How can you sleep at night?

Knowing that you essentially let Brock Turner off the hook after raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. What he committed that night was sexual assault. To call it anything else would simply be insulting to the victim he assaulted, as well as all women across America.

Brock Turner already messed up. He made an undeniable, harrowing, abhorrent mistake that will haunt his victim forever. And yet, you chose to only give him a 6-month jail sentence and three years probation because you felt that “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others.”

If you truly believe that Brock Turner, a man who is capable of raping an unconscious woman without a trace of admittance or remorse about it, is not to be considered “a danger to others,” I don’t think you understand the enormity of the situation.

Someone who is capable of that is most certainly not to be trusted, or to be seen as potentially innocuous. Not to mention that no jail sentence could ever amount to how severe of an impact the victim feels after being raped. I don’t know if deep down you know that what he did was wrong. But I do know that you knew that he was on the swim team at Stanford, your own alma mater, where you were captain of the lacrosse team. Therefore, I think that the real issue is white privilege.

If Brock had been part of a minority group, he would not have gotten the disgustingly gentle slap on the wrist that you so generously awarded him. He already messed up. He committed a crime. And you had the sole power to deliver a sentence proportionately appropriate to the irreparable damage that he caused that victim and her family. Yet you chose to empathize with the attacker, rather than the victim. Your frightening inaction sends out a foreboding message to women across America: Even if your rapist gets caught, he can still get away with it.

Because of you, women will think twice about speaking out and seeking justice because the justice system has failed them. Because of you, men won’t think twice about sexually assaulting women because they think that they can get away with it. And for that reason and all of the aforementioned ones, I have no respect for you. Your ruling was bias and arguably, a conflict of interest. But the case being handled was black and white. A woman got raped, and there were witnesses. A woman got raped, and she was unconscious. Brock Turner is not the victim. She is.

The situation was black and white, and you chose a sickening shade of gray.