Brock And Dan Turner: Rapists And Their Mentor Fathers

Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman. This All-American hero, well-versed in the rituals of manhood that center around heavy drinking and sexually assaulting women, had to be interrupted by two Good Samaritans (also male), who unlike Turner, did not find anything remotely sexy in his violence. Brock Turner found himself in court, and there, facing a judge who thought it more important to take care of his future than that of the woman Turner had raped. That male judge–and a legal system which works hard to preserve sexist and patriarchal structure–sentenced Turner to six months, worrying as he did so that any more time would be too harsh a penalty on this ‘star athlete.’ (The moral lesson that should have been imparted by the judge to this champion swimmer was found instead in the powerful letter that Brock’s victim wrote to him.)

But even that sentence was too harsh for the man who educated Brock Turner in the Way of Rape: his father, Dan Turner, who wrote a revealing illumination of how a rapist got to be that way:

As it stands now, 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. His every waking minute is consumed with worry, anxiety, fear, and depression. 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 favorite snack for him….Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist. These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of the 20 plus years of his life.

Brock Turner didn’t start out a rapist. He was turned into one by his father, a man who can describe rape as ’20 minutes of action.’ Such an understanding is indubitably grounded in past experience and conceptual clarity; it must have formed the basis of an education presumably imparted to his son through his happy childhood, one in which he indicated girls as members of a demographic constituting possible marks when suitably intoxicated. Or perhaps they discussed the tits-n-ass qualities of the neighbor’s girl next door even as Dad worried whether his son would get as much ‘action’ or ‘tail’ as Dad did back in the good ‘ol days when you could just have any woman on campus. Dad must have been ecstatic at the thought that his son was going to campus as an athlete; those guys always get laid. All the time. Woe betide the woman who doesn’t comply with their demands–they have a rep to protect.

Rapists don’t start out as rapists; they are educated and acculturated into that role. They need mentors and coaches. Brock Turner’s was his father, Dan.