I am Brock Turner

I am Brock Turner. Brock grew up in Oakwood, Ohio and I grew up in a suburb of Sacramento. Both predominantly white. Both upper middle class. I remember once in high school leaning out of a friend’s car to yell at some one because she was overweight. My friends in the car didn’t talk to me for hours. I went to Pomona College where I played varsity water polo. I drank a lot. I remember once being very drunk and made inappropriate and unwelcome advances to a good friend.

Sometimes I was an asshole. I like to think I was a lovable asshole but maybe that’s a personal conceit.

I am Brock Turner. I know what it’s like to be him. Except that I don’t. Because he is a rapist. He is a violent criminal. I don’t know what that’s like.

I am Brock Turner’s father, Dan Turner.

I have a son and I can empathize with the desire to say anything to keep my son safe. Dan Turner pleaded with the court:

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.

My son is 11 and he knows what love is. And he knows what sex is. And he works to understand gender identity and race and privilege. And he wrestles with his own identity and his place in the world.

My son will have better tools than I did. (Thanks in no small part to the wonderful Mosaic Project.)

Dan Turner failed his son long before he pleaded with the judge for special treatment.

I am the victim's father, too

My daughter will go to college in a year. She has a good chance of attending an elite college — a college that, thanks to the precedent set by Judge Adam Persky, is a place where violent rape is a misdemeanor. My daughter understands the reality of the world as a difficult and unfair place and she fights for her place in it. She is compassionate. She is a great friend. She smiles a lot. She is a really good person. A Brock Turner will go to college with her.