“I am a changed person”.
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“What brought tears to my eyes was just how courageous she was”, said Victoria Kress, who teaches counseling at Youngstown State University in OH and works with sex assault victims. “The entire time. I checked her and she didn’t move at all”, he said.
“The probation officer’s recommendation of a year or less in county jail is a soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of his assaults, an insult to me and all women”.
A nationwide furor erupted last week when a judge sentenced the woman’s attacker, Brock Turner, a 20-year-old former swimmer at Stanford, to six months in jail, triggering criticism that a star athlete from a privileged background had gotten special treatment. “I am so pleased that the victim’s powerful and true statements about the devastation of campus sexual assault are being heard across our nation. I want to let young people know, as I did not, that things can go from fun to ruined in just one night”. “How fast Brock swims does not lessen the severity of what happened to me, and should not lessen the severity of his punishment…”
“I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don’t want my body anymore”.
“And now we both have a choice”. I argue that you were scared because you’d be caught, not because you were scared of two terrifying Swedish grad students. “That he was going to go to any length to convince the world he had simply been confused”.
The California judge could face recall after handing out what many consider an incredibly lenient sentence against a man who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman. “Then I read your statement”. The two friends said they were biking to a party when they saw what appeared to be a man and a woman lying on the ground behind a Dumpster. Alcohol is not an excuse. My shell and core of who I am as a person is forever broken from this, ” wrote Brock. “… These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgment”. Regretting drinking is not the same as regretting sexual assault. We’re very sorry about this mistake’.
He goes on to explain that he wants to: “make the people around me and society better through the example I will set” and that he plans to do this by “avoiding alcohol”. And you’re right, maybe I was still fluttering my eyes and wasn’t completely limp yet, fine. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again. If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. “We found out through fans”. Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. And that distorted me, damaged me, nearly broke me.
“What the case highlighted was the importance of our training and prevention efforts, and those are continuing, particularly in terms of bystander intervention – “If you see something, do something about it” – and this case has been an excellent example for all of our students”, campus spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said. Before this happened, I never had any trouble with law enforcement and I plan on maintaining that.
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That’s the beauty of it. I don’t need labels, categories, to prove I am worthy of respect, to prove that I should be listened to.
