Brock Turner’s friend pens letter claiming his conviction was due to ‘political correctness’

The blame shifting in regards to Brock Turner’s conviction for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster goes much further than his dad’s pathetic letter.

Turner’s childhood friend Leslie Rasmussen wrote a letter to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky – who is currently facing a recall effort for the light 6-month sentence he gave Turner – and claimed the immense anger directed at her friend is due to political correctness run amok.

“I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him,” she wrote. “I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.”

According to Rasmussen, sexual assault has different tiers of severity.

“This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot,” she continued. “That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded [judgment].”

https://twitter.com/diana_prichard/status/739972712949501952

From Jezebel’s Aimée Lutkin:

Rasmussen’s letter perfectly illustrates the problems with how we speak about consent, and the insidious influence of rape culture. Most rapists are just idiot boys who have been taught that they’re entitled to what they want and will suffer no consequences if they take it. Drawing a line between them and “real rapists” minimizes the injury of sexual assault to the point where people are shocked and saddened when a regular person who has committed rape must face their crimes to any degree.

You can read the full letter here.

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.

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