Former Stanford student Brock Turner will serve his six-month sentence in protective custody, a rep for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office tells TMZ.
The 20-year-old, who was convicted on three felony counts of sexual assault, is being held in an area away from general inmates, and he will have a deputy escort him around the grounds, a rep for the sheriff’s office told the site. Turner will be kept with other inmates who need protective custody, including those who have committed similar crimes, gang dropouts, and LGBT inmates.
“They’re kept totally separate so they aren’t harmed,” the rep explained to TMZ, noting that inmates who are convicted of sexual assault are often targets.
As previously reported, Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner on June 2 to six months for sexually assaulting an unconscious 23-year-old woman. He may be released early for good behavior. He was also sentenced to three years of probation and will have to register as a sex offender. He initially faced up to 10 years in prison. Many have since criticized the sentence as being too light.
The controversial case gained even more attention after the victim’s powerful statement went viral over the weekend. In her emotional address to Turner, she recalled wanting to “take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else.”
On Monday, a statement from Turner's dad also caused outrage. In his letter to the judge, he dubbed the incident “20 minutes of action,” causing many to label his statement “tone-deaf.”
In his own statement to the judge, Turner blamed his crime on college “party culture.”
