Brock Turner's attorney is trying to get his client's conviction overturned, and appealed the People v. Turner case to a state appellate court in San Jose, California last week.
In March 2016, Turner was convicted of three felony charges including assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person and penetration of an unconscious person.
But the abundance of headlines and ledes still depicting Turner as the victim are disturbing. The Los Angeles Times and ABC News are gaining attention on Twitter for referring to Turner as a "former Stanford swimmer" instead of a rapist. The lede on ABCnews.com is especially troubling, describing him as "a former Stanford University swimmer found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman in 2015."
Call me crazy, but someone who was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman is a disgusting, and deplorable rapist far before he is a former student-athlete at a prestigious school.
And now, after serving only three months of his ridiculous six-month sentence, his attorney wants to claim that Turner only wanted "fully-clothed sexual outercourse" and never intended rape.
Yeah, even the three-judge panel was confused.
"I absolutely don't understand what you are talking about," Justice Franklin Elia told Eric Multhaup, Turner's lawyer.
Neither do we. Twitter is clapping back as always at this attempted argument.
"Usually, when a college guy seeks "outercourse," he doesn't drag a woman behind a dumpster, strip her naked, rape her, and flee," said Holly Figueroa O'Reilly on Twitter.
"Dear Brock Turner's Attorney, "Outercourse" is not a thing, stop mocking the consequences of rape. Sincerely, all of the women, everywhere," said Andrea Junker.
Brock Turner getting off easy is not only demeaning to his victim and rape victims everywhere, but it sends a dangerous message to young men just like him. We can't combat rape culture if the offenders in the public eye do not face the proper consequences. If Brock Turner gets to walk free, it sends the message that anyone who commits the same offense against women will make excuses and get off just as simply as he did.
Sexual assault and rape survivors have to carry the weight of what their attacker has done to them for the rest of their lives. So when are we going to start making the attacker suffer, too?
