The Brock Turner case: Sexual assault, mob justice, and the war on "rape culture"

Article here. Excerpt:

'I think the victim's statement was moving and compelling. I also understand the disgust and anger at the attitudes exhibited in the statements submitted to the court by Turner's father (who infamously lamented that his son's life was being ruined for "20 minutes of action"), by his friends and other character witnesses who seemed to see him as an equal victim, and by Turner himself. While his statement makes several brief references to the pain and trauma his actions caused the victim, most of is steeped in self-pity and shows little accountability; he clearly sees himself as a victim of "the party culture" at Stanford.

But I have other concerns, too. I think this case is clearly being used to whip a new moral panic about campus rape and "rape culture," which will be used to step up the policing of consensual sex and punish innocent people (most but not all of them men). Whatever one thinks of the sentence, letting self-righteous outrage mobs and ideological zealots such as Stanford law professor Michele Dauber shape law and policy is extremely dangerous.
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6) The Turner case should not become a political vehicle for curtailing the rights of the accused or boosting campus kangaroo courts. The people driving this crusade, such as Dauber, are quite explicit about holding the rights of the accused in extremely low regard. (Several people who attended a recent Stanford seminar on campus rape have told me that Dauber's demeanor during a talk by attorney Andrew Miltenberg, who represents students accused of sexual misconduct in campus cases, was so openly contemptuous -- with conspicuous eye-rolling and grimacing -- as to be unprofessional.) Dauber is also a strong proponent of having sexual assault cases handled by campus tribunals, which, despite the light sentence, would have served the victim in this case far worse than the real justice system did.'