In April, Massachusetts high school senior David Becker sexually assaulted two of his female classmates while they were unconscious after a party. The 18-year-old faced court, and on Aug. 22, was sentenced to two years of probation rather than two years of prison.
The reason is one heard all too many times when dealing with young men charged with sexual assault — the authorities didn’t want to ruin his life.
According to MassLive, Becker’s attorney Thomas Rooke said that the lenient sentence was to allow Becker to “look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register as a sex offender.” Rooke went on to call the assault a “mistake” and said that jailing Becker and labeling him as a sex offender would destroy his life.
With Brock Turner’s overly lenient sentence still fresh in mind, it’s not hard to form an image of society’s view of rapists, particularly the young, otherwise affluential ones. They are not perpetrators in this view. If anything, they are victims, poor young boys struggling against the possibility of a tattered future thanks to one mishap.
After all, boys will be boys. And the girls were drinking. The boys probably were, too. It was just a mistake. It wasn’t their fault—not really. Right?
Wrong.
That type of thinking, displayed all too frequently by the authorities and even communities in these cases, is toxic. It’s a perfect example of blame erasure. Instead of holding these young men—because that’s what they are: not boys, but men—accountable for their actions, we’ve created a society that teaches these men that there are no real consequences for what they do.
Sure, they may have to go to court. Sure, they may have to deal with a few months of community backlash. As in Becker’s case, they may lose their scholarship to a big-name school (only to be allowed to attend a different community college instead).
But then life resumes. They receive a slap on the wrist and move on—to college, to sports careers, to decent jobs, to all of the shining futures that were preserved by not pursuing any real legal justice. This lack of true punishment does nothing to reinforce the fact that what these men did was wrong.
Instead, society oftentimes attempts to place the blame on anything other than the perpetrator so as to justify letting the rapists off easily. Recently, after facing their own controversial rape case with Brock Turner, Stanford University has implemented a new alcohol policy banning hard liquor and limiting the sizes of permitted alcohol bottles. This change comes in the hopes that reduced alcohol access and consumption will lead to reduced sexual assaults as if the two are synonymous.
With this policy, Stanford is essentially saying that the guilt lies not with the rapist, but with the alcohol consumed. It’s the alcohol’s fault that the man lost his inhibitions and took advantage of someone. If that were the case, however, why isn’t every drunken coed also a rapist?
Thousands of college men get drunk every night. Some of them eat their weight in extra large supreme pizzas; others drunk-call their exes. But you know what a majority of them don’t do? Rape. Because rape isn’t in their nature. To them, it’s not something that’s allowed, approved, or okay.
A liquor ban may be good for the livers of Stanford students, but will most likely do very little to affect a number of sexual assaults because the policy is not addressing the root of the problem—the rapists. Drunk or not, a rapist is a rapist, just as a thief is a thief or a murderer is a murderer.
When was the last time someone was excused from the guilt of a murder just because they had been under the influence at the time? If alcohol was a valid basis of crime, murderers and thieves would face the same questions sexual assailants do: How much were you drinking? How much was the victim drinking?
Yet they are not asked these questions because having consumed alcohol does not excuse someone from punishment if they steal from or murder another person. Why should it be any different with rape?
We as a society need to start holding rapists accountable for their actions. By assuaging their guilt and allowing them to pursue successful futures, we are not only teaching them and others that rape isn’t that bad—not bad enough to be severely punished, anyway, especially if you’re young and have something to offer the world—but also creating the possibility that these men could commit the same crime again in the future.
This also offers no solace to the victims. These girls must suffer being violated in the most disgusting way and having their lives turned upside down, but they aren’t even granted the comfort of knowing that their attacker must pay for what they did and that he won’t be able to do it again to another woman.
Becker and so many men like him were given light sentences to protect their futures, but what about the futures of their victims? Does nobody stop to think how they are affected? In so many of these cases, people worry over the rapist when they should be concerned about the victim.
It needs to end now. Instead of creating the world where rapists are protected and victims are blamed, we need to stand by the victims. We need to protect them and amplify their voices while seeking justice against those who harm them.
Unless we want to be dealing with Brock Turners and David Beckers for years to come, it’s time we create a community where rape—no matter the circumstances, no matter who committed it, no matter what—is not okay. Nothing short of a zero-tolerance policy is acceptable.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault at West Virginia University, call the Rape and Domestic Violence Information Center at 304-292-5100 or visit Ruby Memorial Hospital as soon as possible for a free medical examination. See WELLWVU's website for more information on what to do after a sexual assault.
