Outrage continues to mount over the California rape case of former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner and those who’ve defended him, most notably his father.
In a letter to the sentencing judge, Dan Turner tried to downplay his 20-year-old son’s “20 minutes of action,” during which he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. The dad blamed the resulting sexual assault conviction on a campus culture of “binge drinking” and “sexual promiscuity.”
After highlighting his son’s academic and athletic achievements, he bemoaned the fact that his Brock no longer had an appetite for his favourite snacks since the night of Jan. 17, 2015, when the rape occurred. He also detailed how challenging his son’s life would now be.
WATCH: The disturbing case of a Stanford University campus rape has sparked international outrage
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz decided this week to respond to the letter with one of his own, titled: “To Brock Turner’s Father, From Another Father.”
“It is resonating with so many people,” Pavlovitz told Global News.
His now-viral open letter puts into words what many felt as they read a father about a father trying to excuse rape.
“His letter summarized so much as a society what we do wrong,” he said. “We blame the victim and remove culpability from the assailant.”
Pavlovitz’s rebuttal has been viewed 2.5 million times on his blog (repeatedly crashing it), and has drawn hundreds of messages.
What prompted him to write it was anger over what he saw as a “blown opportunity” on the part of the rapist’s dad to teach his son and other men about accountability.
The pastor hopes his words, which can be read in their entirety below, can help change that and let survivors of sexual assault know they’re seen and heard.
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Dear Mr. Turner,
I’ve read your letter to the judge on behalf of your son Brock, asking for leniency in his rape conviction.
I need you to understand something, and I say this as a father who dearly loves my son as much as you must love yours:
Brock is not the victim here.
His victim is the victim.
She is the wounded one.
He is the damager.
If his life has been “deeply altered” it is because he has horribly altered another human being; because he made a reprehensible choice to take advantage of someone for his own pleasure. This young woman will be dealing with this for far longer than the embarrassingly short six months your son is being penalized. She will endure the unthinkable trauma of his “20 minutes of action” for the duration of her lifetime, and the fact that you seem unaware of this fact is exactly why we have a problem.
This is why young men continue to rape women.
This is why so many men believe that they can do whatever they please to a woman’s body without accountability.
This is the reason so many victims of sexual assault never step forward.
This is why white privilege is real and insidious and usually those with it are oblivious to it.
I understand you trying to humanize your son in your letter; talking to the judge about his favorite snacks and swim practice and about the memories that are sweet for you as his father — but to be honest I don’t give a damn and if his victim was your daughter I’m quite sure you wouldn’t either.
I imagine this young woman had favorite snacks and sports too, and parents who had wonderful plans for her that didn’t include this nightmare.
There is no scenario where your son should be the sympathetic figure here. He is the assailant. He is the rapist. I can’t imagine as a father how gut wrenching such a reality is for you, but it is still true.
Brock has to register as a sex offender because he sexually assaulted an incapacitated a young woman. This is why we have such requirements; because one vile act against another human being is one too many, because we don’t get a do-over when we do unspeakable things, because people need to be protected with knowledge of others in their midst who have failed so egregiously at respecting another person’s basic dignity.
The idea that your son has never violated another woman next to a dumpster before isn’t a credit to his character. We don’t get kudos for only raping one person in our lifetime. I don’t believe your son is a monster but he acted like one and that needs to be accounted for. To be sure, this decision is not the sum total of Brock’s life, but it is an important part of the equation and it matters deeply.
And to be clear, Mr. Turner, “alcohol and sexual promiscuity” are not the story here. The story here, is that young men have choices to make and these choices define them, even if those choices are made when temptation is great and opportunity is abundant. In fact, our humanity is most expressed when faced with such things, we choose integrity and decency; when we abstain from doing what is easy but wrong.
We as parents don’t control our children. Most parents understand this. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, they fail and fall and do things we’d never consent to. I certainly hope this is such an occasion, though it is not coming across that way in your letter. It feels like you want more sympathy and goodwill toward your son than you want for the survivor of his crime, and that’s simply not good enough for her or for those young men and women watching.
Here is her story.
You love your son and you should. But love him enough to teach him to own the terrible decisions he’s made, to pay the debt to society as prescribed, and then to find a redemptive path to walk, doing the great work in the world that you say he will.
For now though, as one father to another: help us teach our children to do better — by letting them see us do better.
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Dan Turner is not the only one who came under fire for his defence of his son. Leslie Rasmussen (who’s a drummer in The Good English band and a childhood friend of the disgraced Stanford swimmer) sent the judge a similar letter, in which she also tried to blame alcohol for what happened.
During the investigation, the rape survivor admitted she drank about four shots of whiskey before going to a fraternity party the night she was attacked, and had vodka there. The next thing she said she remembered was waking up bloodied and bandaged at a hospital, and being told she’d been sexually assaulted.
“I am not blaming her directly for this,” Rasmussen wrote. “But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.”
“This is completely different from a woman being kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink … and having clouded judgement.”
Rasmussen argued that an investigation should’ve found her friend innocent.
Her Ohio band has since had multiple shows cancelled.
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