Dear Mr. Turner,

Your son, Brock Turner, is a convicted rapist.  The facts of his crime are not in dispute:  Brock sexually assaulted an intoxicated woman behind a dumpster.  He was caught by two men who realized that a crime was taking place and who thus not only intervened but held your son until police arrived to take him into custody.

Despite your assertion to the contrary, Brock Turner was, in fact, violent to another human being on January 17, 2015.  He was convicted of 3 felonies.  Your response?  To hold up as a role model for other college students.  You are quoted in multiple media outlets saying that “…having people like Brock educate others on college campuses is how society can begin to break the cycle of binge drinking and its unfortunate results.”

Rape is not an “unfortunate result” of your son, Brock Turner, having one beer too many, Mr. Turner.  Rape is the crime committed by your son against another person, who has painfully and eloquently described the lasting impact of your son’s brutal attack. Your son, Brock Turner, is a convicted rapist who violently attacked another human being, and unless that is what he is going to say to the college students you claim he can “educate”, what they will learn is that sexual violence against women is simply an unfortunate result of boys-being-boys and having a good time at a party.  Yes, Brock was drunk.  But his victim was unconscious.  Unconscious people cannot consent to sex, and that is rape.

What would his message be, Mr. Turner?  “My dad said I shouldn’t have gotten jail time!”?  “Judge Aaron Persky felt bad sending someone like me to jail <sad emoji>”?  “What you call rape, I call sexual promiscuity – but you know what those co-eds are like…”?

Here’s what is truly unfortunate, Mr. Turner:  your son is in good company.  Recent studies have demonstrated that as many as one third of college men report that they would rape a woman – or force a woman to have sexual intercourse against her will (they are a little unclear sometimes that those are the same thing) if they could do so without consequences. And male college athletes are right there in the mix.

Dan Turner, you, and your enthusiastic endorsement of your son’s right to rape, are the best evidence we could offer that the only thing to be learned from this is that we need a radical response to rape and sexual assault.  We need to punish offenders and teach women and girls to defend themselves, both of which send a strong cultural message – that rape and sexual assault will not be tolerated, and that the consequences to the rapists will be severe.  Self-defense training might not have helped the woman your son Brock raped, but we know it helps others both defend themselves AND intervene to help others, like the two young men who intervened while Brock was raping that young woman.  It reminds women and men that women are entitled to their boundaries – a cultural shift that is, as your statements and the statements of others show, is sorely needed on campus today.

And yes, we need to change people’s attitudes, but, as you so eloquently demonstrate, the goal is not for all of us to see things the way you and your son and Judge Persky do.  It’s to get people on board with the fact that rape is a crime, that justice for rape victims should be swift and consequences to rapists severe, that 20 minutes lasts a lifetime.

It’s not just unfortunate that you and Brock Turner and Judge Persky don’t get that, Dan Turner.  It’s criminal.

Jill Cermele and Martha McCaughey