Brock Turner Is Appealing His Rape Convictions Because His Clothes Were On

Brock Turner insists he intended on “outercourse”

An attorney for Brock Turner appeared before a panel of judges this week, attempting to overturn his client’s three felony convictions. Why? Because his clothes were on, essentially.

In 2016, Turner was found guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person, and penetration of an unconscious person.

He got a six month sentence. For three felony assault charges.

He only served three months in county jail. For three felony assault charges.

Turner was facing a maximum sentence of 14 years in state prison, but the most pathetic judge who ever lived, Aaron Persky, gave him six months in county jail because in his words, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”

A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.

Persky has since been recalled by California voters. In fact, Turner has become the poster boy for rape culture with his laughable sentence. Yet still he presses on trying to overturn his convictions because rape culture is a hell of a thing. He won the fucking rape culture lottery, and he’s still not satisfied. What’s the basis of the appeal now? What possible excuse could they have for believing he was unfairly tried? According to lawyers, he only intended to have “outercourse.” Because he had his clothes on.

Turner’s lawyers are arguing the validity of the convictions because Turner was fully dressed when he assaulted his victim. His lawyers argue “because Turner was fully dressed when two Stanford graduate students observed him ‘engaged in aggressive thrusting’ on top of the partially unclothed, unconscious woman…outside a fraternity party in 2015, he was engaging in ‘outercourse’ rather than demonstrating an intent to commit rape.”

His victim’s underwear was gone because Turner removed it before he thrust his fingers into her vagina, along with pine needles and debris — while she was completely unconscious. He admitted to police that he penetrated her vagina. He was charged with three felony counts.

Let’s talk a little about what exactly that looked like.

In January 2015, a couple of students on bikes spotted 19-year-old Brock Turner thrusting his body on top of a half-naked, unconscious woman behind a dumpster on the Stanford grounds. When he spotted the men, Turner attempted to run, but the bikers tackled him and held him until police arrived. When the police were interviewing the men, one was crying so hard he could barely speak because of what he had seen.

He was crying so hard he could barely speak because of what he had seen.

Articles described the survivor as “found breathing, unresponsive with her underwear six inches away from her bare stomach curled in fetal position.” In her own victim impact statement, she described waking in a hospital, on a gurney in a hallway. “I had dried blood and bandages on the backs of my hands and elbow, ” she wrote. “A deputy explained I had been assaulted… When I was finally allowed to use the restroom, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to pull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my hands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was nothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my vagina and anything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced.”

Turner never apologized for assaulting his victim, only drinking.

He apologized for drinking.

And in his father’s letter to the judge when sentencing was being considered, he lamented the fact that his son could no longer enjoy a steak dinner. “I was always excited to buy a big ribeye steak to grill or to get his favorite snack for him,” he wrote. “I had to make sure to hide some of my favorite pretzels or chips because I knew they wouldn’t be around long after Brock walked in from a long swim practice. Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist.”

Everything about this case has been criminally insulting. The immediate mention of how much alcohol Jane Doe had consumed, the unrelenting coverage of Brock as a “swimming star,” the offensive sentencing, his terrible family — and now the appeals. Their first appeal argued that “the implication that the crime occurred ‘behind the dumpster’ prejudiced the jury against Turner.”

You served three months for three felony charges. Can you just go the fuck away now?

These appeals are criminal. It’s criminally offensive that this survivor should ever have to hear Brock Turner’s name again. It’s criminally offensive that women live in a society where men can assault us and then go on to appear respectfully in court, flanked by lawyers who feel totally justified arguing that our bodies are not our own. No big deal if we fall unconscious. Just because a man shoves his dirty fingers into our vaginas — he didn’t mean anything by it! Come on, little ladies. Don’t overreact.

Fuck Brock Turner. Fuck his lawyers. Fuck his family. Fuck anyone who makes excuses for this type of thing. Do you wonder why women are angry? This is why.

THIS. IS. WHY.

We are allowed to go to parties. We are allowed to get shit-faced drunk. We are allowed the minimum expectation that no one will drag us behind a dumpster and that we won’t have to wake in a hospital to a story of someone’s weight being on our unconscious bodies to the point that pine needles are stuck to our hair and skin. We’re allowed to believe that the whole goddamn world would be outraged by something like this.

Fuck you and your appeals, Brock Turner. May the worst misery follow you around your miserable existence, forever.

The justices have 90 days to issue a ruling.