In January 2015 two passing students spotted Brock Turner, 20, behind a
dumpster outside a Stanford frat house, raping a young woman passed out from
drinking. He tried to flee but the students tackled him and held him for the
police. Brock eventually was given a six-month sentence and probation, a
lightweight punishment that sparked an explosion of online protest,
particularly after the victim herself posted online a devastating statement that went viral about the rape and its
effect on her.
Prior to the sentencing, Brock’s father wrote a letter to Judge Aaron Persky attesting to his son’s character and sincere
remorse. The father referred to the rape as “the events” of that night, and
does not mention Brock’s victim at all. He begs the judge not to ruin the boy’s
promising future over what he called, in stunningly tone-deaf phrasing, “20
minutes of action.” He apparently did not consider how those 20 minutes
irrevocably altered the victim’s future as well.
Brock’s mother also wrote a plea for mercy to the judge. Not one of her nearly 3500 words refers to
the crime or Brock’s victim. It’s as if Brock’s family was simply struck one
day with undeserved misfortune that affected no one else. In fact, to read both
these letters, one would think that Brock himself was the victim – the victim
of a guilty verdict. His parents seem wholly detached from any sympathy for the
actual victim of their son’s assault. I understand that the intent of their
letters was to shift the focus from the crime to their son’s positive
qualities, but they gave no indication that they believe Brock should bear any responsibility for such an ugly act.
Even more disturbing is the reaction of Brock himself, who tried in his
own desperate statement to the judge to place the blame on peer pressure and Stanford’s
“party culture,” which he promised to devote himself to spreading awareness about.
“I want to take what I can from who I was before this situation happened,” he said [emphasis added]. “I know I can
impact and change people’s attitudes towards the culture surrounded by binge
drinking and sexual promiscuity that protrudes through what people think is at
the core of being a college student.”
While college binge drinking and sexual promiscuity are certainly serious
issues, rape is another level of gravity altogether. Brock did acknowledge that
he is the “sole proprietor of what
happened that night” [emphasis added again] but maintained that the sex was
consensual (sorry, but no woman consents to being manually probed and humped
while lying unconscious behind a dumpster, and the fact that he attempted to
flee when discovered is damning evidence that he knew he was guilty). “There
isn’t a second that has gone by where I haven’t regretted the course of events
I took on January 17th/18th,” he claimed. The course of events I took – again, a refusal to say directly what
he did.
Brock came close to an apology by saying that his “poor decision-making
and excessive drinking hurt someone that night, and I wish I could just take it
all back.” There’s no question that excessive drinking leads to poor decisions
at best and tragedy at worst. But rape is not a “poor decision”; majoring in puppetry is a poor decision. Rape is a heinous crime,
and the first step toward Brock’s atonement must come from a willingness to own
up to that.
The next step would be to seek mercy and forgiveness not from the judge
but from his victim. But according to her, Brock did not: “Had Brock admitted
guilt and remorse and offered to settle early on,” she wrote, “I would have
considered a lighter sentence, respecting his honesty, grateful to be able to
move our lives forward.”
I am sympathetic to Brock’s parents for being put in such a terrible
position. As a parent myself, I understand the instinct to protect your child,
even a grown child like Brock, from a fate as nightmarish as prison. But as
devastating as it is for them to face, Brock brought this on himself and his
parents must be willing to let their son suffer the consequences. If I had a
son guilty of rape, I would be horrified; I would do anything to turn back the
clock and erase the tragedy – to spare the victim her trauma and to restore the
bright potential of my son’s character. In all fairness, Brock’s parents
probably do feel that horror
privately.
But that is the harsh reality of our life choices: there is no turning
back of the clock. The honorable response is not to seek avenues of escape but
to face the music. Men of honor hold themselves and each other responsible for
their sins. In this respect, all the men of this tale fell short: Brock did not
fully acknowledge his guilt; his father abetted that evasion; the judge’s
sentence trivialized Brock’s crime and did not hold him accountable.
“Honor,” wrote Sophocles, “is not about making the right choices. It is
about dealing with the consequences.” It would break my heart, but I would hope
that I would have the integrity to tell my son in the same situation that the honorable
way forward is to accept the consequences for his crime. That is the beginning
of forgiveness and redemption.
From Acculturated, 6/15/16
