The school took swift & decisive action. There was no cover up.
Once it’s been determined that an intoxicated victim can’t give consent, some defense atty will likely use that to make the point that the intoxicated perp can’t “give consent” to commit the crime, either. And some future jury could buy that as a defense.
I think of it more like getting behind the wheel when you are drunk. Sure, you could be so drunk that you can’t understand the implications of getting behind the wheel. That doesn’t (or at least, shouldn’t) mean you are not held responsible if you kill/maim someone while driving drunk.
It is beyond my realm of understanding to believe that any young man - regardless of how wasted he is - could think that the behavior exhibited that night is okay. I know this is not new behavior, and it’s not limited to Vanderbilt. I remember hearing stories when I in college (not my school, but I heard the stories from friends at other schools). The difference is that people weren’t documenting what was going on. But it was happening. I am sad to know that all these years later, some men still behave this way.
I see a Stanford swimmer will be charged today for rape as well. He apparently passed out on top of his victim…?
These two men plus a third person did a great job.
I actually feel better about my DD going to Vanderbilt. They actually did something about it … unlike another school she was accepted to … I won’t mention any names but it rhymes with FSU! Vanderbilt doesn’t even have a good football team. I think they have to be pretty good students to go to Vandy, even on an athletic scholarship. Of course there are always going to be those that don’t play by the rules. Glad they were found guilty.
“Turner ran away, but the pair tackled him. A third person called police.”
Still a few good men around!
There is no reason to take this out on the Vancy football team.
Note that Vandy did conduct its own Title 9 type investigation, found the players probably guilty and kicked them off campus.
I do agree that Vanderbilt stepped up here and did the right thing. Both in reporting the matter to the police and in getting the boys off campus.
I agree. I believe similar type assaults happen country-wide on campuses. Its all about how they are handled once reported. And yeah!!! to the men at Stanford who stepped up. Their parents should be very proud of them!
I hope so too, but I am also cynical. I worry that the more likely lesson young men will learn is not to video their crimes.
Well given the verdict against Vandenburg they should also learn that under certain circumstances they may be held responsible for the actions of others as well.
I think the majority of young men who find those lessons applicable to the way they live will not learn a single thing. If you need that kind of example to keep your behavior in bounds of morality and humanity, you aren’t likely to apply it.
When they were teens, I would read the police reports of DUI, assaults, rape attempts to my sons. And we would talk about not just the perpetrators, but the bystanders, and what could have been done differently.
I hope that one of the things that comes out of this is that colleges that find themselves in similar situations will “do a Vandy,” and NOT a Penn State. I hope that there won’t be men who have probably raped someone who are allowed to withdraw from a college and go on to another and do the same thing until we find out about it when a young woman like Hannah Graham disappears.
I hope it will convince some young athletes that if they rape a young woman, including one so drunk she may not remember a thing, they might end up ruining their chances to become high paid professional athlete and end up in a prison cell instead–and decide it’s not worth the risk. Sure, I’d prefer they be decent human beings who wouldn’t dream of doing such things, but I’d prefer they refrain from hurting people no matter what their motivation.
And I REALLY hope it will convince young women that it IS worth coming forward and sticking with it through a long, tortuous path to trial.
Yikes. Goose bumps.
I am not convinced he was as wasted as he claimed.
@GMTplus7
I don’t understand why the attorney did not prepare the family better.
If I hire someone to kill my neighbor and I flim it, my defense could be…I was drunk, I did not know what I was doing.i did not do the actual killing.
^But if there was a film of you shouting “kill him kill him slash his throat” what kind of defense would that be and why would the family be surprised, not at the video (although they were probably prepared for that and had seen it before) but at the verdict?
BTW, if you hire someone to kill your neighbor, you’re guilty of murder with premeditation, whether you yielded the gun/knife/shovel whatever weapon.
Not a lawyer but aren’t you guilty of conspiring to commit murder not murder itself? I could easily be wrong.
yes that’s what I thought too, but apparently planning a murder and hiring someone to do it isn’t treated the same as conspiring to commit murder… not a lawyer either so I will defer on any lawyer’s information on this. 
Was just responding to Yenmor’s comment which seemed to say that if you hire someone to kill but don’t use the weapon yourself to kill,it is not seen as the same as (as serious as) doing the killing yourself, but in fact it is (I think!) and seen differently from helping someone commit a murder. Not precise and lawyer-y… :s as I said, not a lawyer
And in this case, if yenmor was making the parrallel, it’d indeed be something like “conspiracy to commit rape”, which would be different from “hiring to commit”…
A man in our community who hired someone to kill his wife was just recently convicted of 1st degree murder as well as conspiracy to commit murder and some other charges.