A steep price to pay
Oh, this is disgusting. I know, I blog about so many disgusting items, but the moral squalor on display here…
The father of Brock Turner, the convicted Stanford rapist, wrote a letter to the judge about his sentence.
Dan A. Turner, Brock Turner’s dad, wrote a letter to Judge Aaron Persky before his son’s sentencing Thursday. He said that since his son was found guilty of sexual assault, he isn’t eating much and is full of worry and anxiety. It’s “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life,” he argued.
Well that could explain a lot. If Brock Turner’s father thinks fucking an unconscious woman is “action” then that could be why Brock Turner felt entitled to fuck an unconscious woman.
Turner Senior tells the judge he used to love to get the Brockster a nice manly ribeye steak to grill, but now the puir lad takes no pleasure in his food any more; he eats only to exist.
These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. His life will never the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That’s a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.
It wasn’t 20 minutes of action, it was 20 minutes of rape. There was another person involved, a human being, with her own life and dreams and work. She’s the one who paid a steep price, and she paid it for going to a party with her sister, and drinking too much too fast, and being female – none of which is criminal or unethical or harmful to other people.
That level of narcissism and entitlement is hard to credit.
I actually don’t think that he meant “action” in the sense of “getting some sex.” I read the whole letter, and that just doesn’t seem consistent with the writing style. I would chalk that up to an unfortunate choice of words.
What troubled me more was where he wrote “[h]e has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of [the rape].” (emphasis mine).
He stands convicted of having inserted himself into, and thrust himself repeatedly into, an unresponsive woman. Just because she wasn’t able to resist him physically doesn’t make it not an act of violence. If you slit someone’s throat while they’re sleeping, is that not an act of violence?
I also find it frustrating that it was actually brought up that Turner supposedly comes from “a good family.” How so? What’s so good about them? And why does that matter? As the Stanford law professor wrote in her letter urging a more severe sentence pointed out, if anything, someone who comes from a relatively privileged background should get less latitude than someone who grew up in an environment of violence.
Quite. It’s the 20 years of life, attitudes an actions that brought him to that place. The sentence is sickeningly light and frankly, it sounds like the father should b sharing it.
Exactly. You grew up with numerous advantages, and so when you seriously hurt someone you deserve a lighter sentence than the kid who had none and maybe lived his formative years in fear?
…And justice for all, my ass.
Well. The apple sure didn’t fall far from the tree in this case. What a gross, revolting pair of nonhumans.
Oh shit. There’s another bad part I overlooked on first reading.
One of daddy’s arguments in favor of leniency is that his rapist son is willing to go on the lecture circuit and speak to college students so they can learn from his mistakes. Specifically,
emphasis added.
What the fuck does sexual promiscuity have to do with this? What is Brock going to tell college students? “Women, don’t be a slut or you might get raped by someone like me?” Or “guys, be careful of sluts, because they might accuse you of rape. Them, and the eyewitnesses who confronted you while you were fucking her unconscious body, and who tackled you when you tried to run away because, uh, you were so surprised to discover that she had lost consciousness, yeah, that’s the ticket.”
If it’d been 20 minutes minutes in a stolen car that resulted in manslaughter charges, or 2 minutes with a handgun in a classroom, there would be universal recognition of his calloused, privileged attitude. But hey, it was just some girl. She probably liked it, anyway.
A father loves his son, and I am not surprised the son is not feeling well, but… quite apart from that ’20 minutes of action’, which I cannot see how any half-way or quarter-way or far less sensitive person could sensibly have written, there is no mention at all in that letter of the person who was the victim of those 20 minutes of ‘action’ – it’s extraordinary, she’s obliterated, as though she were some sort of non-human natural disaster with which the son became accidentally entangled with.
And how much can we really know about the father, or the son’s, conduct and character? Schoolyard bullying, cruelty to animals, breaking and entering, other forms of sexually invasive and depersonalizing acts?
All these pass under the radar every day. I’ve a terrible suspicion that both of them have unknown ‘records’ that would condemn them to longer sentences than this. Rapists don’t just appear from nowhere. Double the legal limit of alcohol WILL make anyone a bad driver, but not a rapist.
But Brock loves steak! And pretzels! Surely that shows what a great guy he is!
Every time I see a parent come forward and say, “Hey, don’t punish my kid the way you would all those other rapists,” I want the judge to have the option to reply, “Well, tell you what–for every two years YOU stay in a jail cell, we’ll knock one year off your kid’s sentence. That way, people will get the notice that they need to do a better job of educating their sons.”
@#8 you can, and are right to, condemn the son of rape and the father of a bad letter, but it’s unjust to suspect them of other unspecified crimes. And the son’s character is on display well enough for this one crime without adding hypothetical sadism to it.
Shut up, OlliP. By their fruits you shall know them.
The guy was macking on all the women at the party before he figured out who was the easiest prey. The younger sister had to push him away for unwanted kissing– in other words, more aggressive behavior. it is a common tactic for rapists to experiment to find out who has the most trouble defending their boundaries– because rape is the plan.
The father sees NOTHING WRONG with his son, other than depression for being in trouble.
It isn’t unfair to assume their entitled, aggressive, unempathetic behavior has manifested before.
@OlliP
In what way and how is it ‘unjust’ to suspect people of crimes? At what point does speculation pervert the course of justice?
I think you misunderstood John’s point. John said that the veneer of ‘goodness’ is exactly that. You, however, seem to want to preserve that veneer at all costs. Presumably that’s because you stole a sherbet dib-dab from a child when you were four.
When will justice be done about my wild accusation?