other, over and over again, without realizing that they were trapped in an infinite, blacked-out loop.
At the end of the trial, Emily Doe read a letter out loud to the court, addressed to Brock Turner. Every young man and woman who goes to a bar or a fraternity party should read Emily Doe’s letter. It is brave and eloquent and a powerful reminder of the consequences of sexual assault: that what happens between two strangers, in the absence of real consent, causes genuine pain and suffering.
What happened that night, she said, shattered her:
My independence, natural joy, gentleness, and steady lifestyle I had been enjoying became distorted beyond recognition. I became closed off, angry, self-deprecating, tired, irritable, empty. The isolation at times was unbearable.
At work she would show up late, then go and cry in the stairwell. She would cry herself to sleep at night and in the morning hold refrigerated spoons to her eyes to lessen the swelling.
I can’t sleep alone at night without having a light on, like a five-year-old, because I have nightmares of being touched where I cannot wake up. I did this thing where I waited until the sun came up and I felt safe enough to sleep. For three months, I went to bed at six o’clock in the morning.
I used to pride myself on my independence; now I am afraid to go on walks in the evening, to attend social events with drinking among friends where I should be comfortable being. I have become a little barnacle always needing to be at someone’s side, to have my boyfriend standing next to me, sleeping beside me, protecting me. It is embarrassing how feeble I feel, how timidly I move through life, always guarded, ready to defend myself, ready to be angry.
Then she comes to the question of alcohol. Was it a factor in what happened that night? Of course. But then she says:
Alcohol was not the one who stripped me, fingered me, had my head dragging against the ground, with me almost fully naked. Having too much to drink was an amateur mistake that I admit to, but it is not criminal. Everyone in this room has had a night where they have regretted drinking too much, or knows someone close to them who has had a night where they have regretted drinking too much. Regretting drinking is not the same as regretting sexual assault. We were both drunk. The difference is I did not take off your pants and underwear, touch you inappropriately, and run away. That’s the difference.
In his own statement to the court, Turner had said he was hoping to set up a program for students to “speak out against the campus drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that.” Doe was scathing:
Campus drinking culture. That’s what we’re speaking out against? You think that’s what I’ve spent the past year fighting for? Not awareness about campus sexual assault, or rape, or learning to recognize consent. Campus drinking culture. Down with Jack Daniels. Down with Skyy Vodka. If you want to talk to people about drinking, go to an AA meeting. You realize, having a drinking problem is different than drinking and then forcefully trying to have sex with someone? Show men how to respect women, not how to drink less.
But that’s not quite right, is it? That last line should be “Show men how to respect women and how to drink less,” because the two things are connected. Brock Turner was asked to do something of crucial importance that night—to make sense of a stranger’s desires and motivations. That is a hard task for all of us under the best circumstances, because the assumption of transparency we rely on in those encounters is so flawed. Asking a drunk and immature nineteen-year-old to do that, in the hypersexualized chaos of a frat party, is an invitation to disaster.
The outcome of People v. Brock Turner brought a measure of justice to Emily Doe. But so long as we refuse to acknowledge what alcohol does to the interaction between strangers, that evening at Kappa Alpha will be repeated again. And again.
P: You’ve heard that voice mail of [Emily], haven’t you?
Turner: Yes.
Turner is being cross-examined by the prosecutor. She’s referring to the slurred phone call Emily Doe made to her boyfriend sometime after she blacked out.
P: You would agree with me that in that voice mail, she sounds super intoxicated?
Turner: Yes.
P: That’s how she was with you that night, wasn’t she?