. . . Chanel habitually hides in our apartment bathroom and locks the door . . . for hours at a time, unprompted. I can hear her crying through the bathroom door, when I am nearby. I felt my cheeks growing hot, suddenly self-conscious. I was embarrassed by my behavior, my failure to conceal my pain. Chanel is a courageous woman and should be commended for her emotional fortitude.
I’m sorry, he said. I thought this was the assignment. You know how strong you are, right? I nodded, tears emerging. I was a little mortified, but mostly I was touched. When asked to write a letter about how he’d noticed me changing, he did not say, Well I don’t know, I wasn’t there. He could’ve kept my pain at arm’s length, a safe distance away, or removed himself entirely. Instead he had been on the other side of the bathroom door, listening, trying to figure out how to care for the new me.
When Tiffany sent her statement to my mom, my mom sent back a few words: Sorry my Tiffy, Mama can’t read, cry too hard. I braced myself to read it. It was as painful as I had imagined, but there was another tone in it too.
Those moments that you assaulted her were just the beginning; you took her down with you because you failed. You saw a drunk girl alone, incapacitated—why would you not try to find her friends? I was trying to find her. You nearly destroyed her spirit, but you did not succeed. You cannot undo the harm you have caused her, the darkness you have put us through, but you can now finally leave us alone to heal. The only sorrow I feel for you is that you never got to know my sister before you assaulted her. She’s the most wonderful person in the world.
I’d never heard this defiant note in my sister. You failed. Leave us alone. I was stunned by her strength. Maybe my little sister was not as little as I thought. Maybe I’d gone with her back to Cal Poly after the hearing because I’d been the one scared to be alone. Because I wanted her to take care of me, to sleep in her bed as she came and went from classes. This whole time I’d tried to preserve this illusion I could be unwaveringly competent, never dependent. But they had seen through it.
Julia also provided a statement, but her letter was almost entirely about changes she had seen in Tiffany. It was stunning, the effects rippling out wider than I could ever have imagined. I thought of my pain like my personal rain cloud; reading these letters was like watching the whole sky turn an inky black. When all damages were typed up and laid out it was staggering. Everyone had become a victim of this crime. Everyone had their story, had doors they secretly suffered behind. I needed to find a way to clear the skies.
The probation officer’s report had been a bump in the road, but with my twelve-page statement, a few letters from loved ones, and over two hundred Stanford student signatures, we had a chance. I was informed I’d have limited time and would need to read an abridged version of my statement. I would focus on what I wanted to say to Brock. I predicted he’d be going away for at least two years, this would be his send-off. My DA said that we may want to leave the courtroom after I read; if Brock was handcuffed and taken away, emotions would run high in his family. I remembered the stomping, the wailing, did not forget the anguish and chaos that accompanied these victories. No matter how angry I was, it never caused me joy to see others in pain.
On the plane ride back, I pulled out my computer to make some edits, elbows tucked in, typing with two fingers. Suddenly, a woman in the row to my left yelled, He’s not okay, somebody help. I watched the man beside her shake, his neck bent back like putty, his mouth wide open. He had a picture of his family printed on his T-shirt. His young son stared up at him. His teenage daughter was sitting next to me. Two men materialized stating they were doctors. As the mom remained frantic, do something, I watched the sister quietly gesture to her brother to come sit on her lap. I watched her wrap her arms around him, then calmly explain her father’s medical history of seizures to the doctors. I watched her stare down the people craning their necks into the aisle. I wish they would give us some privacy, she said. I understood the feeling of wanting to pull a blanket over your suffering while the public treated it like a spectacle. Her mom was exasperated, her brother gaped, but she had not even blinked. Digest.
Tiffany drove home from school the night before the sentencing. She had come for one night, would have to go back to take her final exams. She laid on my bed, scrolling through the letters of support for him from people in Ohio. I could see it bothering her. I was sitting at my desk, making final touches to my statement. I told her to stop reading, not to worry. I’ve got something better.
