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His victim fought a hard legal fight, but Stanford sex attacker Brock Turner is the one who won in the end

Brock Turner had everything going for him during his freshman year at Stanford. He had a pristine reputation, solid grades and a position at a prestigious university. He’s white, male and talented; he was an Olympics hopeful in the swimming pool. But then he chose to sexually assault a woman

Lauren Puckett
Friday 02 September 2016 17:16 BST
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After serving just three months of his six-month sentence, Turner gets to rejoin the rest of society
After serving just three months of his six-month sentence, Turner gets to rejoin the rest of society

Brock Turner won. At least that’s how it might appear on Friday, when the former Stanford University student trots out of his jail cell to rejoin the rest of us common folk. After serving three months of his strenuous six month sentence, Brock can finally get some well-needed R&R. After all, he’s had a rough go of it. That girl he sexually assaulted? She’ll be all right.

That may sound like a tasteless joke, but it’s not – it’s exactly the kind of talk that started circulating after Emily Doe (operating under a pseudonym) released that powerful response to her attacker.

“He’ll never get his reputation back,” protesters cry.

“He doesn’t deserve all the hate he’s getting!” shout others.

But when a college student sexually assaults an unconscious woman behind a skip and is released after three months, that’s not simple. That’s sickening. That means the justice system – and the culture surrounding it – is not doing its job.

Brock Turner had everything going for him during his freshman year at Stanford. He had a pristine reputation, solid grades and a position at a prestigious university. He’s white, male and talented; he was an Olympics hopeful in the swimming pool. He had the look: a sort of deer-in-the-headlights, innocent-until-proven-guilty-and-maybe-even-after-that look. No doubt he had a successful future waiting for him.

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But he chose to sexually assault a woman. That sort of action deserves a consequence, no matter how it might tarnish a glistening future.

Still, Turner’s lawyers didn’t seem to think so. They used a loophole in California law to finagle a shorter sentence for him. In California, state law treated sexual assault victims differently when they are drunk or otherwise unconscious at the time when Brock Turner was convicted. Basically, the law did not consider attacks on unconscious victims to include use of force. Why? Because the victims cannot physically resist the attack.

So Brock Turner won. He received a meagre six month sentence, of which he has now served only three months. And there he goes, a free man, free to perpetuate the idea that women are simply bodies to play with; that alcohol is a timeless scapegoat; that anyone can get away with a crime if they’re savvy enough at victim-blaming.

But Brock Turner didn’t win without a battle. Emily Doe fought him tooth and nail.

Emily Doe had the strength to speak out about one of the most horrifying moments of her life. She had the courage to call out her attacker, to publish her statement as a piece of journalism. And unlike so many journalistic narratives, most of which are sadly ignored, this story exploded. It swept across the internet at lightning speed. It provoked more outrage and controversy than any story about sexual consent I’ve read in years. It may not have earned Turner an adequate sentence, but, by God, it got people talking. And that means that the world can and will change.

Before you call me idealist, take a look at this clip from The New York Times. After the wildfire-like reaction to Emily Doe’s letter, California lawmakers voted to close that loophole in sexual assault law, giving harsher consequences to attackers who assault an unconscious victim. That’s one step forward. One step closer to a world where assault victims are heard and understood.

I’m not saying all is fair and all is right. Quite the opposite, in fact. Emily Doe has been damaged in a way Brock Turner will never understand, and Turner got the kind of gentle treatment you’d expect in a spa rather than a judiciary system. Doe will never be free of what happened to her that night. One step is not enough.

But it’s a start. And in a world with so much injustice, a start isn’t just important – it’s life-changing. So thank you, Emily. You’ve bought the state of California – and the rest of the world – something they desperately needed.

If only you hadn’t had to pay the price you paid for it.

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