https://www.sccgov.org/sites/da/newsroom/newsreleases/Documents/B-Turner%20VIS.pdf
I have done enough explaining. You do not get to shrug your shoulders and be confused
anymore. You do not get to pretend that there were no red flags. You do not get to not know why
you ran. You have been convicted of violating me with malicious intent, and all you can admit to
is consuming alcohol. Do not talk about the sad way your life was upturned because alcohol
made you do bad things. Figure out how to take responsibility for your own conduct.
Lastly you said, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin a life.
Ruin 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. 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.
See one thing we have in common is that we were both unable to get up in the morning. I am no
stranger to suffering. You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was “unconscious
intoxicated woman”, ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that
was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is
not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while
you are the All-American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so
much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, who waited a year to figure
out if I was worth something.
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My independence, natural joy, gentleness, and steady lifestyle I had been enjoying became
distorted beyond recognition. I became closed off, angry, self-deprecating, tired, irritable, empty.
The isolation at times was unbearable. You cannot give me back the life I had before that night
either. While you worry about your shattered reputation, I refrigerated spoons every night so
when I woke up, and my eyes were puffy from crying, I would hold the spoons to my eyes to
lessen the swelling so that I could see. I showed up an hour late to work every morning, excused
myself to cry in the stairwells, I can tell you all the best places in that building to cry where no
one can hear you, the pain became so bad that I had to tell my boss I was leaving, I needed time
because continuing day to day was not possible. I used my savings to go as far away as I could
possibly be.
I can’t sleep alone at night without having a light on, like a five year old, because I have
nightmares of being touched where I cannot wake up, I did this thing where I waited until the sun
came up and I felt safe enough to sleep. For three months, I went to bed at six o’clock in the
morning.
I used to pride myself on my independence, now I am afraid to go on walks in the evening, to
attend social events with drinking among friends where I should be comfortable being. I have
become a little barnacle always needing to be at someone’s side, to have my boyfriend standing
next to me, sleeping beside me, protecting me. It is embarrassing how feeble I feel, how timidly I
move through life, always guarded, ready to defend myself, ready to be angry.
You have no idea how hard I have worked to rebuild parts of me that are still weak. It took me
eight months to even talk about what happened. I could no longer connect with friends, with
everyone around me. I would scream at my boyfriend, my own family whenever they brought
this up. You never let me forget what happened to me. At the of end of the hearing, the trial, I
was too tired to speak. I would leave drained, silent. I would go home turn off my phone and for
days I would not speak. You bought me a ticket to a planet where I lived by myself. Every time a
new article come out, I lived with the paranoia that my entire hometown would find out and
know me as the girl who got assaulted. I didn’t want anyone’s pity and am still learning to accept
victim as part of my identity. You made my own hometown an uncomfortable place to be.
Someday, you can pay me back for my ambulance ride and therapy. But you cannot give me back
my sleepless nights. The way I have broken down sobbing uncontrollably if I’m watching a
movie and a woman is harmed, to say it lightly, this experience has expanded my empathy for
other victims. I have lost weight from stress, when people would comment I told them I’ve been
running a lot lately. There are times I did not want to be touched. I have to relearn that I am not
fragile, I am capable, I am wholesome, not just livid and weak.
I want to say this. All the crying, the hurting you have imposed on me, I can take it. But when I
see my younger sister hurting, when she is unable to keep up in school, when she is deprived of
joy, when she is not sleeping, when she is crying so hard on the phone she is barely breathing,
telling me over and over she is sorry for leaving me alone that night, sorry sorry sorry, when she
feels more guilt than you, then I do not forgive you. That night I had called her to try and find
her, but you found me first. Your attorney's closing statement began, "My sister said she was fine
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and who knows her better than her sister." You tried to use my own sister against me. Your points
of attack were so weak, so low, it was almost embarrassing. You do not touch her.
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.
You should have never done this to me. Secondly, you should have never made me fight so long
to tell you, you should have never done this to me. But here we are. The damage is done, no one
can undo it. And now we both have a choice. We can let this destroy us, I can remain angry and
hurt and you can be in denial, or we can face it head on, I accept the pain, you accept the
punishment, and we move on.
Your life is not over, you have decades of years ahead to rewrite your story. The world is huge, it
is so much bigger than Palo Alto and Stanford, and you will make a space for yourself in it
where you can be useful and happy. Right now your name is tainted, so I challenge you to make
a new name for yourself, to do something so good for the world, it blows everyone away. You
have a brain and a voice and a heart. Use them wisely. You possess immense love from your
family. That alone can pull you out of anything. Mine has held me up through all of this. Yours
will hold you and you will go on.
I believe, that one day, you will understand all of this better. I hope you will become a better
more honest person who can properly use this story to prevent another story like this from ever
happening again. I fully support your journey to healing, to rebuilding your life, because that is
the only way you’ll begin to help others.
