Images 'show Stanford rapist with bong' despite telling judge he was ‘inexperienced’ with drugs
Newly released images purportedly from the mobile phone of convicted rapist Brock Turner show him allegedly smoking bongs and hash pipes and drinking alcohol straight from he bottle despite telling the judge he "does not do illicit drugs”.
The 20-year-old former Stanford University student was sentenced to serve six months in prison and three years’ probation after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster on the college campus.
It has been revealed Turner may serve only half of his sentence if he keeps his record clean, adding to heightened outrage worldwide.
Online records show the inmate as of June 2 is expected to walk free on September 2.
Swedish students chased Stanford rapist away after he 'aggressively thrusted hips' into victim
Father of convicted rapist says son shouldn't be punished for '20 minutes of action'
In a letter addressed to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, Turner wrote that he wasn’t normally involved in party culture.
“Coming from a small town in Ohio, I never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol,” he wrote.
He also said that he doesn’t “do illicit drugs”.
A photograph of Turner smoking a bong was taken from a video found on his phone where the former swim star was also seen drinking alcohol out of the bottle.
The items were dated December 27, 2014, only three weeks before he was caught raping the unconscious 22-year-old woman.
In a text message from July 25, 2014, Turner wrote to a friend that he had done acid.
In outrage over the ‘lenient’ sentencing, the graduating class from Stanford University is planning to protest before their graduation ceremony on Sunday.
Turner was caught in the act by two Swedish students who saw him “aggressively thrusting his hips” into his unidentified victim.
When he tried to flee, the men chased him down and tackled him, holding him down until police arrived.
The victim of the assault, who was not a student at Stanford, read a heartfelt 7000-word victim impact statement in court directly addressing her attacker.
She described waking up in hospital to the news of the attack with no recollection of the events of the night before.
She found out via media websites and news broadcasts that her genitals had been left exposed by Turner, and had pine needled in her hair and inside her vagina.
After the hospital finished conducting their tests, they allowed her to shower.
"I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don't want my body anymore. I was terrified of it,"she wrote.
"I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else."
The moving transcript has since gone viral.
Turner’s father Dan Turner also penned his own letter to the judge where he defended his son, saying the six-month penalty was a “steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action”.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he was disappointment that the judge did not sentence Turner to prison.
"The punishment does not fit the crime," Rosen said in a statement after the sentence was announced Thursday.
"The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim's ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape."
Turner returned a blood-alcohol reading that was twice the legal limit, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
News break – June 10
