As anyone that has spent an afternoon watching a Law & Order Special Victims Unit Marathon on the USA Network can tell you “In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous”. Although this famous Dick Wolf creation is based in the reality of our world recent events across the nation have seemed far from the justice brought by Lieutenant Olivia Benson and the detectives of the Manhattan SVU. Unfortunately, many of the incidents that have made waves across this country have been tied to the world of sports.

On January 28th, 2015, 19-year-old Stanford University student Brock Turner was arrested and charged in Santa Clara County, California. Turner a three-time High School All-American at Oakwood High School in Dayton, OH was on a swimming scholarship at the university. Turner was charged in relation to an incident that took place around 1:00 AM the morning of January 18th, 2016 on the Stanford campus. It was on this early morning when Swedish graduate students Carl-Fredik Arndt and Peter Lars Jonsson were riding their bikes through the area and came upon Turner on top of an unconscious female behind a dumpster. After Johnsson confronted Turner he fled was pursued by Johnsson while Arndt checked the victim for a pulse and the two caught Turner 75 feet from the dumpster and held him down until campus police arrived after being called by another passerby. The victim could not be shaken awake by medical personnel until hours after Turner was discovered on top of her. After his arrest, Turner stated that he had interacted with the victim at a party at the Kappa Alpha House. Part of the story claimed that he and the victim ended up there after stumbling down an incline to where he was confronted. On January 28th, 2015 eight days after being banned from the Stanford University campus Turner was indicted on one count of each of the following: rape of an intoxicated person, rape of an unconscious person, Assault with intent to rape an intoxicated women, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. The first two charges were dropped at a preliminary hearing in October 2015 due to a lack of evidence. On March 30th, 2016, Turner was convicted of the three felonies remaining on the indictment. Three days later on June 2nd Judge Aaron Persky, a former Stanford student-athlete in his own right sentenced Turner to six months incarceration in the Santa Clara County Jail and three years’ probation, Turner also must register as a sex offender and participate in offender rehabilitation. The ruling sparked outrage as a man found guilty of three felonies was only given a six-month sentence. Outrage flared up again when he was released after only serving three months of his sentence. As for Judge Persky, the ruling brought up some of his past as well. In 2011 Persky took over a civil case involving members of the De Anza College baseball team being accused of gang rape after of a 17-year-old girl. The case was a civil suit because three months after the alleged incident The District Attorney announced that they would not be pursuing charges against the team members. Persky as criticized for not allowing other alleged victims from testifying as well as allowing photos of the plaintiff from a party that took place a year after the incident to put into evidence. Also controversial was Persky’s decision to overturn a 2010 decision by the case’s original judge that members of the team who invoked the fifth amendment during discovery could not testify at a later point in the case. Persky continues to sit on the bench but faces the possibility of a recall vote in 2017 pending petitioning.

On November 28th, 2007 Art Briles became the head coach at Big 12 bottom-feeder Baylor University. Signing a 7-year deal to lead the Bears. Briles who coached former first round pick Kevin Kolb and was the first college coach for current Los Angeles Rams starting quarterback Case Keenum. In his first year at Baylor, Briles started true freshman and current Cleveland Brown Robert Griffin III. The two would see joint success in the spread offense which combined with Griffin’s mobility Baylor went from 4-8 each of Briles’ first two seasons to a 10-3 season and a #13 ranking in 2011 and a Heisman Trophy for Griffin in his senior year. All was well for Briles’ Bears until rumblings started to surface that the school was mishandling claims of sexual assault by football players. On May 26, 2016, Baylor University released a report by Pepper Hamilton LLP outlining the school's response to sexual assault saying that among other things university were guilty of having untrained staff members inquiring into these matters but that some administrators discouraged and retaliated against students that reported sexual assaults. One excerpt from the report says “reflect significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of athlete misconduct” The report led the firing of Briles, the resignation of Athletic Director Ian McCaw and the demotion of Chancellor Ken Starr. Since the scandal broke former Baylor Defensive End Shawn Oakman was indicted on a sexual assault charge and video broke on ESPN showing an anonymous female Baylor student saying that she had been told by Associate Dean of Student Conduct Bethany McCraw that she was the sixth student to report a rape by former Defensive End/Linebacker Tevin Elliot. Elliot has since been convicted.

In August of this year, David Becker, a former three-sport athlete from East Longmeadow High School in Massachusetts received probation for two counts of rape committed against classmates. Becker will have to complete sex offender rehabilitation but will not be required to register and will not have the conviction on his record if he completes the terms of his probation. His Lawyer, Thomas Rooke said that this sentence will allow him an easy transition to his future “He can now look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register as a sex offender, The goal of this sentence was not to impede this individual from graduating high school and to go onto the next step of his life, which is a college experience.” The judge involved in the trial Thomas Estes is now also facing the possibility of a recall petition.

This article is not meant to make all athletes seem like perpetrators, many perpetrators are not and many athletes are upstanding people. It is simply to show the correlation between athletes and cases of sexual assault. I chose this articles not because they are the biggest but because they are some of the most recent, unfortunately, there were many stories that I did not talk about, from the Maryville Missouri case involving Daisy Coleman, to the Sasha Menu-Courey allegations against a fellow student-athlete at the University of Missouri to the 2012 case involving members of the Steubenville High School Football team. Sport is a great thing, a thing that I will always love deeply but protecting athletes and programs should never come at the cost of belittling or dismissing victims of a major crime. It is time to stop this downslide.