The sister of former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner’s rape victim told the man that attacked her sibling that she feels “such intense hopelessness that there will always be people like you,” in a letter describing the emotional toll the sexual assault took on her family.
The sister’s scathing words to Turner were made public Friday as part of a release of 470 pages of documents related to the rape investigation. The victim’s sister submitted the impact statement to the Santa Clara County court before Turner’s sentencing.
“My message to Brock Turner is that the damage you inflicted is irreversible. What has affected me most is that you did something to someone I love that I cannot take back. In this last year and half, I have experienced some of the lowest points in my entire life,” the emotional letter read. “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.”
The victim and her sister, neither of whom have been publicly identified, were together the night of the Jan. 17, 2015, assault. The victim’s sister was visiting home in the Santa Clara County area from where she went to college out of town, and invited her sibling to attend the frat party where they met Turner.
The sister left the party to escort a drunk friend home just before Turner violated the unconscious victim behind a frat house dumpster, the details of which her sibling says she had to find out for the first time “from a police report that went publicly viral.”
“I had to read about the 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 says.
The sister’s letter describes the life-altering guilt she’s experienced for not having been there to prevent the assault and how the two sisters have “cried until their bodies have run dry.”
“I stayed up at night obsessively turning the events of the night over in my head; delusional that it was my fault for leaving her alone for a stranger to prey upon,” the victim’s sister, who was a senior in college at the time of the assault, wrote, before describing the toll the guilt took on her.
“I was falling behind in school I left class whenever I would dwell on that night for too long. I began suffering panic attacks from the anxiety, crying hysterically and unable to think or breathe. I was barely sleeping,” she said.
The victim’s sister also said Turner had been aggressive toward her the night of the assault, according to her account of the night to police, which was also made public yesterday.
Turner tried twice to kiss her, an unwelcome advance that she thought was “odd because they had not talked much and there was no flirtation,” according to court documents.
The sister’s letter describes how “I still have an image of the assailant right before he tried to kiss me earlier in the evening; the face of the man who assaulted my sister, is burned in my memory,” she wrote in the victim impact statement.
She ended the letter with a single note of sympathy for her sister’s assailant.
“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.”
The sister’s letter was made public after the victim’s own impact statement had been widely circulated and read aloud by members of the media and celebrities.
Both of the women’s impact statements were submitted to Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky as he considered what sentence to give Turner. Persky gave the former college athlete six months behind bars.
The light punishment has sparked outrage across the country and demands for Persky to be removed from his job, including a Change.orgpetition that has garnered more than 1 million signatures.
