Page 102 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Emily Doe on the ground.
Turner: I don’t think I ran.
Q: You don’t remember running?

Turner: No.
Keep in mind that the event in question just happened earlier that night, and that even as he is
speaking, Turner is nursing an injured wrist from when he was tackled as he tried to escape. But it’s
all gone.
Q: Did you get a look at her while she—this was going on, while the guys were approaching you
and talking to you?
Turner: No.
Q: Is it possible she was unresponsive at that point?

Turner: Honestly, I don’t know, because I—like, I really don’t remember. Like, I—I think I was
kind of blacked out after, uh, like, from the point of me going—like, hooking up to her, to,
like, me being on the ground with the other guys. Like, I really don’t remember how that
happened.
I think I was kind of blacked out. So the whole story about flirting and kissing and Emily Doe
agreeing to go back to his dorm was a fiction: it was what he hoped had happened. What actually
happened will be forever a mystery. Maybe Turner and Emily Doe just stood there on the dance
floor, repeating the same things to each 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