Anyone who has read the victim impact statement in the Stanford University sexual assault case – if you haven’t, I would highly recommend doing so – will have been moved by it. The case, wherein a young graduate was sexually assaulted behind a dumpster on the prestigious campus by a freshman student, has gained international attention.
Brock Allen Turner was found guilty on three counts of sexual assault and was sentenced to a meagre six months in prison. The leniency of the sentence has rightly caused outrage. The more pressing issue, however, is the indifferent attitude towards rape culture that permeates not only college campuses, but all strata of society. For some, just how widespread this indifference is not news. For others, learning about society’s attitude to such women has been an eye-opening and shocking experience.
Attitudes like Turner’s father’s perpetuate a patriarchal culture that is apathetic towards sexual assault and must be challenged
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The statement by the victim gives a vivid description of the attack and details the anguish she endured in its aftermath and during the trial. Though Turner was judged guilty for sexually assaulting the victim while she was unconscious, he has failed to take responsibility for his actions or show any remorse. Turner’s father sparked even more controversy when he said in a letter to Judge Aaron Persky that the sentence “is a steep price to pay for twenty minutes of action fuelled by alcohol and promiscuity”. Regardless of parental loyalty, anybody in their right mind who thinks Turner’s actions were in anyway justifiable is devoid of sense. Attitudes like Turner’s father’s perpetuate a patriarchal culture that is apathetic towards sexual assault and must be challenged.
This culture is not removed from the everyday lives of our students. A survey carried out by Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) in 2014 highlighted the reality of sexual assault within the College. Out of those who responded, one in four females said that they had been victims of a non-consensual sexual experience, while one in 20 men answered yes to the same question. In an attempt to put real faces to personal experiences, the recent “Feminists of Trinity” campaign highlighted many of the challenges women face on a daily basis, unbeknownst to the majority of men – myself included. These ranged from being wolf-whistled at for wearing a particular piece of clothing to having to put a key between their fingers when walking alone at night for fear of being attacked. The campaign shed light on a culture of fear that women in Ireland continue to experience. People may ask how jokingly wolf-whistling at a random girl has anything to do with sexual assault. Though one does not necessarily lead to the other, what it does do is facilitate a society which sees women in a negative way.
While these campaigns were mostly met with a positive response, they were, at times, met with reactions ranging from angry attacks to offensive trolling. The mandatory consent workshops for first year students in Trinity Hall to be trialled in the coming year has been met with the strongest negative reaction outside of Trinity, despite having positive support from most of the students inside the College’s walls. For those concerned about the kind of culture that Brock Allen Turner’s case typifies, however, these workshops should been a step in the right direction, and should we welcomed. They will hopefully start a serious conversation about consent and the culture of sexual violence that pervades student life. Of course, ideally, these conversations should begin in secondary schools where young adolescents are developing a view of the world. As someone who attended an all-boys school, the only experience I can recall in relation to consent was during a sexual education class in sixth year where a teacher told us that “no means fucking no”. Good advice, but limited.
The negative and patronising reaction to the suggestion that young people might be taught about consent does not sit well with this desire for change
The international, intergenerational and hugely negative response to the outcome of the case and to Turner’s father’s comments shows that society is upset, angry and simply fed up of the way that society deals treats those who commit sexual assault and desires change in how they are portrayed are punished. The current culture, which too-often sees victims blamed and perpetrators forgiven, simply cannot continue. The negative and patronising reaction to the suggestion that young people might be taught about consent does not sit well with this desire for change. Those who wish to see the culture changed have to accept that steps have to be taken to affect that change, and that students deciding to educate each other to keep their own environment safe is a good place to start.
The actions of Brock Turner should outrage us all. We must have a zero-tolerance policy against such crimes and must not be afraid to confront the culture that allows such actions to persist. Until we work to create a society based on mutual respect and equal partnership between men and women, assaults such as this will unfortunately continue to occur.
