On the weekend I read Brock Turner’s victim’s statement.
It was staggering in its strength, its power, its frank and reasoned wording.
It is something I hope everyone gets to read at some time.
As a woman who’s known men like Brock Turner I am hugely grateful to her for every word of that statement.
Then, as most of you would have, I read the hideous words of Brock Turner’s father.
A small man who spoke with such entitlement and privilege it made it hard to follow.
His son has clearly learned his lack of respect and basic humanity from his father.
But it gets worse.
Because now a letter that Brock Turner’s friend wrote to The Honourable Judge Aaron Persky has emerged.
A letter in which his friend Leslie Rasmussen defends Brock’s character.
“Brock is such a sweetheart and a very smart kid” she writes.
“I never caught him harassing anyone, verbally or physically. That would have been so out of character”.
In the letter Lesie says Brock came from a very respectable family, “I also know his sister Caroline. They all seem like such good kids brought up by two very cool and grounded parents”.
Because a rapist would never come from a respectable family would they?
But the thing we know, even if Leslie doesn’t, is that even if Brock’s family were a good family, which his father’s letter points against, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t take advantage of a woman and rape her behind a dumpster.
I went to a “good” school, an elite school where parents paid fortunes for a private education.
Presented in their school ties and blazers the boys from my wealthy suburban school looked the part.
But there were boys amongst them, young men from prestigious backgrounds that treated girls with the most foul and abusive behaviour.
Demands of sex, unwanted touching and non-consensual sex, this was the thrill for of some of these “well bred boys”. No blazers and ties were worn then. Nothing made them look good and proper when they were taking what they thought belonged to them.
Good breeding, expensive clothing, going home to a mansion and having excess cash don’t dictate behaviour.
That is dictated by the kind of person you are.
I look back to my days at school and I wonder what the girls like Leslie Rasmussen were thinking.
I wonder how they smiled and chatted idly with these boys who would go back to the party and mingle with them after they had just sexually abused one of her classmates.
Leslie Rasmussen writes “I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him. I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists. “
I will tell you where we draw the line Leslie, we draw the line when a person touches another person without consent.
When a man rapes a woman whether she is awake, asleep, unconscious or comatose that is rape.
Rape on campuses are always about people being rapists. Only rapists rape. Even privileged rich ones.
“This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot” writes Leslie “That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgement.”
The only judgment clouded here is the people who promote rape culture.
I only hope that all the Leslies’ out there never have to learn the difference between being raped by a boy at school and being raped by a stranger in the car park.
Because at the end of the day, there is no difference.
