Sister of Brock Turner's Victim Writes Scathing Letter to Ex-Stanford Swimmer
— -- The sister of the unidentified victim sexually assaulted by Brock Turner has one, clear message for the former Stanford University swimmer: “The damage you inflicted is irreversible.”
The sister’s scathing words rang out in her victim impact statement, which was among the court documents made public today. Both the names of the victim and the sister were redacted, and they are identified as “Jane Doe 1” and “Jane Doe 2,” respectively.
“What has affected me most is that you did something to someone I love that I cannot take back,” the victim’s sister wrote in her statement directly addressing Turner, prior to his sentencing. “In this last year and a half, I have experienced some of the lowest points of my entire life; I have felt more sadness, guilt, and anger than I have ever felt. But I would go through what I’ve suffered a million times over if it meant that I could take away what you did to my sister. I can’t undo your mistakes and I can’t mend the part of her that you took away, even though she’s dedicated her life to mending me when I need her.
It began at a fraternity house on Stanford University’s campus in January 2015. The victim went to a party there with her sister, where the two became separated. Later that night, two graduate students riding their bikes saw Turner on top of the victim behind a dumpster outside the fraternity house. She was intoxicated, unconscious and half-naked -- details which the victim’s sister said she first learned “through a police report that went publicly viral.”
“Because she had blacked out, neither of us knew exactly what happened. I had to learn about every graphic detail of her assault through a police report that went publicly viral before anyone told us,” the sister wrote in her statement. “I had to read about way her body was found. I realized that the reason I could not find her that night, after checking every room in the fraternity house, after yelling her name outside, was because she had been unconscious and hidden behind a dumpster. That she was naked from the waist down.”
She lamented over not being there to “protect” her sister, who was saved by the two graduate students who restrained Turner and called police as he tried to run away after they called out to him. She also noted how the media frenzy over the case has made it difficult to heal.
“Today, I am still sick thinking about it. Sick to my stomach every time that I am reminded of the incident. I am still sad that I was not there to protect her. We have both been devastated, we have been speechless, and we have cried until our bodies have run dry,” the victim’s sister wrote. “Whenever my sister and I thought we could distance ourselves from this horrid memory, the media was there to remind us in full detail about her sexual assault.”
She said Turner’s crimes, the lengthy trial and his failure to admit to his wrongdoings have left her heart “permanently broken.” She described how she has become a shell of herself from this experience, “no longer the always-laughing, always engaged student” at school.
“A few of my professors confronted me, asking me why I was distracted,” she wrote in her statement. “One by one I had to explain the event to them, to describe again and again, that my sister had been assaulted and that we were in the middle of a seemingly endless battle for justice, that for the year I would have to be traveling back and forth. I have spent heavy portions of my senior year of college driving six hours alone on multiple trips to sit in a dreary courthouse."
The victim’s sister slammed Turner, asking, “Where has your remorse been? Really, truly: do you feel guilty because you were sexually assaulting her, or because you were caught?”
She ended her impact statement with a single regret for Turner: “The only sorrow I feel for you is that you never got to know my sister before you assaulted her. She’s the most wonderful person in the world.”
