Stanford rapist Brock Turner will walk free after serving just three months. Where is the justice in that?

The Stanford student who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster will walk free after serving just three months in prison. He’s yet another rapist handed a ‘first time freebie’.

Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer, raped an unconscious woman. But because of his “good behaviour”, he will walk free after serving just three months in prison. (Pic: Supplied)

Well, that was quick. Brock Turner, the Stanford student who raped an unconscious young woman behind an alleyway dumpster, will be released from prison this Friday. According to various news reports, Turner’s already lenient six-month sentence has been slashed in half due to his so called “good behaviour”.

Indeed the rapist barely had time to settle in to prison, and yet by this weekend he will be back on the streets having supposedly “repaid his debt to society”. His release also happens to coincide with the start of the new academic school year in America, meaning that there will be plenty of orientation week frat-parties for him to celebrate at.

According to various news reports, the rapist’s prison term has been drastically cut due to good prison conduct.

Never mind the conduct that put him there in the first place, I guess.

After all, what’s a pesky rape count — or three — when you’re an ace at hospital-corners and making pleasantries with the guards? And why expect a rapist to serve out his entire six month sentence, when there are important university functions to attend? Boys will be boys, you guys.

The facts are that in June this year, Turner was found guilty of three counts of felony sexual assault against a woman, meaning that he has served just four weeks per count.

That, apparently, is the going rate for rape.

His victim, meanwhile, has been handed a life-sentence in the sense that she will never be able to erase the events — or the choices Turner made — that night.

Rape survivors and victim’s advocates are justifiably outraged at this most recent development, and protests have been planned for Friday.

The Turner camp (who have previously stated that any jail sentence was a “steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action”) are no doubt diligently planning his “re-entry” into society.

A lot can change, in three months, after all: everyone you know is dead and gone (or at least three months older). Many of his favourite television shows have probably ended — at least until next season. And who knows how the hell he’ll ever catch up with Pokemon Go.

Indeed Turner’s sentence has been so ludicrously brief that if he does return to university, he will have missed less than a single week of class. (According to Stanford’s academic calendar, classes ended on June 7 for the summer break and will recommence on September 1. Turner was sentenced on June 2, and will be released September 2).

Brock Turner’s mugshot from night of his arrest. (Pic: Stanford University Department of Public Safety)

And make no mistake about it. These horrifically lenient sentences are precisely why so many rape victims are reluctant to come forward — and why so many refuse to go through the court process.

As Sharna Bremner from End Rape on Campus Australia says: “Why would any victim bother coming forward to go through the re-traumatising process of a trial if you know this is the likely outcome?

“Why would anyone do that, knowing that the person who violated your body gets to have their sentence cut in half for ‘good behaviour’? As though a person can make up for rape by being well mannered to the guards. It’s outrageous.”

And the problem is not isolated to America. In Australia, sexual assault sentences are equally insipid. In Queensland, one in eight convicted rapists walks free from court, without spending a single night in jail for their crimes.

Let that sink in for a moment. One in eight individuals who are proven — beyond all reasonable doubt — in a court of law to have committed a rape or rapes, are allowed to walk away scot-free.

Similarly, in Victoria, between 2003 and 2008, only 81 per cent of individuals found guilty of rape were sent to prison. (In this period of time, 226 individuals were convicted of rape, and of those, only 183 were imprisoned). The remaining one in five were let off, or given a slap on the wrist such as a “community based order” or a “suspended sentence”.

This is beyond a joke.

At this point, not only are our courts disincentivising rape victims from coming forward, but in many cases they are actively shielding rapists and even enabling them, by returning them to the community.

As an anti-sexual assault advocate I have seen this scenario play out many times. A survivor will go through the unbelievably gruelling process of going to court, facing her rapist, and surviving cross examination, only to be told that because her rapist is a “first time offender”, the judge has decided to give him a suspended sentence.

As though all rapists should be entitled to a “first time freebie”.

As though the only way for men to ever learn about boundaries is if they are granted the opportunity to violate them first. (This, as almost all men know, is absolute rubbish and insulting to the overwhelming majority of good men in the community).

In fact, not only is it outrageous to suggest that sex offenders should be given the benefit of the doubt, and that their interests should be given priority over the safety of every woman they come in contact with, but the ultimate paradox here is that even in cases where a rapist has assaulted multiple victims, many judges will still go easy, by allowing the perpetrator to serve their multiple sentences concurrently.

In other words, rape one woman and we’ll give you a “first time freebie”. Rape a bunch of women, and we’ll give you a “bulk discount”.

Equally nauseating is when we hear rapists declare that their own “ordeal” has been a “valuable life lesson”. As though women exist merely so that aberrant men can have “learning experiences’’. As though such men are equal victims in the matter.

The simple fact is that women are not like the bumpers in bumper bowling: there to absorb violent men’s forceful knocks, while helping those men to correct course as they roll through life.

We are not here for rapists to make practice mistakes on.

And as Brock Turner returns to society, we should all ask ourselves what message this action sends to every survivor out there who is currently contemplating whether or not they should report to police.

Put simply, our societies cannot legitimately expect victims of sexual assault to continue to go through the trauma of reporting, if such lenient, insipid punishments continue to apply.