PALO ALTO, Calif. — A six-month jail term for a former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman is being decried as a slap on the wrist.
A California judge sentenced 20-year-old Brock Turner to six months in county jail and three years’ probation after the woman who was assaulted read the court an emotional statement that has gone viral.
She described reading about her attack in the paper.
At the bottom of the article, after I learned about the graphic details of my own sexual assault, the article listed his swimming times. She was found breathing, unresponsive with her underwear six inches away from her bare stomach curled in fetal position. By the way, he’s really good at swimming. Throw in my mile time if that’s what we’re doing. I’m good at cooking, put that in there, I think the end is where you list your extra-curriculars to cancel out all the sickening things that’ve happened.
She described how the attack left her “closed off, angry, self-deprecating, tired, irritable, empty.”
Prosecutors had asked for a six-year prison sentence.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky said in handing down the punishment that a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner.
Turner is a three-time All-American high school swimmer from Dayton, Ohio. He withdrew from Stanford after his January 2015 arrest.
