In many ways Brock Turner’s father seems like a real Brock Turner: ignorant and entitled, grossly misogynist, eager to condone sexual assault. The brazen arrogance and extraordinary lack of compassion he showed when he described the sexual assault of an unconscious woman as no more than ’20 minutes of action’, in a letter sent to Santa Clara County Superior Court which asked for probation rather than a prison sentence for his son, has been widely and inevitably shared and condemned.
Brock Turner had taken his victim to a dimly lit spot behind a dumpster, sexually penetrated her causing significant trauma, and only stopped when two men interrupted the assault before chasing him down as he fled.
Yet other aspects of his father’s appalling yet astounding letter deserve equal scorn. And as Brock was released from prison last week, having served three months of a six-month sentence for three counts of felony sexual assault, his father perhaps inadvertently renewed the focus on himself by throwing a barbecue for his son and all his supporters, and contentedly declaring ‘Let them eat steak’.
You see when people started to upset Brock by suggesting that assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster was not okay, one of the first things to go was his appetite. In the letter he sent to the court, Brock’s father lamented:
‘Brock’s life has been deeply altered forever by the events of Jan 17th and 18th. He will never be his happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile […] You can see this in his face, the way he walks, his weakened voice, his lack of appetite. Brock always enjoyed certain types of food and is a very good cook himself. I was always excited to buy him a big ribeye steak to grill or to get his favourite snack for him. 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.’
It might seem bizarre to some that a father would defend his son’s sexual assault on the grounds that with less steak, surely he’s suffered enough. Others might ponder a father’s delight at buying his son a big ribeye. But like father like son, in another uncanny resemblance, Brock’s father also knows how to handle meat on a grill. And it will be he rather than Brock who takes steak duties while other supporters ply Brock with some of his favourite things, like pretzels and meat pockets, copious candied sweets, LSD and ecstasy, and of course an excessive amount of drink.
Brock won’t even need to attend a swim practise first. For as his father explained, ‘Three months without steak was a stern order, but now Brock is very hungry indeed. And we hope to feed him steak after steak, until he feels that his stomach has emerged from this whole situation in a net positive way’.
In response to the case and Brock’s brief spell in jail, California state legislators have now voted unanimously to close a loophole in the sexual assault law which allowed for more lenient sentences in cases where victims did not actively resist their assault. While the use of force already carried a mandatory prison sentence, previously no mandatory sentence existed when the victim was unconscious and unable to resist.
