Convicted rapist Brock Turner is due to be released this Friday, having served just three months behind bars in a county jail.
The Stanford University student was controversially sentenced to six months jail and three years probation for the January 2015 sexual assault of an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party.
However, public records suggest he is due be released early on good behaviour, reports The Los Angeles Times.
Prosecutors had sought a six-year prison term, but Judge Aaron Persky declared a stint in a state prison was not “the right answer” for Turner. It was a move that sparked outrage around the world and led to a prominent campaign to have Persky recalled from the bench.
The case was brought to international attention via a powerful 12-page impact statement penned by Turner’s unidentified 23-year-old victim.
Read: Rape victim’s powerful message to her attacker: “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me.”
“In newspapers my name was ‘unconscious intoxicated woman’, 10 syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was,” she wrote.
“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.”
Turner’s impending release has brought public anger over the leniency of his sentence bubbling back to the surface, with many taking to social media to vent their frustrations.
Persky has since been reassigned to the civil division of Santa Clara court, and will no longer hear criminal cases.
Meanwhile, Californian lawmakers yesterday passed legislation that would ensure a mandatory prison sentence for offenders convicted of sexually assaulting a person who is unconscious or too intoxicated to consent, a move enacted as a direct response to Turner’s case.
According to CNN, the law will bring such offences in line with other sex crimes including rape by force and aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Top Comments
It doesn't help or add anything useful by being dishonest with headlines. Whatever your feelings or beliefs are, Brock Turner is not a rapist. A rapist is a person who has been convicted of the crime of rape in a court of law.
A rapist is somebody who rapes a woman. He was caught in the act by witnesses.
No, he was neither caught raping a woman or convicted of raping a woman. He never took off, or lowered his pants, and nobody claimed that he had done so. He was convicted of sexual assault because he said to the police that he was 'fingering her' and claim that she enjoyed it. To claim that he is a rapist is to be either ignorant or dishonest. See http://documents.latimes.co...
Why on earth are you defending this guy? He's not a rapist because his penis wasn't involved? Perhaps you need to go back and read the victim impact statement again, and try to understand how violated she felt. Or perhaps you're just here trying to provoke a reaction.
This is why women are still getting raped. Men like you justifing it makes me sick. Your comment is awful. You are part of the reason why many rape victims never press charges.