Stanford rape case: America, you're as disgusting

Last year, when Leslee Udwin's BBC documentary India's Daughter was broadcast in the Western world, there was widespread condemnation that saw India being labelled the "rape capital of the world".

The Nirbhaya incident - which admittedly was one of India's darkest moments - was relentlessly exploited by the West to paint a picture of India as a No Woman's Land full of rapists and ne'er-do-wells.

As recently as last month, US Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, a member of the US foreign relations committee, gave a speech in Delhi about how India should "do better" to address violence against women and other human rights issues.

Give me a break.

Also read - By letting Stanford rapist get away, America just put women on trial

I'm tired of Americans pretending like they have a moral high ground. Somehow, they have managed to convince the world that their own judicial system is sound when nothing could be further from the truth. I'd like to draw senator Cardin's attention to a recent instance on his own turf.

How is it that a case of sexual assault as deplorable as the one in Stanford University is not condemned by the world media to the extent Nirbhaya was? The Delhi incident was definitely extreme in its barbarity to a point which warranted universal objurgation.

Udwin's documentary not only captured the essence of the perpetrators' pig-headed reasoning but also held Indian society culpable for leading to such an unfortunate crescendo. However, the Stanford case is doubly horrendous; first due to the crime itself and then for the punishment meted out to the criminal.

Consider the facts: a young woman has one too many drinks after attending a fraternity party. She wakes up on a stretcher and is informed that she was sexually assaulted by a stranger.

She has no recollection of the event because she was unconscious. Her rapist would have walked away free (and presumably repeat the offence), had it not been for two Swedish men who came to her rescue and caught Brock Turner red handed.

This is an open and shut case. Medical examinations confirmed rape, the two witnesses testified and the culprit was in custody. The jury gave a unanimous guilty verdict on three counts of sexual assault.

However, the presiding judge Aaron Persky gave Turner a laughable sentence of six months in county jail instead of the six years he was facing. With good behaviour he can get out in three months.

The fact that the judge in question is a Stanford alumnus definitely seems to have clouded his judgement. Judge Persky thought that, "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others".

Also read - Nirbhaya film: Solidarity is what we want, not a civilising mission

I thought the whole point of a prison sentence was that it should have a severe impact on the criminal. And it's nice to know that the judge "thinks" that Turner won't be a danger to others. I mean, it's not like he was trying to rape an unconscious woman behind a dumpster like a dangerous person would.

It turns outs that Brock Turner also happened to be a star swimmer at Stanford. His defence counsel (and several American media outlets) used this to paint him as an "All-American swimmer" who had a moment of weakness and a fall from grace.

It bears reminding (for those with similarly warped vision) that Brock Turner is not a swimmer who committed a rape; henceforth he is a rapist who used to be a swimmer.

I remember how some years back I had gone to a movie-theatre to see the film No One Killed Jessica. In it, when the mother of a politician is informed that her son had fatally shot the eponymous victim, she urges her husband that "kuch bhi karo, mere Monu ko kuch nahin hona chahiye".

This simple dialogue made the whole theatre erupt in laughter. It's funny because despite finding out that her son is a murderer; her parental instinct makes her only think of his safety and not the gravity of his crime.

It was funny until it struck me later that the mother of the man who killed Jessica Lal (on whose real life shooting the film was based), would have almost certainly uttered something similar to her husband.

Brock Turner's father also had a mere-Monu-ko-kuch-nahin-hona-chahiye moment when he requested the judge to not give his son jail time as, "it would be a steep price to pay for '20 minutes of action'."

He also puts emphasis on how his son no longer enjoys eating big Rib-eye steaks like he used to. It is appalling that his plea seems to have worked on judge Persky. I would like to draw the attention of these Neanderthals to two separate cases in Shillong and West Bengal, where two mothers took their sons to the police after they suspected them of committing rape.

Being women themselves, these mothers perhaps had enough empathy to know that in matters of sexual assault, it is not the duration of the crime but its savagery that affects the victim.

Also read - India’s Daughter: Rape is okay in fiction, not as a fact?

If you haven't yet read the Stanford victim's impact statement to her attacker, then I urge you to do so at the earliest. It's a heartbreaking document that dispels all misconceptions that one may have about consent and its limits.

There are some who pretend to dance in the grey and not know the extent of the havoc that they wreak. Much to the victim's chagrin, Brock Turner has refused to take responsibility for his actions and continues to blame alcohol and the "party culture" at Stanford for his supposed downfall.

Making an argument that would even embarrass ML Sharma (defence lawyer in Nirbhaya case), Turner's lawyer bizarrely claimed that his client had an erection when apprehended because it was a cold night. It appears that the laws of human biology - much like America's criminal laws - don't apply to good swimmers.

After the lenient sentencing, there was a petition to have the judge recalled from his position. There was hope that perhaps by removing Persky from his seat of power, a strong message could be sent across America to those who fail to denounce the rape culture taking root across the country's college campuses.

But because reality is not an episode of Law & Order, it has been confirmed that judge Aaron Persky will be getting a new six-year judicial term.

One in five women is raped in America each year (more than 90 per cent sexual assault victims don't report the assault). At 93 rapes reported per day, India's statistics are nothing to be proud of either.

Also read - India's Daughter: Make it #NirbhayaBetrayed, not #NirbhayaInsulted

However, when adjusted for population, India has one of the lowest per capita rates for sexual assault.

This does not suit the American narrative of India as a nation where human rights go to die. Here's a not so fun fact: 1,134 African-American men were killed by US Police in 2015... Nine times more than other American groups.

It's also a fact that if an African-American man was on trial for the same crimes as Brock Turner, then no one would give a damn if he was a good swimmer.

Last year when I was in Vietnam, I happened to spend an afternoon in the ruins of Mỹ Sơn, a cluster of Hindu temples constructed by the kings of Champa between the 4th and 14th century AD.

Our local guide was downcast as he recounted how the Americans carpet-bombed the entire area during the Vietnam War in 1968 and all but erased a site of such rich archaeological value.

By coincidence, that night I switched on my hotel TV and stumbled upon The Monuments Men in which a sappy George Clooney says, "You can wipe out an entire generation, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they'll still find their way back. But if you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements and it's as if they never existed. That's what Hitler wants and that's exactly what we are fighting against."

Having seen first hand the damage that US caused to Vietnamese history, I was suddenly cognisant of American hypocrisy.

In light of the Stanford case, I urge Americans like senator Cardin to move out of their glass house before they throw stones at others.