BY: JESSICA BEUKER
There was a communal moment of shock on June 2 when Brock Allen Turner, a former Stanford University athlete, was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman and sentenced to six months in jail and probation – a sentence that has been regarded as disgustingly lenient.
The judge, Aaron Perksy, cited Turner’s age – he’s 20 – and his lack of criminal history as factors in his decision. Adding, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him … I think he will not be a danger to others.” Turner was convicted of three felonies and faced up to a maximum of 14 years in prison.
The 23-year-old victim gave an incredibly emotional speech at the hearing, recalling the events that happened on January 17, 2015 and the days and weeks following the incident in harrowing detail. She began her letter addressing Turner directly, “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.”
The letter goes on to detail her anger and hurt after reading about what had happened to her in an online article for the first time. “When I read about me like this, I said, this can’t be me, this can’t be me. I could not digest or accept any of this information. I could not imagine my family having to read about this online.”
She continues:
“And then, 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 the fetal position. By the way, he’s really good at swimming.” The impact of the entire statement is indescribable.
Yet, there were some who weren’t as affected by it. Turner’s father, Dan Turner, called on the judge to grant his son probation, and amidst a laundry list of reasons his son’s life would be “deeply altered”, including the fact that Brock has lost his appetite for steak and pretzels and now speaks with a weakened voice, he stated: “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 his 20 plus years of life.”
That particular line has triggered an uproar across North America. And people are speaking out.
Gavin Michael Booth, an award-winning filmmaker, who works as a writer, director, producer, cinematographer and editor in the entertainment industry, has created a powerful 20-minute response video to Dan Turner’s “20 minutes of action” remark. Below are Gavin’s thoughts on the case, the issue of rape culture, and the video, which will leave you feeling incredibly uncomfortable, enraged and heartbroken, at the very least.
PZ: Was it specifically the “20 minutes of action” comment that triggered the idea for the video?
GMB: It was the audacity in Dan Turner’s meaning behind that phrase. We should all simply chalk these 20 minutes of rape up to not meaning anything in the grand scheme of a lifetime. I was enraged, as anyone should be reading that. Are we to forgive drunk drivers, people who pull the trigger and nameless other crimes if they take play in party culture?
I’ve always felt that seeing is believing. I told my wife I should make a short film that shows just how terrible it would be to watch someone be raped while unconscious. A film, in real-time – no edits, a single take 20-minute film. I would attempt to make something I hope people don’t even watch through to the end when they realize no rescue is coming. There is no hero – no rescue to be had. Watch that 20 minutes play out and then tell me why anyone is allowed to go in front of the media and make excuses for some rotten bastard’s actions. Youth, alcohol, party culture have zero to do with if you decide to sexually assault someone or continue on with your evening like a normal person not committing a crime. That was it, it went from “here’s what I would do” to the compulsion to take action and make the film.
PZ: What are your thoughts on the Brock Turner case, and how did you personally feel when reading the letter that his father wrote on his behalf?
GMB: As I said above I was enraged. Sure convicted rapist Brock Turner is his son but after everything else that poor woman has been through this felt like the biggest insult. The entire letter was trash. Nothing but excuses and forgetting that regardless of how great Brock was before, and maybe after, these 20 minutes he still chose to be a monster and rape someone. It felt like a slap in the face to victims everywhere. I had also recently watched a documentary, “The Hunting Ground,” which is about campus rape at big American schools and how most, if not all, of them are swept under the rug to protect the school’s P.R. image.
PZ: What is the goal of the video? What do you hope people will take away from it and how do you hope it will make people feel?
GMB: The goal was to use our art and our filmmaking talents to create something that could open eyes to understanding that words shouldn’t be used so flippantly. Here’s what that 20 minutes looks like – more often than we’d care to think about – all across North America, every week, every month, every year. If it is hard to watch, then it should be harder to attempt to dismiss in a letter. It is one thing to hear or read about how terrible something is and then to see the eyewitness video or dashboard cam of an incident – it is always far more shocking and disturbing. Seeing makes it harder to forget. Harder to stay silent. Harder to not do something about it. The world can always use a little more ‘take action’ instead of just talking.
I hope people are uncomfortable. I hope they can gain empathy for victims of sexual assault.
PZ: Time and time again we hear of rape/assault cases where the victim is shamed for what they were wearing, how they were acting, what they were drinking, etc. Why do you feel this is? Why has society been conditioned to dissect and scrutinize the personal choices of women, rather than the subsequent actions of men?
GMB: That is a great question. There was a quote I almost used at the end of the film, which is “We live in a society that teaches, “Don’t get raped” instead of “Don’t rape”. Victim shaming is just horrible. The definition of victim is that they were victimized, that they were put in the way of hard by the choices of another person(s). There isn’t an outfit in the world or an amount of alcohol that should suddenly make it understandable for rape to have occurred. I think it is used often as an excuse when the person doing the shaming knows that the law or educational institution won’t be able to prosecute the crime. It’s a sick way of making a victim second guess themselves and possibly retract from their desire for justice.
Men should be held accountable. Like any other crime, that’s what rape is – a crime. It should be treated the same as robbery or anything else.
PZ: The victim came under heavy fire from a lot of people for getting belligerently drunk, prompting a wave of “activism” where many are asking “what gives anyone the right to get that drunk?” and arguing that “we need to crack down on university alcohol use.” But she said it best in her letter, when she stated: Sometimes I think, if I hadn’t gone, then this never would’ve happened. But then I realized, it would have happened, just to somebody else.
What are your thoughts on this comment? Do you feel that cracking down on party culture in universities is a good first step, or do you see it has a band-aid fix for a large problem with a deep root?
GMB: That’s just trying to put out the smoke instead of the fire in my opinion. Yes, would less drunken college kids lead to less rape and date rape? Possibly. Seems reasonable but it isn’t the main problem. Short of making all of America a dry county where do people think college kids will stop drinking and conducting themselves as stupid youth so often does? This would solve one fraction of the problem. What about date rape drugs? Oh wait… that’s not relevant to this case so we don’t need to address that problem right now I suppose.
How about actual convicted cases of date rape and campus rape? How about real punishments for the crime, which only something like 3 per cent of rapes are ever prosecuted. Wouldn’t knowing the risk of punishment be a great deterrent?
Her letter was fantastic. Just brilliant. I think that’s part of what hit me so hard about Daddy Excuses’ letter, how much it tried to negate the brilliance of her letter I had read just the day before.
PZ: How do we get to that root? In your opinion, what are some things that the education system and ourselves, can do to help people understand consent (because apparently it’s a hard concept to grasp), and furthermore to stop contributing (whether directly or indirectly) to rape culture?
I don’t know how we get to that root exactly. This film was my gut reaction and wanting to do something through my art form to express my distaste for that letter. I don’t claim to be an expert on the end all, be all solution to rape and adjusting party culture. My opinion is tougher crackdown on prosecutions and punishments for the rapists. Stop letting it happen, stop letting people get away with it. If people knew that robbing a bank would only have a likely 3 per cent that they would end up in jail there would be a lot more bank robberies, no? It seems to make a lot of sense to me. After watching “The Hunting Ground” the Universities and Colleges should definitely step up and support the victims, and not make it easy as hell for the rapists to stay on campus, finish their education and stay out of the law’s clutches.
