Too Many Rapes to Differentiate

Trigger warning for rape discussion beyond the cut.

 Rape has become another news story. These stories are part of our lives. Part of our culture. When judges and lawyers find loopholes to avoid prosecuting rapists, when they pass sentences that are almost non-existent, they are continuing the idea that rape is just another American idea.



Yesterday, a friend and I were discussing the biased sentencing of rapist Brock Turner that occurred on Thursday, June 2, 2016, which a lot of people are referring to by the name of the school that Brock Turner attended - Stanford. T

Brock received a six month jail sentence for what appeared to be a fairly straight forward rape case. Two passerbys caught him in the act of humping and digitally raping an unconscious woman whose clothes he had ripped off.  Part of the judge's decision to give such a lenient sentence is because his father provided a character witness letter stating that his sexually assaulting son would suffer for the rest of his life for his 20 minutes of action. They also detailed how he shouldn't get a harsh sentence since it was allegedly his first rape.

Oddly enough, this post isn't about Brock's horrifically violent acts. There are so many posts about this atrocity.

No, this post is because my friend was confusing it with the the 2015 rape of an Oklahoma high school student and its ridiculous conclusion. Oh, wait, maybe she was confusing it with other mishandling of rape cases.

There are so many ridiculously handled rape cases out there that it's become impossible to differentiate between them. They are becoming "just another horror story." Background noise. Things we know happen. Over and over we read about rape and over and over we hear about how rapists faced no consequences.

Rape is not just another story of Americans who have been wrong. It is not background noise for us to listen to on the news while cooking dinner. Each of these stories is about a person, or people, who have been sexually assaulted. Their lives have been forever changed by the actions of a violent actions of violent rapists. Yet there are so many that we cannot even keep up!

This is not ok. This will never be ok.