Remember how your blood boiled when you found that Brock Turner, the Stanford University jock who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman next to a dumpster, was sentenced to just six months’ prison (of which he served 3 months) because 'a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him'? Well, there's a case in the UK that's strikingly similar - taking place on a university campus, it involves an 'arrogant' former uni student who tried to use his privilege to worm his way out of a sexual assault charge.
Felix Beck, now 22 and once voted The Tab’s Maddest Fresher, has been sent to prison for three years and put on the sex offender’s register for life after being found guilty of sexually assaulting another student in her halls at Edinburgh University
The then-18-year-old victim was left with PTSD and depression after the encounter, in which the pair connected on Tinder, she invited him to her room and they started kissing. The victim consented to the kissing, but then Beck ‘seized hold of her neck and compressed her neck’. He also digitally penetrated her, pushed her about, ‘uttered abusive remarks to her…bit her on the legs and on the private parts all to her injury.’ He then masturbated onto her, the judge, Lord Uist explained in his sentencing remarks.
She was left bruised on her neck and bleeding on her vagina and on the insides of her thighs. In a message sent after the attack, Beck said he ‘wouldn’t have become aggressive if she hadn’t given him a shit blowjob’, the court was told, reports The Times.
In court, Beck claimed was innocently enacting the victim’s BDSM fantasies of being spanked and choked.
And it’s funny - in a weird way, not in a ha ha way - that whenever BDSM is brought up in a court case, it seems to be always in defence of a man severely hurting a woman, never the other way around.
Beck’s lawyers also suggested that he could atone for what he admitted to doing by way of attending sex addiction therapy.
It didn’t wash with the jury, though who found Beck guilty of sexual assault by penetration committed in October 2016 in Edinburgh. Beck, who was once described by The Tab, in a now-removed page as the beneficiary of 'Daddy's credit card', cried as the sentence was read out.
Sentencing, Lord Uist told Beck: ‘You come from a comfortable, indeed privileged background,’ but rather than consider this as some sort of get-out clause, he recognised Beck’s background as a reason why Beck should never have behaved this way in the first place: ‘You have only yourself to blame for the situation in which you now find yourself, which arises out of the lifestyle you were leading and your sense of sexual entitlement and arrogance.’
It sounds like justice has been done, but let’s not take this conviction - where a pretty low bar has been met - as a sign everything’s just fine. Beck’s victim’s mental health issues won’t suddenly disappear. After all, he left her so traumatised, she had to relocate to finish her university course. Beck has also, three times, been cleared of rape, one incident, the complainant claimed, happening just weeks before he committed the sexual assault he was found guilty of.
In Scotland, though one in ten women have said they’ve been raped, only 1755 rapes and 123 attempted rapes were reported in 2016/2017 and only 39% of cases prosecuted lead to a conviction.
Things can get better for victims of rape: as we see with Turner, his face has now been used as a literal textbook definition of a rapist. Californian law on rape has become more inclusive, to allow for digital and penile penetration. And following widespread outrage, Judge Persky, who gave Turner the lenient sentence, has been removed from office. Turner’s appeal to have his conviction - and lifelong place on the sex offender’s register also failed in 2018. But still, Turner walked free just three months after being convicted of sexual assault.
Unlike the Turner case, where it was seen that justice hadn't been done, we can be sure that the Beck case is a ripple in the right direction. But if the tide is truly turning, even post-#MeToo, which barely touched the UK with regards to actual convictions, we're yet to have noticed it...