Brock Turner’s friend initially wrote a letter saying the sexual assault was a “huge misunderstanding.”
A friend of Brock Turner, the former Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assault who penned a letter in his defense, retracted her statements in a now-deleted Facebook post.
Turner, 20, was convicted of three counts of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster on the Stanford campus after a fraternity party in 2015.
Turner had faced a maximum 14 years in state prison, but last week was given the reduced sentence of six months in county jail and probation.
In a character statement — which are typical in the sentencing phase of trials — Leslie Rasmussen defended Turner, blaming accusations of campus rape on political correctness and chalking it up as a "huge misunderstanding."
"I don't think it's fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn't remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him," she wrote. "I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn't right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn't always because people are rapists."
Rasmussen went on to say that the Turner case was not rape because it "is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot."
But on Wednesday, Rasmussen posted a statement on her band's Facebook page retracting her early comments. The post has since been deleted.
Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP
"I know that Brock Turner was tried and rightfully convicted of sexual assault," she posted. "I realize that this crime caused enormous pain for the victim. I don't condone, support, or sympathize with the offense or the offender. I was asked by a court in California to provide a character statement as a standard and necessary part of the sentencing process.
"I believe that Brock's character was seriously affected by the alcohol he consumed, and I felt that the court needed to consider this issue during their sentencing deliberations."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/24A5CiT
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