Stanford banned Brock from campus right after his arrest.
About that sentencing…
I just saw something on my FB feed to the effect of- if you are a competitive swimmer who rapes, you are not an athlete who made a mistake, you are a criminal who happens to swim well.
I imagine what it must be like if this were your son - to be so heartsick that he’s gone so wrong but to also naturally want to defend him. My stomach gets upset at the very thought. It goes without saying it also gets upset at the thought of a daughter being on the other end.
Agree, @pizzagirl, but how can even his own family think that it was best for him to posture and deflect and deny as he did?
Even as I would be sick at the thought of my own son committing such a crime, I would honestly, deeply feel that I would be doing him no favors if I recommended that he defend himself in this way.
I would feel that the only hope for my son’s future would be to force him to recognize himself as a criminal and try to rehabilitate himself. Step one is owning up to the crime - fully. Step two is accepting the punishment that goes with it, not some watered-down entitled version. And even then, it would take years to convince me that he had really changed - even my own child.
Depends on the family. Some families I knew from my own neighborhood and many in my extended family would be inclined to let the judge throw the book at the child who committed a serious crime/offense.
It may just be my limited observations, but I found this strictness more common among older generations of parents(Silent generation and before) and/or those from the working/lower-middle class whereas those from the upper/upper-middle class tend to be much more inclined to believe their child “can do no wrong and anyone who says so is mistaken/has an agenda against my kid”.
This was underscored by the contrasting behaviors of lower-middle/working class parents vs upper/upper-middle class parents coming in to visit their kids after they were caught red-handed in various criminal acts while I was at a police station to do research for a social science project for one of my advanced undergrad classes.
The former were much more inclined to be strict and “let the law throw the book” at their kids whereas the latter parents either were in denial despite the red-handed evidence or tried minimizing it by citing the family’s SES/neighborhood background, school record/attendance at respectable/elite high schools/colleges, topflight/lettered athlete status, etc etc etc.
Some of the latter parents went so far to threaten the police with lawsuits from their attorneys in the same manner some Prof/TFs I’ve talked with at H recounted some well-off undergrads and/or their parents attempting to threaten lawsuits because they felt they were entitled to an A and the Prof gave them a B/B+ instead.
Was very interesting to see all that go down during the 3 hours I was at that police station taking notes and doing some interviews.
@cobrat, um… are you calling me “older” or “working/lower middle class?” I don’t think I’m either one (“not that there’s anything wrong with that…”)
@prospect1 If you read the concluding paragraph of Professor Dauber’s letter she pretty much says exactly what you have expressed in your post #303:
“This important lesson will ultimately aid in Turner’s rehabilitation because it will help him to take responsibility for what he did…”
The length of time he is in jail is not IMO going to help him take responsibility. That is something that comes from within and I’m not seeing it.
The mugshot surfaces.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/no-brock-turner-mug-shot.html
@momofthreeboys You’re right that this may not have happened if neither party had been drinking. But voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a crime under CA law (I am a CA lawyer). Nor is it a generally considered grounds for reducing a potential sentence. The prisons are full of people who were drunk or high when they committed crimes. It’s pretty much a given that quite a few crimes wouldn’t occur if people didn’t drink – it’s in no way uniquely relevant to this type of crime. It is HIGHLY unusual for someone convicted of three violent felonies (and the fact that the jury convicted him is significant – prosecutors often face an uphill battle in these cases, precisely because there are jurors who are ready to blame the victim’s drinking) to get a few months in county jail. The system didn’t work here. And clearly the perpetrator’s family – who lament that he no longer wants to eat steak – will continue to tell their son he did nothing wrong.
@MichiganGeorgia, it’s not the length of time per se that gets the message across to people like Turner, I agree with you. But if he is to be rehabilitated at all, it can only be because he is made to understand the message society is sending him.
As things stand, society is telling him that his crime was relatively minor. That’s what his parents/family/friends and judge have told him, and he will take their words to heart more than the condemnation of the general public.
If he had been sentenced more harshly, and if his family had not defended him so staunchly, he would have received a different message from his own village. That is the type of message I would want MY son to hear, because I would want him to stand a decent chance at rehabilitation. In that way, a longer jail sentence – the kind that comes when you don’t have an expensive lawyer and family backing – could have made Turner look within himself more closely and critically.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/06/06/3784952/letter-victim-blaming-turner/
Here is a letter from a friend to the judge.
To me, this looks like it can’t be for real. I guess it is.
Seriously, do we know for a fact the above letter and the father’s letter are legitimate?
^^^^^^ I am speechless
There is an almost ironic sense of justice that the huge amount of publicity and outcry generated by the Judge’s inadequate sentence means Brock’s life is likely more severely impacted by his crime than if he had been appropriately sentenced. He’s all over the national news which he probably would not have been otherwise. I first read about it here. Then yesterday my daughter asked me out of the blue if I’d read the victim’s impact letter.
The father’s letter was legitimate according to the prosecuting attorney. It’s interesting that I’ve not seen any response or statement from the mother .
The letter alh quotes was not written by Ms Dauber. It was written by a 20 yo friend of Turner’s.
Right. Dauber posted that letter and the father’s letter, if I understand correctly from all these news reports. (I assume people will read links)
I haven’t looked at the facebook posts people were discussing earlier. Is it possible to see them if you don’t belong to facebook? How could anything be more unbelievable than those letters?
“Agree, @pizzagirl, but how can even his own family think that it was best for him to posture and deflect and deny as he did?”
I think the cognitive dissonance would be so great a parent would cling to any delusion that this was a “drunken consensual hookup she now regrets” instead of what it was.
http://reductress.com/post/prison-installs-new-olympic-sized-swimming-pool-for-stanford-rapist/
Pretty funny, in a trying not to hit something way.
^^^^ disgusting , if this is true.