I slept well that night, my anxiety hushed. I reminded myself I was only here to seal the deal. That morning I put on my oatmeal-colored sweater. This would be the third and last time I’d be wearing it in court. I put a Pop-Tart in my purse. Tiffany left early to meet her friends at the courthouse. I walked out of the house with my printed statement in hand, forgetting my keys, locking myself out and unable to start my car. Tiffany had to come back and get me. I sat in the passenger’s seat rewriting lines as she drove, distracted, talking to myself. As we sat in the victim closet, I read new lines to Lucas, does that make sense, is this line okay.
I knew a few friends were coming but I didn’t know what it’d feel like to see so many familiar faces materialize on my side of the courtroom. Mel, Cayla, Athena, Nicole, Michele and her daughter, Grandma Ann, Anne, Julia, Myers, Tiffany’s friends, my mom and dad. All of them had stepped out of their lives without a second thought to be there. This dreary world I had only known as my own, a miserable realm, now looked like a regular room. I told myself, Do you understand now, your loved ones want to go to bat for you, you only had to let them.
I smiled at Detective Mike Kim, I felt invincible, excited even. But a couple of things threw me. I thought I would be behind the witness stand, the same way I’d testified, facing the audience to deliver my statement. Instead I would be standing with my back to everyone in the courtroom, facing the judge directly. I understood now why my DA had wanted me to write my statement addressing the judge. Brock and his attorney would be sitting at a table with their backs to me.
It also hit me that the jury would not be there, their box empty. I felt sad they wouldn’t be there to watch me reclaim my identity, to rewrite the only version of me they’d seen. To my right, my DA’s boss, Mr. Rosen, sat with two pieces of paper on his lap. One speech for if it went well, one speech for if it went poorly. He kept flipping between them.
As we sat there waiting, I realized that my case was one in a line, that the rows were packed with strangers. My whole family watched as a man received his sentence for a DUI. Next a young Chinese woman in a red blouse stood up, holding a thin stack of papers. Her voice was shaking, English was not her first language. She spoke about her ex-fiancé, his physical abuse. She asked the judge if she could show pictures of her face after she’d been beaten. The judge gave a strained smile, said, Why don’t you just show them to me. She held up a series of large photos. The lower half of her face looked crusted with ketchup. There was an audible intake of breath. It slowly registered that the man standing only a few feet to her right, hands loosely clasped behind his back, had done this to her. She said she was wearing the same shirt she had bled in. As she spoke, the judge’s hand went up, asking how long she had left. I was in shock. I did not know he was free to stop you. She said she was almost done, started again, struggling in English to pick up speed. My eyes went back and forth between the judge and her, growing nervous she would not be able to finish. I could see the page she was holding; we were down to the last paragraph, we were almost there. The judge interrupted again, reminding her we needed to wrap things up. He was already organizing papers. She assured him she had only a few more lines. She stood, a few feet from her attacker, fighting for her life in a foreign language in a foreign country, but was indirectly told, your problems are taking up too much time. The man, charged with battery causing serious bodily harm, had asked for a light punishment. She said, When I get beaten, can I ask for a better offer?
>
I had forgotten, temporarily, where I was. The man would be sentenced to seventy-two days of weekend jail, so he could maintain his job during the week. I did not know weekend jail even existed. Incarcerated on Saturdays and Sundays, back in the office every Monday. I felt hollowed by the images of her blood-caked face while the judge swept at her feet, hurry, hurry.
Someone was nudging me, are you ready. I looked down at my packet, panicking. No, I’m not. I hadn’t shortened it enough, needed to cross out more paragraphs, where’s my pen. I was called to the front. I stood up mechanically and wedged my way sideways down the row, bumping into people’s knees as I told myself to focus. My DA stood next to me. I tried to smooth out my bent papers on the podium. Just look at the words, just read. As I began, I could hear my voice trembling, like I was wobbling across a string bridge. Come on, find your way, you didn’t come this far to get cut before you finished page 1. Don’t cry, you’ve done enough crying.
