Brock turner witness statements4/24/2024 Promote doubt: Instead of focusing on the facts in the case, capitalize on cultural stereotypes about women’s unreliability.Ensure his visual image makes him appear as clean-cut and respectable as possible. Attach the word “ruin” to the risk to the perpetrator’s future and reputation and not to the victim’s. This shifts responsibility from her attacker to her.Įlicit sympathy for the accused: Emphasize his many accomplishments and bright future (including his career as a promising athlete). The focus especially is on what she wore and what she drank, as if the natural consequence of getting drunk is not an awful hangover but a sexual attack. While there are numerous strategies, here are the three that predominate:īlame the victim: This includes attacking her entire history and turning everything in her life into a sordid example of her loose morals. These strategies shift responsibility from perpetrators to victims. The Brock Turner trial offers an opportunity to examine a familiar and successful set of strategies his legal team employed in the rape defense. Why, then, are the stereotypes that women “cry rape” so durable? When the crime is rape, why are women doubted? Here’s what the Turner case shows The majority of rapes will never be prosecuted and, when they are prosecuted, the majority of rapists will not be convicted. Overwhelmingly, women tell the truth about sexual violence. None of these cliches is grounded in evidence. Yet even when the facts in a case confirm guilt, as they did in the case against Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, defense teams can rely on bias: that women send “mixed signals” about sex, that women say no and mean yes, that women regret sex and cry rape. And in criminal cases, like rape, reasonable doubt is the standard the evidence must meet. They allow savvy defense teams to substitute bias against women for the facts of actual cases and to turn sympathy towards perpetrators.īecause these stereotypes have entered the law and permeate everyday life, doubt has become a legal weapon that can be used against any woman who testifies about rape. Such phrases actively harm women’s credibility in general and erode our capacity to engage with the truth of specific cases. Phrases like “he said/she said” or “no one knows what really happened” are used commonly to describe rape as a matter of interpretation. Law professor Anita Hill during her testimony. In my forthcoming book, “Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives,” I examine how women who bring forward accounts of sexual assault and harassment find their credibility attacked. In numerous cases, including recent high school and college rape cases involving athletes, victims are routinely exposed to legal processes that leave them feeling revictimized. Facts are often not enough to offset cultural stereotypes about rape in court. My research into how women’s testimony about sexual assault is discredited demonstrates that facts are only one element in rape prosecutions. The sympathy she received kept the story in the news.ĭetails that have emerged in the aftermath of the trial – about the crime, Turner’s robust partying past and predatory sexual behavior, as well as his parents’ statements pleading for leniency in sentencing – reveal, I would argue, the extent to which the judge’s decision to go easy on Brock Turner was grounded not in the facts of the case, but in a protective orientation toward young, privileged, white men. As the case against Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted a woman when she was unconscious, unfolded in court, his attorneys presented him as a young man whose inexperience with alcohol and desire to fit in with his teammates led to a drunken night of consensual sex.įollowing Turner’s conviction and six-month sentence, the victim released her 12-page courtroom statement to Buzzfeed and it went viral.
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