North Carolina Father Writes Letter Chastising Father of Stanford Sex Assault Convict Brock Turner: 'Brock is Not the Victim Here'
A North Carolina father wrote an open letter to the father of Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student recently sentenced to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in 2015.
John Pavlovitz, a pastor and blogger in Wake Forest, is one of many to express outrage at the length of the sentence. His letter responds to a letter written by Turner's father, Dan, to Judge Aaron Persky, in which he begged the judge for leniency for his son.
Dan Turner's letter, which has been widely criticized, read: "These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways." It added, "His life will never be the one he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. This is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life."
Pavlovitz's letter declares that the former Stanford swimmer is not a victim.
"I need you to understand something, and I say this as a father who dearly loves my son as much as you love yours: Brock is not the victim here. His victim is the victim. She is the wounded one. He is the damager," he wrote in the blog post, which was entitled, "To Brock Turner's Father, From Another Father" on his self-titled website.
"This young woman will be dealing with this for far longer than the embarrassingly short six months your son is being penalized. She will endure the unthinkable trauma of his '20 minutes of action' for the duration of her lifetime, and the fact that you seem unaware of this fact is exactly why we have a problem."
Turner told authorities that the 23-year-old woman consented to having sex with him behind a dumpster after a fraternity party in the early morning hours of January 18, according to the The Washington Post. However, the woman said in court that she didn't recall meeting the man let alone agreeing to have sexual contact with him.
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The victim penned an emotional letter to her attacker, describing the "severe impact" she suffered as a result of the assault.
"Your damage was concrete; striped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me," she wrote. "You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today."
Pavolvitz echoed the woman's sentiments, writing, "There is no scenario where your son should be the sympathetic figure here."
"He is the assailant. He is the rapist. I can't imagine as a father how gut wrenching such a reality is for you, but it is still true," he continued in the letter. "The idea that your son has never violated another woman next to a dumpster before isn't a credit to his character."
He added: "One vile act against another human being is one too many."
He ended his letter with a call for Turner's father to "do better."
Pavlovitz wrote: "You love your son and you should. But love him enough to teach him to own the terrible decisions he's made, to pay the debt to society as prescribed, and then to find a redemptive path to walk, doing the great work in the world that you say he will.
"For now though, as one father to another: Help us to teach our children to do better – by letting them see us do better."