Now to address the sentencing. When I read the probation officer’s report, I was in disbelief,
consumed by anger which eventually quieted down to profound sadness. My statements have
been slimmed down to distortion and taken out of context. I fought hard during this trial and will
not have the outcome minimized by a probation officer who attempted to evaluate my current
state and my wishes in a fifteen minute conversation, the majority of which was spent answering
questions I had about the legal system. The context is also important. Brock had yet to issue a
statement, and I had not read his remarks.
My life has been on hold for over a year, a year of anger, anguish and uncertainty, until a jury of
my peers rendered a judgment that validated the injustices I had endured. Had Brock admitted
guilt and remorse and offered to settle early on, I would have considered a lighter sentence,
respecting his honesty, grateful to be able to move our lives forward. Instead he took the risk of
going to trial, added insult to injury and forced me to relive the hurt as details about my personal
life and sexual assault were brutally dissected before the public. He pushed me and my family
through a year of inexplicable, unnecessary suffering, and should face the consequences of
challenging his crime, of putting my pain into question, of making us wait so long for justice.
I told the probation officer I do not want Brock to rot away in prison. I did not say he does not
deserve to be behind bars. The probation officer’s recommendation of a year or less in county jail
is a soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of his assaults, and of the consequences of the
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pain I have been forced to endure. I also told the probation officer that what I truly wanted was
for Brock to get it, to understand and admit to his wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, after reading the defendant’s statement, I am severely disappointed and feel that
he has failed to exhibit sincere remorse or responsibility for his conduct. I fully respected his
right to a trial, but even after twelve jurors unanimously convicted him guilty of three felonies,
all he has admitted to doing is ingesting alcohol. Someone who cannot take full accountability
for his actions does not deserve a mitigating sentence. It is deeply offensive that he would try and
dilute rape with a suggestion of promiscuity. By definition rape is the absence of promiscuity,
rape is the absence of consent, and it perturbs me deeply that he can’t even see that distinction.
The probation officer factored in that the defendant is youthful and has no prior convictions. In
my opinion, he is old enough to know what he did was wrong. When you are eighteen in this
country you can go to war. When you are nineteen, you are old enough to pay the consequences
for attempting to rape someone. He is young, but he is old enough to know better.
As this is a first offense I can see where leniency would beckon. On the other hand, as a society,
we cannot forgive everyone’s first sexual assault or digital rape. It doesn’t make sense. The
seriousness of rape has to be communicated clearly, we should not create a culture that suggests
we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error. The consequences of sexual assault needs to
be severe enough that people feel enough fear to exercise good judgment even if they are drunk,
severe enough to be preventative. The fact that Brock was a star athlete at a prestigious
university should not be seen as an entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a strong
cultural message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class.
The probation officer weighed the fact that he has surrendered a hard earned swimming
scholarship. If I had been sexually assaulted by an un-athletic guy from a community college,
what would his sentence be? If a first time offender from an underprivileged background was
accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking,
what would his sentence be? How fast he swims does not lessen the impact of what happened to
me.
The Probation Officer has stated that this case, when compared to other crimes of similar nature,
may be considered less serious due to the defendant’s level of intoxication. It felt serious. That’s
all I’m going to say.
He is a lifetime sex registrant. That doesn’t expire. Just like what he did to me doesn’t expire,
doesn’t just go away after a set number of years. It stays with me, it’s part of my identity, it has
forever changed the way I carry myself, the way I live the rest of my life.
A year has gone by and he has had lots of time on his hands. Has he been seeing a psychologist?
What has he done in this past year to show he’s been progressing?
Throughout incarceration I hope he is provided with appropriate therapy and resources to rebuild
his life. I request that he educates himself about the issue of campus sexual assault. I hope he
accepts proper punishment and pushes himself to reenter society as a better person.
To conclude, I want to say thank you. To everyone from the intern who made me oatmeal when I
woke up at the hospital that morning, to the deputy who waited beside me, to the nurses who
calmed me, to the detective who listened to me and never judged me, to my advocates who stood
unwaveringly beside me, to my therapist who taught me to find courage in vulnerability, to my
boss for being kind and understanding, to my incredible parents who teach me how to turn pain
into strength, to my friends who remind me how to be happy, to my boyfriend who is patient and
loving, to my unconquerable sister who is the other half of my heart, to Alaleh, my idol, who
fought tirelessly and never doubted me. Thank you to everyone involved in the trial for their time
and attention. Thank you to girls across the nation that wrote cards to my DA to give to me, so
many strangers who cared for me.
Most importantly, thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet. I sleep with
two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That
we are looking out for one another. To have known all of these people, to have felt their
protection and love, is something I will never forget.
And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you.
When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop
fighting, I believe you. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save;
they just stand there shining. Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today,
you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small
satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big,
big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you
are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody
can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank yo
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