Stanford Woman to Attacker: 'I Don't Want My Body Anymore'

PALO ALTO, Calif. - A woman whose sexual attacker on the Stanford campus received a light six-month jail sentence last week addressed the convicted man in court during sentencing, providing chilling details about her experience.

The 23-year-old victim read her letter in front of the defendant, 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner.

Turner was convicted in March of three felony counts: rape of an unconscious person, digital penetration with an unconscious person and assault with the intent to commit rape.

Turner could have received a maximum 10-year prison sentence, according to prosecutors, but Judge Aaron Persky sentenced the former Stanford swimmer to a six-month sentence in the county jail.

Also on Patch: Facing 10 Years In Prison, Former Stanford Swimmer Sentenced To 6 Months In Jail

In one portion of the the letter, re-published to social media by Buzzfeed, the victim described what she remembers at the hospital when she regained consciousness after the attack:

The next thing I remember I was in a gurney in a hallway. I had dried blood and bandages on the backs of my hands and elbow. I thought maybe I had fallen and was in an admin office on campus. I was very calm and wondering where my sister was. A deputy explained I had been assaulted. I still remained calm, assured he was speaking to the wrong person. I knew no one at this party. When I was finally allowed to use the restroom, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to pull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my hands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was nothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my vagina and anything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced. I still don’t have words for that feeling. In order to keep breathing, I thought maybe the policemen used scissors to cut them off for evidence.

Then, I felt pine needles scratching the back of my neck and started pulling them out my hair. I thought maybe, the pine needles had fallen from a tree onto my head. My brain was talking my gut into not collapsing. Because my gut was saying, help me, help me.

I shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers that said “Rape Victim” and I thought something has really happened. My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the pine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down, they said it’s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs inserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my vagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions.

After a few hours of this, they let me 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, I didn’t know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.

Read the full letter, as published by Buzzfeed, here.

-image via ShutterStock