Court records shed light on Stanford sexual assault case

The former Stanford swimmer whose six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman set off a national uproar about binge drinking and sexual assault sought at his sentencing to minimize his experience with alcohol before he came to the university. But court documents released Friday suggested that Brock Turner had familiarity in high school with alcohol and marijuana.

In photos and phone messages, Turner appears to be holding a pipe for smoking marijuana, as well as talking about drinking and buying drugs.

In a June 2014 exchange, after he was asked, “Did you rage last night?” Turner replied he had spent an hour and a half drinking, documents show. Messages extracted from his cellphone include repeated exchanges from that year, when Turner was in high school, about buying and using drugs, including marijuana.

Those words and images contrasted with the message Turner gave last week at his sentencing.

“Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol,” Turner told Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky.

Turner was convicted this year of three felony counts of sexual assault for a January 2015 incident when he left a party at the Kappa Alpha fraternity house very drunk and attacked a woman he had met at the party, who was passed out behind a dumpster. At the time, he was a freshman at the university.

The court documents also include testimony from a woman who said she met Turner at a Kappa Alpha party the week before and quickly became uncomfortable because of the way he was touching her on the dance floor: dancing behind her, trying to turn her around to face him, and touching her waist, stomach and upper thighs until she got away from him. She said Turner “creeped her out” because he was so persistent.

Turner’s lawyer did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment about the documents.

Documents released Friday also included heartfelt letters from the victim’s family and her boyfriend about the continuing pain the assault caused her and her family.