similar to Turner’s, was given six years in prison. Cory Batey, a 19-year-old black college freshman, faced three counts of sexual assault and received a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 to 25 years.
In fact, Judge Persky, the same judge in Turner’s case, issued a prison sentence of three years to Raul Ramirez, a Latino immigrant in a similar case.
The ingrained apathy for gender crimes mixed with white privilege in the justice system may have let Turner off the hook in a case that should have earned him a life-sentence, but civil society’s empathy combined with a thirst for some form of justice can be a great leveller — as Rennison and Dodge's book has shown.
He may not have done the time he deserved for the crime, but the world will always know him for who he is — and the rape culture that shrouds him.