I would like to ask every one of my readers to click the link below and read it all the way through, and also read this post all the way through even though it may be a bit uncomfortable.
An open letter by the victim of the Stanford sexual assault
In case you haven’t heard, former Stanford swim team member Brock Turner was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman he met at a party. He dragged her outside and assaulted her behind a dumpster for several minutes before being chased off by two Swedish men riding bikes. He could have received a maximum of 14 years for his crime. However, he came from money and his father hired a high-dollar attorney who made the victim re-live the horrible assault on the stand, questioning her credibility and promiscuity and generally making her feel worthless. The prosecutor recommended a lenient sentence of only one year, and the judge was even more lenient and sentenced Turner to six months. With good behavior he will be a free man before Labor Day.
I think that is disgusting.
My blog draws hundreds of readers a day, and although my stats tracker doesn’t break down demographics by gender, I think it’s safe to assume that about 50% of my readers are men. Given the number of people who read this blog, it’s probably safe to also assume there are men reading this who have the potential to commit a rape or sexual assault in the future. I beg you, please, please, please don’t. When you do that to a woman, you are emotionally scarring another living being for the rest of her life. She will never be able to get away from the sense of helplessness and powerlessness that you caused her to feel. Please read the letter I linked above and get a sense of what a woman goes through emotionally and physically as a result of this crime.
I have been debating whether to write about this issue every day this week. As early as Wednesday I had it in my daily news update posts and then deleted it. It just didn’t seem appropriate to include this in between who’s playing Loflin Yard and what bobblehead the Redbirds are giving away. However, as someone who is a shaper of public opinion, I feel a responsibility to write about what happened at Stanford. I feel like I’m part of the problem if I don’t write about it. Sorry for bringing up a subject that most of us would rather not discuss, but it is an issue that must be discussed or this kind of thing will continue to happen.
Massive respect to Vice-President Joe Biden for his open letter to the courageous young woman who survived the assault.
Massive respect to USA Swimming for banning Brock Turner for life. I sure as hell do not want this piece of garbage representing my country.
There’s a website where you can sign a petition to recall Judge Aaron Persky who handed down the extremely light six-month sentence.
If a woman ever discloses to you that she suffered a sexual assault or rape, the two most helpful things you can say to her are “I believe you” and “It wasn’t your fault.”
I did a news update this morning, so keep scrolling if you want to know what’s going on around town today. I may do another news post after work. Sorry to go off on a tangent but I just find this matter sickening and couldn’t keep quiet any more.