Then I felt my DA’s hand, pressed flat against the center of my back, holding me steady. The gentle weight of her palm centered me, told me, I’m right here. Soon I heard people sniffling, they were crying. It’s working, they’re listening, I thought. My delivery smoothed out, my power returning. I realized how loudly I was speaking, my yelling amplified by the microphone. I did not adjust. I looked straight at the judge, meeting his eyes repeatedly, reminding him I was not done. This time I carved his face in my memory. I pointed at the back of the defense attorney’s cotton-haired head. He never turned to face me. I bore into the side of Brock’s unmoving face, his stoic profile. I was rooted, pointing at him. I wanted everyone consumed by my voice, in my control.
Silence followed my final words. As I sat down I was received back into everyone’s arms as if descending from the sky, all of them catching me. People were distraught, crying. They leaned over to whisper, squeeze my arm, rub my back. I was shaking, coming back into myself inside their touches. Settled in between Lucas and Tiffany, I felt my stomach softening. I had done it. I left it all on the floor. That was it, it was over.
To my surprise Brock’s father stood up. I appreciated this, thinking he was going to apologize on behalf of his son. But as he stood, he did not look at me. He went straight to the podium, adjusting his belt, locking eyes with the judge. Brock would do anything to turn back the hands of time and have that night to do over again.
Soon we were inside a story of Brock in elementary school, weekly spelling tests, baseball, Cub Scouts. I blinked a few times wondering what was happening. If a victim speaks but no one acknowledges her, does she make a sound? He explained Brock was accepted academically before he was considered athletically, he had large amounts of interest from Division I coaches. At one point his father paused, choked up, while the judge waited patiently. Brock had the highest GPA of all freshmen on the swim team. Awarded a 60 percent swimming scholarship. Stanford had a 4 percent acceptance rate.
He explained: [Brock had been] struggling to fit in socially. In hindsight, it’s clear that Brock was desperately trying to fit in at Stanford and fell into a culture of alcohol consumption and partying. This—this culture was modeled by many of the upperclassmen on the swim team and clearly played a role in the events of January 17 and 18, 2015. Looking back at Brock’s brief experience at Stanford, I honestly don’t believe it was the best fit for him. Homesickness had never occurred to me as a defense. He said Brock’s life had been deeply altered . . . He will never again be his happy-go-lucky self, with that easygoing personality and welcoming smile.
We had come to Brock’s funeral. I was always excited to buy him a big rib-eye steak to grill or to get his favorite snack for him. . . . Now he eats only to exist. I could hear my family stirring.
These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. He spoke of the verdicts as if they were a disease that had befallen them. Verdict of what? Guilt. Guilt for what? Assault. Assault committed by whom? Brock. Your son has broken and shattered your family. But he could never say that.
That is a steep price to pay for twenty minutes of action out of his twenty-plus years of life. I was still. I just wanted him to be finished.
He has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone, including his actions on the night of January 17. This one felt like a direct hit, a message just for me. I looked straight ahead at the blank wall. I felt the tension rising in every row, like a fight was about to erupt. Brock’s stance suddenly made a lot more sense. He had lived shielded under a roof where the verdict was never accepted, where he would never be held accountable.
Next came Brock. I had never heard his voice. For over a year he’d been a silent face in the courtroom. Now he stood hunched, holding a single sheet of paper folded in half. The light that shone through the paper showed only a few typed lines. I stared at the weightlessness of it; I could blow from where I was sitting and it’d slip out of his hands. I looked down at the thick, stapled packet of my statement on my lap, marked up in edits. His voice came out slowly, each word pulled like a heavy bucket out of a well, unnervingly monotone. I’m so sorry for every moment and span of time. . . . My mind, my heart, and my body agonize over the suffering and pain I have caused on Chanel, Tiffany . . .
I wanted to scrape our names out of his mouth. The statement he read was ten sentences long, generic apologies and plans to educate students about the dangers of alcohol, over in less than a minute. He had dragged us around in one small circle. I sat in disbelief. Here we were so far down the line, on the other side of a verdict, and yet again nothing seemed to have changed.
