Brock Turner’s victim has dreams and a future, too: Sympathy for convicted sex offender is grossly misplaced
Like many young, affluent, white men in rape cases, the Stanford swimmer's "potential" inspires twisted defenses
You can’t say that the Stanford sexual assault case hasn’t garnered an outpouring of public empathy. It’s just been fascinating to see how much of it has been directed on the now convicted sex offender at the heart of it.
You may, if you have been following the story, know that Brock Turner is a felon and future registered sex offender. You may know that earlier this year, a jury found him guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, sexual penetration of an intoxicated person and sexual penetration of an unconscious person. And, because we still live in a world in which “white dude” is considered the default human interest angle in a story, you probably also a lot of other things about him. Things that have, ever since the case first came to light in 2015, been told and retold as sympathetically as possible.
Take, for example, how the Washington Post’s Michael E. Miller — a man whose masculine bio boasts that he’s “smoked stogies, interviewed strippers, and narrowly survived a cavity search in a Panamanian jungle prison, all in the name of journalism” — covered the Turner verdict. Describing the convicted sex offender as a “baby-faced Stanford freshman” and “a member of Stanford’s varsity swim team, one of the best in the country,” he went on to sadly note that “his extraordinary yet brief swim career is now tarnished, like a rusting trophy” after Turner’s“life and career were upended during a night of drinking.” The story ends with an anecdote about how Turner responded, three years ago, when he was named his high school’s Athlete of the Week. He’d offered a quote from Muhammed Ali and a wish to be “in residency to be a surgeon” in ten years. But, Miller observed, “If his conviction stands and his sentence is stiff, however, he will be in prison instead.” I can’t make this crap up.
Or look how the San Jose Mercury News’ Scott Herhold argued earlier this month that Turner “deserves county jail, not state prison” because ” He is not, as the prosecution has it, ‘a continued threat to the community'” and hey, “For the rest of his life, Turner will have to register as a convicted sex offender. That effectively closes many career avenues. It’s a permanent blight.” Besides, “It’s hard to review this case without concluding that it has roots in a culture of campus drinking, the unindicted co-conspirator here.”
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