20-year-old California man Nolan Bruder, who pleaded guilty to drugging and raping his teenage family member, has been sentenced to only four months in a local jail with probation after a judge said that the "stigma" of being convicted would be enough to prevent him from reoffending in the future.
The Los Angeles Times reports that a Northern California district attorney has called the case, "more egregious than Brock Turner," in reference to the 20-year-old Stanford swimmer who was sentenced to only six months in jail last year after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.
According to court records, Bruder and his 16-year-old victim were smoking marijuana and playing video games in his room. The victim said Bruder asked her to have sex multiple times, to which she repeatedly said no.
"Eventually, it got to the point where I couldn't say 'no' anymore, like, I didn't know how to," the victim told police, according to BuzzFeed News. "So I ended up having sex with him." She later added that she felt she unable at the time to resist, and was too high to view him as a family member anymore.
Judge William Follett, who sentenced Bruder, used the fact that the victim was not unconscious and that she took her own clothes off as reasoning for the light sentence, speculating that the stigma of being convicted, coupled with being forced to register as a sex offender, was punishment enough. Laws have been put into place following the Brock Turner case that ensure tougher punishments for perpetrators of sex crimes, but the crime was comitted before new legislation was passed. meaning Follett was not required to apply them.
Meanwhile, the Times reports that the three probation officers who reviewed Bruder's case said that he, "showed no real remorse and seemed smug," and "tried to normalize, minimize and excuse his predatory behavior."
Quick reminder: this is not okay. No matter how "sorry" the perpetrator is, rape is always rape - and four months of punishment is never comparable to what victims of rape and sexual assault will be forced to suffer from for the rest of their lives.