Sex is always intentional, and they are going to understand
that even consensual sex needs to be cared for with the utmost delicacy.
“That
is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of
life. The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of
his life forever alters where he can live, visit, work and how he will be able
to interact with people and organizations. What I know as his father is that
incarceration is not the appropriate punishment for Brock.” —Dan
Turner
“Steep? Mount Everest is steep. The peak of the emotional
roller coaster Brock Allen Turner’s rape victim has only begun to descend is
steep. Six months in jail is a joke; a speed bump, if you will. The “20 minutes
of action” that Brock’s father minimizes in his above statement will haunt his
victim for the rest of her life. It may have been a measly 20 minutes for him
but for her, the impact of those 20 minutes will weave into every fiber of her
being, every facet of her life, for its entirety. In her letter, the rape
victim states that she “does not remember” the night Brock penetrated, groped
and left her behind a dumpster. But what she will soon find out is that her
body will not let her forget. I know this because I married a victim of a
college rape.
Steep will be the amount of time, energy and financial
resources that will go into undoing what Brock has done. Undoing is the wrong
word here, what he did can never be undone. It can only be rewired, reworked,
processed and worked through again. When she is but a distant bad decision in
your life, you will be a permanent fixture of her subconscious.
Trauma has a way of blocking the logic centers of the brain
and reducing its survivors to their most primitive survival instincts. When I
touch my wife, nearly 13 years after her rape, she can be triggered into an
immediate fight or flight response. We never know when, or if, it will happen
because Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often has no rhyme or reason. Her
body remembers what her mind can’t. Sexual desire was non-existent for years,
and is just now only slowly coming back. For years I couldn’t understand why
she didn’t have the same desire for me that I do for her. It isn’t that she
doesn’t want to, it’s that she can’t. The trauma she experienced has caused her
primitive brain to associate sex with danger.
My hope for these unfortunate events is not that we would
use this story to communicate the dangers of college partying and binge
drinking to teenage girls. My hope is that we would use this story to raise
better boys.
As the father of three boys, I can understand the hurt and
disappointment that is felt when your child makes a poor decision. The loss of
the dreams and aspirations that were once so clear is a crushing blow. But rape
is not just a poor decision. Rape is an intentional violation of another human
being. Rape is an abuse of power. I love my boys with every ounce of my being,
but if they ever rape a woman, I will not defend them the way Dan Turner
defended his son. I will not minimize the impact of sexual trauma because in
doing so, I’d be perpetuating a much larger social issue that is playing out
all around us.
I don’t believe my children will ever rape a woman because I
have the ability, as their father, to raise them to respect women. Not only do
I have the ability to shape them into respectful men, but I feel a social
responsibility to do so. We, as parents, should all feel socially responsible
to parent children who are upstanding citizens; children who grow into men and
woman with integrity. We need to raise men who value the lives of other people,
especially women. Men who do not violate women for self-satisfaction. I
shouldn’t have to defend my children for committing a heinous crime because I
will not raise them to be capable of destroying another human life.
While this case may be used as a way to draw awareness to
the dangers of binge drinking and partying in college, I want us to focus our
attention on the larger social issue at hand. Twenty five percent of women
suffer sexual abuse. TWENTY FIVE PERCENT! That means 25 percent of parents are
not upholding their social responsibility to raise men who value human life
more than their sexual gratification. No wonder women are scared of men; 1 in 4
of them will be or already has been assaulted by one. This is not okay. The
fact that women are scared of men is a societal crisis and we, as a society,
are handling this crisis all wrong. We are doing a great job of warning women
and providing them with safety precautions in case they find themselves in a
dangerous situation, but it’s about time we start working on the root of the
problem. We need to raise our children better than the generation before us.
I plan to read the victim’s letter to my boys when they are
old enough to understand the conversation behind it. Will it be an
uncomfortable conversation? Absolutely. But it’s a crucial conversation to
have. I need them to understand the emotional impact that sex has on the woman
involved. Sex is always intentional, and they are going to understand that even
consensual sex needs to be cared for with the utmost delicacy.
I will not shy away from my social responsibility of raising
better boys. My boys will become men that will stand up for others. They will
build each other up instead of tearing humanity to shreds. They will be able to
draw into awareness the emotional ramifications of all of their actions, and
when they make a mistake, they will be humble enough to admit when they are
wrong. And if, God-forbid, they ever violate another human being, they will
take full responsibility for their actions, no matter what the cost.”
**This article originally appeared on Christine Suhan’s
blog. See more from her at feelingsandfaith.net.
Via : Damn