Earlier this week, Brock Turner, was sentenced to six months in prison, followed by probation and registration as a sex offender.
Turner was found guilty of three sexual assault counts for attacking a young woman known only to the press as Emily Doe, on Standford University Campus in January of 2015.
In her victim statement, Doe told the court and the world, exactly how being sexually assaulted when blackout drunk made her feel.
I think we can all kind of relate to the horror of waking up the day after drinking and being unable to remember what we did. We can relate to the mounting embarrassment as our friends fill in the blanks.
Doe didn’t have that luxury. According to her victim statement she woke up in the hospital, and only when she was allowed to use the washroom did she notice that her underwear was missing and realize that something serious must have happened.
Evidence of her assault was collected, bruises were measured, photos and swabs were taken of intimate places, and still Doe didn’t know what had happened to her.
She said that her body felt contaminated.
“I wanted to take off my body like a jacked and leave it at the hospital with everything else,” she wrote.
She pretended that everything was fine, she didn’t tell her parents or her boyfriend but then her assault came up in the news.
That was when she finally learned what had happened to her.
Despite continually saying that she was okay, she wasn’t.
Because Turner had been caught in the act, because there was dirt in her body Doe didn’t think her case would go to trial, she thought he would settle, apologize and they would both move on, but he didn’t settle.
“I was told not only was I assaulted, I was told that because I couldn’t remember I technically could not prove it was unwanted,” she wrote.
Because Doe couldn’t remember, Turner’s side of the story became the only side of the story.
“After a physical assault, I was assaulted with questions designed to attack me, to say see, her facts don’t line up…” Doe wrote.
Throughout the rest of her statement she describes the effect the trial has had on her own life as well as the lives of her loved ones: a year of anger, anguish and uncertainty.
Doe’s statement, though with highly emotional and with gory details, is something that should be read.
For those who have never been sexually assaulted to better understand the emotions, the processes, the trauma and perhaps make more of an effort to make a change and ensure that nothing like this happens again.
When she finally had her chance to tell the story, she made damn sure that people would understand, she didn’t spare any truths, she didn’t pull any punches.
What a brave, resilient woman.