Unpopular opinion (and I know I'm probably gonna get a lot of shit for it, but so be it):
1. The title is misleading. There is a reason people say "that was taken out of context", because a lot of quotes on their own can sound far worse than they are. If you read the rest of his statement, he says that his son is a 20-year-old young man who has achieved so many things in his life and those 20 minutes can (and most likely will) ruin his entire life. It wasn't, "come on, guys, it was only 20 minutes of action, it could have gone much longer, go easy on him". He just juxtaposed a lifetime of achievements with a criminal act, which OF COURSE he shouldn't have called "20 minutes of action".
The fuller quote is "That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life".
2. You have a father who sees his son as someone who got where he was after thousands upon thousands of hours of training (and studying, I suppose if he got into Standford). He has shared so many moments with him that he doesn't simply see him as a rapist. And he isn't just a rapist (Does thate mean that he shouldn't go to jail? Of course he does! He committed a serious crime and needs to be punished for it)
3. The father is defending his son who is facing up to 20(?) years in prison. He probably beleived that by the time he gets out his entire life will be ruined. He wanted him to get the least time, so that he may be able to have a life after that. By calling it a "rape", it wouldn't help his son's case. I'm pretty sure their lawyer told them to avoid the "r" word and anything that had to do with that night. So he probably thought that that was the vaguest way to refer to it.
4. I think most of you see people who commit crimes as the scum of the earth who deserve the absolute worst because they're 100% bad. That's not the case. Rape is a terrible thing and so is murder, and being held at gunpoint (my 90 year old grandmother never overcame it even though that happened to her in WWII buy 2 Germans soldiers).
(people don't make a big fuss when someone gets a light sentence for killing people [unless it's a racial thing], but raping for some reason is treating as a 10x worse thing. When was the last outrage for someone who got a light sentence despite killing x number of people).
For the record I know quite a few people with many great qualities that could have been in jail if their victims reported them to the police and had enough evidence. One of my best friends was almost raped once by a somewhat fat, unattractive girl with low self esteem. She offered the group weed and it hit my friend pretty hard. He went to his bedroom to sleep it off, and she followed him and sexually harassed him. He said no and she kept going. Eventually he found the strength and ke kicked her out. Technically, that was rape, right? Do you know how many people (both men and women) have committed similar acts? It's probably people you see and talk to all the time. It could be your brother (about a night he never told you), it could be your best friend. A lot of great people have done terrible things that could scar another person for the rest of their lives. And they should be punished. But they don't for a number of resons. My point is things are not as black and white as people make them to be.
