Two months after Stanford University rapist Brock Turner was released from prison, the survivor at the centre of the case has spoken out.
In a moving essay penned for Glamour magazine, the woman says she was left with nothing but “embarrassment for trying” when her attacker was given a sentence of just six months.
She had prepared a lengthy and impassioned victim’s statement which she read to the court prior to sentencing, and which was later circulated around the globe after it was published in the media, read out on television and in the US Congress.
“I started getting e-mails forwarded to me from Botswana to Ireland to India,” she wrote of the aftermath of her statement.
“I received watercolor paintings of lighthouses and bicycle earrings.
“A woman who plucked a picture of her young daughter from the inside of her [office] cubicle writes, ‘This is who you’re saving’.”
The woman – who has chosen to remain anonymous - was also attacked by a small number of trolls, one of whom responded to a leaked photo of her by saying, “she’s not pretty enough to have been raped”.
However, it was the pity-filled comment of another person who said, “I hope my daughter never ends up like her”, that truly stuck a chord.
“I absorbed that statement. Ends up," she wrote.
"As if we end somewhere, as if what was done to me marked the completion of my story.
"Instead of being a role model to be looked up to, I was a sad example to learn from, a story that caused you to shield your daughter’s eyes and shake your heads with pity.”
Viewing survivors as being irreversibly tainted or ruined by any one traumatic event brought on by someone else is deeply problematic, she argued.
She herself has learned to be strong and proud of herself as a result of her experience: “victims are not victims, not some fragile, sorrowful aftermath. Victims are survivors, and survivors are going to be doing a hell of a lot more than surviving.”
Throughout her lengthy case, the woman’s attacker was painted as a model student and all American champion swimmer and blame was placed on the amount of alcohol he consumed rather than him.
Meanwhile her judgement was continually questioned by Turner's attorney and afterwards by some members of the public.
Victim blaming and honing in on a woman’s behaviour in this way – telling them to be more sober, more covered or more attentive – takes society nowhere, she wrote.
Instead, she argued, it was important to recognise actions that harm or violate another person are the priority and that the people responsible are properly held to account.
Her essay ends with the hopeful sentiment that, “the world will no longer stand for this”.
Turner was taken into custody after two men riding by on bikes discovered him on top of the woman behind a college campus dumpster. She was unconscious and almost completely naked.
A jury found Turner guilty of three counts of sexual assault, a charge which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in that jurisdiction, however the presiding judge sentenced him to six months with probation saying that any longer term would have a “severe impact” on Turner’s future.
A petition has since been circulating calling for the judge to be repealed.
