Sunday Reading - The Stanford Thing

With all the outrage over the 6 month jail sentence the judge threw down for the convicted assailant in the Stanford sexual assault case I decided to delve into it a bit further.

Actually I also heard some individuals talking about it at work too which peaked my interest a bit since if something is so common place as to imprint itself on the normally oblivious masses I take note.

The first thing that struck me right off the bat wasn't so much what was being said but what was being purposefully omitted by the media. SO many questions just were simply not answered and never mentioned.

For instance the convicted assailant Turner fellows version of what went on is NEVER printed at all. The most often repeated thing I saw was the anonymous victim's letter followed closely by the assumption impressions the two "heroes" from Sweden proclaim they saw as they rode by on their bikes. There was also the quoted letters from Turner's mother, father and family friend used to scream about victim blaming and callousness.

Some curious points that are never made however are things like....

The victims age. She was I believe 24 at the time of the attack. A recent graduate (graduate is how she is usually mentioned) and off partying with her younger sister. Turner was I believe 18 at the time of the incident. That's not a huge age gap but it does bring up some questions of life experience and such. It's typically been my observations that any 24 year old woman can easily deflect the unwanted attentions of a drunk 18 year old and should have quite a bit more life experience anyway.

I guess as long as you are not six foot tall, Black and assaulting a police officer 18 still counts as an adult in the media. Yet they just call this Turner guy a Man and never mention age at all. Very curious that.

Alcohol seems to have become a super substance. It somehow magically works as a blanket excuse to remove all blame from young women while somehow shifting into a devious ally of men. Even when it is technically illegal for an of age woman to be partying with underage others and no one has any clue or remembers what the "victim" was up to anyway.

Now I have had more than one experience with drunk women in my day. I couldn't even count the times one has managed to stagger around while pulling at my clothing and managing to fall in pretty strange places. Again we never hear Turner's side of things so who knows? What we do know is what the two Swedish dudes say.

You remember Sweden right? That's the place were they made a law that men have to sit to piss. Personally I would take the word of two guys from Sweden and how they perceived a sexual interaction between two drunk Americans with about as much faith as I would an Arab talking about a Catholic mass. Also let's look at the age thing here again. These two "heroes" are mentioned as PHD students, that would make them a minimum of 26 themselves. Two older guys grab and detain a young drunk 18 year old and he says nothing. Something is fishy about that part of things too.

As to this being a rape case. It isn't by California law since there was no penetration by the male sexual organ. At what point did the "victim" pass out is important here but no one seems to be able to answer that either. What was the victim's blood alcohol level? Never mentioned? Who's job is it to monitor that anyway?

Most of the victim's issues are mentioned as feelings of being ashamed, put on display, prodded etc. Yet I ask who is really to blame for these things? Was it Turner? Was it the entire system or the two "heroes" that jumped to conclusions and assumed it was full blown rape that then demands all these tests, checkups and evidence finding maneuvers?  Who really put the victim through all these hoops?

One thing I know for sure boys and girls. And boys you better think about this long and hard. The victim will be dealing with her feelings for the rest of her life. Turner basically has no life now. He is branded a sex offender and is sentenced to low skill jobs and limited travel/living areas now forever. He not only has his feelings to deal with but extreme poverty, zero prospects and will be restricted in one way or another until the day he dies now.

And his side of the story will never be told.