Brock Turner, the 20-year-old former star athlete from Stanford University who was convicted of felony sexual assault after he raped an unconscious woman, blamed "party culture" for the crime he committed.
In a revealing letter Turner wrote to judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced him to a very lenient six months in prison, Turner acknowledged that he was the "sole proprietor of what happened"—that is, the rape—but still found a way to deflect the blame away from himself.
In a copy of Turner's statement obtained by The Guardian, Turner bemoans the apparent distress he feels as a result of his actions. He writes:
It debilitates me to think that my actions have caused her emotional and physical stress that is completely unwarranted and unfair. The thought of this is in my head every second of every day since this event has occurred. These ideas never leave my mind. During the day, I shake uncontrollably from the amount I torment myself by thinking about what has happened.
Turner then blames his actions on alcohol: "I wish I had the ability to go back in time, and never pick up a drink that night, let alone interact with [redacted]."
He continues to describe his damaged psyche as a result of the rape he committed:
I can barely hold a conversation with someone without having my mind drift into thinking these thoughts. They torture me. I go to sleep every night having been crippled by these thoughts to the point of exhaustion. I wake up having dreamt of these horrific events that I have caused. I am completely consumed by my poor judgement [sic] and ill thought actions. There isn’t a second that has gone by where I haven’t regretted the course of events I took on January 17th/18th. My shell and core of who I am as a person is forever broken from this.
Turner's comments about the "torture" he feels as a result of having raped a woman are anger-inducing and cringeworthy because they're tone-deaf and overshadow the impact on his victim. Yes, Turner has to live with himself and the hideous crime he committed, but so does his victim. What's more, women must continue to live in fear that Turner or men like him will "drink too much" and cause them harm.
While Turner took (or at least feigned) responsibility for his actions at the beginning of the letter, near the end, he suggests he never would've raped his victim had he not been drinking and partying:
I want to demolish the assumption that drinking and partying are what make up a college lifestyle. I made a mistake, I drank too much, and my decisions hurt someone. But I never ever meant to intentionally hurt [redacted]. My poor decision making and excessive drinking hurt someone that night and I wish I could just take it all back. ...
Ultimately, Turner violated a woman who couldn't defend herself, and he should feel terrible. But all of that lost sleep and distraction during conversations—the "torture" he's enduring—are meaningless if he and the rest of society don't acknowledge that the real problem has nothing to do with party culture, and everything to do with rape culture.
Read the full transcript of Turner's statement, as published by The Guardian, below:
The night of January 17th changed my life and the lives of everyone involved forever. I can never go back to being the person I was before that day. I am no longer a swimmer, a student, a resident of California, or the product of the work that I put in to accomplish the goals that I set out in the first nineteen years of my life. Not only have I altered my life, but I’ve also changed [redacted] and her family’s life. I am the sole proprietor of what happened on the night that these people’s lives were changed forever. I would give anything to change what happened that night. I can never forgive myself for imposing trauma and pain on [redacted]. It debilitates me to think that my actions have caused her emotional and physical stress that is completely unwarranted and unfair. The thought of this is in my head every second of every day since this event has occurred. These ideas never leave my mind. During the day, I shake uncontrollably from the amount I torment myself by thinking about what has happened. I wish I had the ability to go back in time and never pick up a drink that night, let alone interact with [redacted]. I can barely hold a conversation with someone without having my mind drift into thinking these thoughts. They torture me. I go to sleep every night having been crippled by these thoughts to the point of exhaustion. I wake up having dreamt of these horrific events that I have caused. I am completely consumed by my poor judgement and ill thought actions. There isn’t a second that has gone by where I haven’t regretted the course of events I took on January 17th/18th. My shell and core of who I am as a person is forever broken from this. I am a changed person. At this point in my life, I never want to have a drop of alcohol again. I never want to attend a social gathering that involves alcohol or any situation where people make decisions based on the substances they have consumed. I never want to experience being in a position where it will have a negative impact on my life or someone else’s ever again. I’ve lost two jobs solely based on the reporting of my case. I wish I never was good at swimming or had the opportunity to attend Stanford, so maybe the newspapers wouldn’t want to write stories about me.
