Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday he is “filled with furious anger” over a case that has attracted widespread attention after a judge handed down a six-month sentence to the attacker.
“I am filled with furious anger — both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth,” he wrote in a letter published on Buzzfeed.
“It must have been wrenching — to relive what he did to you all over again,” Biden added. “But you did it anyway, in the hope that your strength might prevent this crime from happening to someone else. Your bravery is breathtaking.”
Outrage has erupted over a California judge’s decision to give Brock Turner, a former Stanford University swimmer, a six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in January 2015. Prosecutors had asked that Turner be sentenced to six years in prison, and critics are blasting the decision as too lenient.
The unnamed woman read her own letter in court explaining the harm Turner caused her.
Biden has previously been vocal about the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. He spoke against campus sexual assault at this year’s Oscars ceremony.
“I do not know your name — but your words are forever seared on my soul. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages,” Biden wrote in Buzzfeed. “Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write.”
