Music

Festival drops band whose drummer defended Stanford rapist

by Jesse Locke

UPDATE: Good English have also been dropped from the Dayton Music, Art & Film Festival.

Last Thursday, convicted rapist Brock Turner was sentenced to a controversially lenient six months’ imprisonment and probation for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Three uniquely shocking letters have punctuated this story and turned it into a national conversation.

The first letter was read aloud by his victim at trial and later widely shared online because of its heartrending, horrific details. The second came from Turner’s father with a jaw-droppingly awful plea of privilege that his star swimmer son should not be imprisoned for “20 minutes of action.”

Finally, the third letter arrived from Leslie Rasmussen, a childhood friend of Turner and drummer of the band Good English. The 20-year-old musician wrote to Judge Aaron Persky to argue that it “wasn’t fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him.” Shifting the blame to the victim, “political correctness” and alcohol abuse, she bafflingly stated that “rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.”

After Rasmussen was identified as the band’s drummer, scheduled performances from Good English at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival have been cancelled by the venues Matchless, Rock Shop, Indie City Distillery, and Gold Sound.

Rasmussen released a follow-up statement (now deleted, along with the band’s entire Facebook page) defending her letter. While she stated that she does not “condone, support, or sympathize with the offence or the offender” she continued to argue that “Brock’s character was seriously affected by the alcohol he consumed.”