Fake Turner support page riles
PALO ALTO — An Internet troll is inflaming Facebook users with a page that defends convicted Stanford sexual assailant Brock Turner, denigrates his victim and suggests that it is administered by Turner’s parents.
Turner’s attorney confirmed in an email that the family does not administer the page. But in 17 posts since June 9, the Brock Turner Family Support page has fooled thousands of Facebook users.
The page has portrayed Turner as the “real victim” in the case, which drew global media attention after Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner on June 2 to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in 2015 outside a Stanford campus party. Prosecutors had asked for six years in state prison.
Referring to Turner in recent posts as “our son,” the unidentified administrator of the page has cast the 20-year-old ex-Stanford swimmer as the target of a conspiracy whose Olympic dreams have been dashed. The page has urged readers to #PrayForBrock and portrayed critics as “feminazis.” Some Facebook users have caught onto the hoax, but many others haven’t. Thousands of commenters have registered their disgust at what they see as over-the-top insensitivity on the part of Turner’s family.
Turner’s attorney, Mike Armstrong, did not provide further comment beyond confirming that the family is not behind the page.
The page has now spawned an opposition group calling on Facebook to Delete the “Brock Turner Family Support” Page.
“Parody or not, every ‘support’ page of Brock Turner is a huge slap to the face to not only Brock’s victim, but every victim of sexual assault,” the opposing group wrote in a post Wednesday.
Facebook has deleted a couple posts from the Brock Turner Family Support page but declined to strike the page as a whole, according to a company spokeswoman, saying it does not, at this point, violate the company’s community standards. The guidelines prohibit bullying and harassment of private individuals but generally allow people to speak freely about public figures.
“We aim to find the right balance between giving people a place to express themselves and promoting a welcoming and safe environment for our diverse, global community,” a spokeswoman said in an email. “Not all disagreeable or disturbing content violates our community standards. For this reason, we offer people who use Facebook the ability to customize and control what they see by unfollowing, blocking and hiding posts, people, pages and applications they don’t want to see.”