Stanford sexual assault case: Does Brock Turner’s dad believe his own logic?

Last March, Stanford student and swimmer Brock Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman at a fraternity party at the university. He was convicted of three felonies, including assault with intent to rape.

Despite facing up to 14 years in prison for his crimes, Turner received three years of probation and just six months’ imprisonment after the judge stated that a harsher sentence would have a “severe impact” on the 20-year-old man.

Turner had hopes of becoming a future Olympian, and in a letter that has been widely covered by worldwide media, Brock's father, Dan Turner, refers to the lifelong damage to his son's reputation as "A steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action". The statement is shocking, and has received an unsurprisingly baffled and outraged response online and in the media. The case is important, and says something about the wider culture in which we live, so it is worth giving some consideration to.

When I read Dan Turner’s letter, which laments the impact of this situation on his son’s life while failing to fully make a connection between Brock’s decision to sexually assault an unconscious young woman and the consequences of that heinous action, I had the same emotional reaction as everyone else – strong distaste and sadness.

I read and reread that sentence – “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life”, considering what Dan Turner may have meant by it. A background in philosophy has taught me not to presume the intent of others, but to consider statements and arguments carefully, even when uttered by someone who may seem unworthy of being given the benefit of the doubt. Emotion is not helpful when trying to come to a rational understanding of what a statement such as that may mean, so I decided to try to unpack it to discern whether there were any other possible interpretations, apart from the most obvious and vulgar one.

It doesn't seem to be the case that Turner Sr meant the word "action" by its common, sexual usage – "getting some action" as having sex. If he did, that would be deeply offensive to the victim, since sex is consensual, and his son's victim certainly did not and could not consent. Many people have interpreted the statement this way, and responded with outrage.

I think that is an oversimplification, and that what Dan Turner actually meant by it is far worse. He says that Brock’s desolation and ruined reputation “. . . is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life”.

In doing so, he compares the duration of the wrongdoing to the duration of Brock’s lifespan, as if to suggest that relative to his lifespan – about 10,512,000 minutes, Brock spent only a tiny percentage – a mere 20 minutes – sexually assaulting someone. It supposes that undertaking any action for a tiny portion of one’s life should not condemn someone to a ruined reputation for the remainder of it.

This makes a fundamental error, which is to assume that the most important factor here is the fact that Brock spent more time not assaulting women than he spent assaulting them. Obviously, this is asinine logic. If this were the metric by which we decided the severity of crimes, no one would ever go to prison. It is clear, too, that Turner’s father cannot really believe that undertaking any action for 20 minutes (or whatever relative portion of one’s lifetime) should not condemn someone’s reputation for life.

If a large man found Turner’s son Brock unconscious at a party, and beat or sexually assaulted him for 20 minutes, would Turner Sr consider six months and a ruined reputation a bit much? Or if someone spent 20 minutes stabbing another person, or raping a child? Clearly, Dan Turner cannot believe his own ‘logic’. There is no way to interpret that statement which doesn’t imply that he believes what his son did isn’t really that bad. Severity of a crime is dictated by facts such as intent, how self-interested the crime was and consequences for the victim.

Turner was convicted, and got off very lightly. There are bigger factors at play than his reputation – the fact that his father doesn’t recognise that is the sort of attitude that creates young men who assault women.