I thought the response by the victim was great on this point:
You said, you are in the process of establishing a program for high school and college students in which you speak about your experience to “speak out against the college campus drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that.”
Campus drinking culture. That’s what we’re speaking out against? You think that’s what I’ve spent the past year fighting for? Not awareness about campus sexual assault, or rape, or learning to recognize consent. Campus drinking culture. Down with Jack Daniels. Down with Skyy Vodka. If you want talk to people about drinking go to an AA meeting. You realize, having a drinking problem is different than drinking and then forcefully trying to have sex with someone? Show men how to respect women, not how to drink less.
Drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that. Goes along with that, like a side effect, like fries on the side of your order. Where does promiscuity even come into play? I don’t see headlines that read, Brock Turner, Guilty of drinking too much and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that. Campus Sexual Assault. There’s your first powerpoint slide. Rest assured, if you fail to fix the topic of your talk, I will follow you to every school you go to and give a follow up presentation.
Lastly you said, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin a life.
A life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine. Let me rephrase for you, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin two lives. You and me. You are the cause, I am the effect. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again. You knocked down both our towers, I collapsed at the same time you did. If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. Nobody wins. We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering. Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.
How does this guy even have a platform? Not only was he caught raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, he hasn’t even accepted guilt for his actions, just some kind of lapse in judgement that harmed his own life. This is not even acknowledging the main consequences of his actions, and the authority figures around him seem to be going along with this reasoning. We don’t want to harm his chances of success, we must remember his good qualities, we must avoid letting this affect his life too much.
This is where I can heartily agree with @donaleen. I can accept the fact that some people are going to commit crimes in every society and that men are probably going to be the ones committing most of the violent and sexual crimes. I can’t accept those crimes, but the best communities I’ve been in have had some people who proved themselves unworthy of trust placed in them. But this minimising of something that is so far beyond the kind of doubt that might exist in other cases is all on the system. There is no level of drunk that could make this in any way understandable. If you raped an unconscious person for 20 minutes and then ran away when you were caught without even covering her up or trying to argue that it was consensual, you knew what you were doing. The idea that the rapist’s ability, sporting credentials or chance of success should influence the sentence is pure classism. The defence attorney bringing up the victim’s sexual history in unconscionable. Unfortunately, I don’t think there will ever be a society without rape. But we can make one without rape apology or minimisation.
