Illustration by Corey BrightSpencer Portis - Contributor
spencportis@gmail.com
Brock Turner is a rapist.
He’s not a “gifted swimmer” or a “star athlete” or whatever embellished, evasive term the media pins on him, he’s a rapist and nothing more. That should be the title that he carries for the rest of his life. There seems to be a fear among the media that leads them to call him everything other than that. Instead of seeing his mugshot, we see his high school graduation pictures. Instead of hearing about the traumatized victim he raped behind a dumpster we hear that he was a “gifted swimmer.” It seems major media outlets are bending backwards to humanize this rapist. As heinous as his crime was, as disgusting and repugnant a person Brock Turner is, that’s not the primary issue here, his sentence is.