The judge ordered a brief recess. Everyone was brimming with irritation, a storm brewing. Holy shit, what was that. I was disturbed, but I told myself it didn’t matter, it was their last desperate attempt before being kicked to the curb. The judge heard me.
When we resumed the judge opened by quoting some of my lines. He said he’d read them out loud because they were relevant to the sentencing decision. This made me hopeful. But the judge was speaking quietly, like we were in a library and he didn’t want to disrupt anybody. His eyes were cast down on his papers, flipping back and forth. He went over some penal codes and at some point he said the words six months. I sat patiently, waiting for him to announce the final sentence. But soon he began explaining his reasoning. He said that this is a case where probation is prohibited, and I thought, yes, good, except in unusual cases . . . I had not known my case was unusual.
Some weight should be given to the fact that a defendant who is, albeit voluntarily, intoxicated versus a defendant who commits an assault with intent to commit rape, a completely sober defendant, there is less moral culpability attached to the defendant who is legally intoxicated. I had heard this sentiment echoed in the probation officer’s statement. Alcohol freed Brock of moral culpability.
The judge laid out reason after reason: he was youthful, had no prior criminal offenses, no weapons, and the degree of monetary loss to the victim is not really applicable. He said the crime didn’t demonstrate criminal sophistication, Brock did not take advantage of a position of trust or confidence to commit the crime, and registering as a sex offender was already a consequence. Obviously, a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I was struggling to comprehend, wanted to lean forward and tap my DA, What’s happening?
He addressed the adverse collateral consequences on the defendant’s life resulting from the felony conviction. And those are severe. He said the character letters showed huge collateral consequences. If we punished him, we’d hurt his community too. With respect to the media attention that’s been given to the case, it has not only impacted the victim in this case, but also Mr. Turner. Where, in certain cases, there is no publicity, then the collateral consequence on those on the defendant’s life can be minimized. He suffered from media attention, had not been able to keep what he’d done under wraps. I turned his phrases over in my head, examining them, but failed to underst
and. Then he made it clear.
Number seven is whether the defendant is remorseful. And that’s maybe one of the most conflicted and difficult issues in this case. Because Mr. Turner came before us today and said he was genuinely sorry for all the pain that he has caused to Chanel and her family. And I think that is a genuine feeling of remorse. Chanel has stated that he hasn’t really taken responsibility for his conduct. And I think at one point she basically wrote or said that “He—he just doesn’t get it.” And so you have Mr. Turner expressing remorse, which I think, subjectively, is genuine, and Chanel not seeing that as a genuine expression of remorse because he never says, “I did this. I knew how drunk you were. I knew how out of it you were, and I did it anyway.” And that—I don’t think that bridge will, probably, ever be crossed.
“Chanel not seeing that.” It’s me, the problem is me. My failure to see something the judge did. I had been deluded into thinking that’s why we had all come here today, to cross the bridge. I could see the judge snipping it in midair, the bridge falling, leaving me on my side and Brock to be coddled on his. Everyone around him had succeeded in preserving him inside his illusion. I had tried to pull him out. The judge believed him. I finally felt the ground tilting, everything sliding to his side.
I mean, I take him at his word that, subjectively, that’s his version of events. The jury, obviously, found it to be not the sequence of events. . . . Once a jury renders a verdict, everybody is bound by that verdict. Everybody must accept the verdict, including Mr. Turner. But I’m not convinced that his lack of complete acquiescence to the verdict should count against him with respect to an expression of remorse because I do find that his remorse is genuine. Is an apology valid without change? If he says he’s sorry, but maintains he’s not guilty, doesn’t that resemble manipulation more than reconciliation? I was watching him release the fish back into the water, swim away, into the depths. All along I thought the judge was the head, the jury the body. They were one. But the jury had come and gone, and now only the head was speaking.
Know My Name Page 24