They say there are two sides to every story. Last week, we were ostensibly given two versions of the same event: the case of Brock Turner, ex-Stanford swimmer, and Emily Doe, the unnamed victim he sexually assaulted behind a dumpster at a frat party.

Two letters regarding the case were published. The first was a statement by Emily Doe, described by Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen as “the most eloquent, powerful and compelling piece of victim advocacy that I’ve seen in my 20 years as a prosecutor.”

The second letter, written by Dan Turner, Brock Turner’s father, makes the crime committed by Turner seem just as abhorrent, but also somehow inevitable. Reading it, I thought to myself, “If this is how mightily his father can excuse such actions, are we to be surprised that his son engages in them so blithely?” In three pages of obfuscation, whining, and hand-wringing, Turner’s father laments the high cost of Stanford tuition, reminisces about his son and his accomplishments, and confides sadly that Turner was having a hard time living so far away from home.

Then, he writes that his son’s future is now ruined, all because of “twenty minutes of action.” He tells the judge that his son is now a shadow of his former self, depressed, having trouble eating: no more pretzels and chips and steaks for this remorseful man. And then the kicker: “He has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th, 2015.” On that night, his son took an inebriated, unconscious woman to a dumpster outside of a frat house and sexually assaulted her. This means one of two things: either Turner’s father sees nothing violent in an act of sexual abuse, or he has chosen to believe his son’s version of events -- that an unconscious woman somehow gave him verbal consent.

The letter, especially the “twenty minutes of action” section, provoked deserved outrage from the general public. Turner’s father excuses his son’s actions with a statement that simply doesn’t hold any water. Does the duration of the crime matter? Would it be less heinous if his actions had lasted for ten minutes, more if they had lasted for an hour? The act itself is what horrifies us, what angers us. To make the argument that it was only a moment out of a whole life is to become lost in the weeds of a pointless defense. Lives can be made or broken in only a moment, and for Turner to have had twenty years of good behavior before he engaged in twenty minutes of abusive behavior means nothing.

It would not matter if Turner had assaulted his victim in five minutes, or ten minutes, or an hour. Because what matters is that he did it at all. His father decries the witch hunt that he feels has chosen his son, the people out for blood all because of an action that lasted the length of a sitcom episode. But he forgets. In those twenty minutes, another person’s life was changed forever too. Turner’s father mourns that “his life will never be the one that he dreamed about.” His son is on the registry now, the list he can never unsubscribe from. Of course, he says nothing of the victim, of the fact that her life too, will never be the one she dreamed about. Nobody dreams of being raped at a frat party.

And unlike Turner, the pain she now feels comes from an event that occurred without her consent, understanding or knowledge. The same cannot be said of Turner. The future he now faces is a creation of his own making, the monster he created in a lab.

Once again, the hammer of justice is brought down with a bang and the wrong call is made: the message could not be clearer. Sexual assault isn’t a crime we’re interested in doing anything real about, as this saga -- and so many others -- tells us. It’s just something we’re interested in sweeping under the rug. Please, let’s be appropriate here. Please, let’s not run the rumor mill. A regrettable error in judgement, too many shots, an accident. Look, he shows remorse. That is the narrative. It wasn’t his fault, for who can expect a drunk man to be in control of himself?

We all can. It is not a Herculean feat we ask of Turner, just a simple one. Though you may be drunk, smashed, completely sozzled, please limit your antics to some embarrassing dancing and a puke in the alley. After all, it’s easier to not sexually assault a woman than it is to sexually assault her.

Turner was convicted of three felony counts, but was sentenced to just six months in prison, with the possibility of parole after three for good behavior. After all, he’s young! So much left to live for, to do. Criminals do not look like this young man, we are told. Not blonde haired, blue eyed, apple pie American. No: he was an aspiring Olympian, so he couldn’t have done this. He got into Stanford, one of the exalted four percent. Education at an Ivy League school -- what could be more civilizing? A pursuit of knowledge at such a high level must be proof of his innate good. After all, men who get into the Ivies are surely the best of the best. Perhaps Turner will find acceptance among the Yale frat boys who marched through their campus shouting, “No means yes, yes means anal.”

Aaron Persky, the judge on Turner’s case, made sure that the silence of rape culture remains status quo. When he sentenced Turner he said, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.” Yes, it surely would. Just as rape has a severe impact on the victim, her family, and her friends. There is no possibility of parole from the physical, emotional, and mental scars that a person is left with after being violated in such a manner. Our court system turns the attacker into the victim, and seeks to discredit the actual victim by proving that because she was drunk or because she danced or because she was at a party, she was asking for it.

Turner himself remains in denial. He writes in his statement that he hopes to speak to students at colleges about the dangers of drinking. It made me laugh, when I heard that, though without any humor. It’s a skill, almost, to miss the point by such a wide margin.

Again, our justice system proves that the safety of women means little to nothing. That the defense of “she was drunk, therefore she was asking for it” still works, a golden ticket that can be redeemed at the nearest courthouse. And again, victims of sexual assault wonder to themselves how long this will last. How many Brock Turners must stand in court and bumble through excuses before we say, “That’s enough.” How women like Emily Doe must wake up on a gurney in a hospital and be unable to remember how they got there or why their whole body hurts? The worst part of it all is believing that the answer is: only one more. This is the last time, must be the last time. We’ve heard the story again and again, and now, finally, we will act. But it hasn’t happened yet.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m tired of waiting. Tired of hoping that this time, the right call will be made, that the correct penalty will be set. I’m tired of listening to people describing the women who have been violated so horribly as drunk, or asking for it, or unreliable. And I’m tired of telling myself and other women that we have worth, that people care about our safety, only to be proven wrong, again.

Every time I read about yet another high-profile rape case in the media, I think of a folk story we all heard as children. The boy who cried wolf, or in this situation, I suppose, the girl who cried wolf. In the story, the boy fools the townsfolk so many times that they stop running to his aid, and so when the wolf does appear, the boy is eaten as his cries go unheeded by the disbelieving villagers. This narrative is even more disturbing, as Emily Doe, Emma Sulkowicz and so many others try to shelter themselves in a tree surrounded by a hungry pack of wolves. And though the townsfolk all watch, though they hear the girls plead for help, see the animals prowling and salivating and snapping their jaws, everyone turns away.