Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Recall judge in Stanford rape case (video)

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Recall judge in Stanford rape case (video)

Michele Landis Dauber, Juan Gonzalez (DemocracyNow.org) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

Stanford Letter: A "Watershed" Moment Against Rape?

White jock rapist Brock Allen Turner

More than 60,000 people have signed a petition calling for Stanford University to at least apologize publicly to the female student who was raped on campus last year by a Stanford swimmer.

Judge Persky. [But he's white, and I'm white.]

The case made national news this month when Stanford alum Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky ordered Stanford student rapist Brock Allen Turner, 20 (from Ohio), who was convicted of three serious felonies, to only six months in county jail, of which he will only serve three months.

The prosecution recommended he serve years in prison of the maximum 14 years sentence he faced, just three months in spite of that fact that he was caught by two graduate students who were eyewitnesses of Turner's sexual assault of the unconscious female victim, also a Stanford student, behind a dumpster.

A Stanford law professor has launched an effort to RECALL Judge Aaron Persky (sign it at change.org), who quietly began a new six-year term this week when he ran unopposed and the election was called off.

Judge Persky. [White privilege partially derives from an implicit bias that favors whites.]

VIDEO: Just before sentencing rapist Turner, judge gave domestic abuser a light sentence

Stanford rapist: 'I've been shattered by the party culture'

I like the judge.

Right before sentencing Stanford rapist Brock Allen Turner to six months in jail, Judge Aaron Persky presided over a domestic violence case, where the abuser was also dealt a light sentence. Stanford law professor Michele Landis Dauber watched as the victim in that case made a powerful statement to the court and showed photos of her abuse. "She had been beaten so badly that she was completely unrecognizable....the photos were almost impossible to look at," recalls Dauber, who is leading an effort to recall Persky. "[Her abuser] got like a weekend or two in jail." Even then, Dauber says, Judge Persky was concerned the man might not be able to make it to work on Monday after his jail term. "We all had to sit there while they tried to communicate with the county jail to make sure that he wouldn’t be super-inconvenienced by having to go to jail for having basically almost beaten this woman to death," Dauber says.

Meet law professor leading bid to recall Judge Aaron Persky

Separately, more than 800,000 people have signed a petition to remove the judge. The victim’s powerful letter to her attacker has been viewed more than 13 million times online (buzzfeed.com) and read aloud on CNN:

He's my boy, it was only 20 minutes worth of action, we're from Ohio. I think the judge did the right thing not throwing the book at him. He'll be in the neighborhood jail 3 months.

"You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today," she wrote in the letter, addressing her rapist directly.

"You bought me a ticket to a planet where I live by myself," she added. Stanford Univ. is also facing criticism for its outrageous handling of sexual abuse and rapes on campus, which they conceal to save the university money and its reputation.

The "S" is for Sexy jocks at frat parties

A new report by The Daily Beast found that the university reported 26 rapes on campus in 2012, 2013, and 2014. While that's certainly a gross under count of the real number, it's still one sexual assault every two weeks for three years.

Democracy Now! talks about the Stanford case and how the problem extends far beyond Stanford with Amy Ziering, filmmaker of "The Hunting Ground," a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses, and Harvard's Kamilah Willingham, one of the film’s subjects.