John Bacon

USA TODAY

An open letter written by a North Carolina father chastising the father of Stanford University rapist Brock Turner was swept up Wednesday in the social media tide triggered by the savage crime and the controversy surrounding its punishment.

Turner, 20, was found guilty in March of three counts of sexual assault for the attack on an unconscious woman in January 2015. He was arrested after two graduate students witnessed the assault near an outside trash bin and intervened, tackling Turner when he tried to flee. Last week, Turner was sentenced to six months in jail and three years probation, a ruling roundly criticized as too lenient.

A powerful, impassioned letter written by Turner's 23-year-old victim went viral, and a dubious defense missive written by the rapist's father, Dan Turner, drew almost as much attention across the nation.

Turner's letter also drew the attention of John Pavlovitz, a pastor and blogger in Wake Forest, N.C. Pavlovitz penned a blog post To Brock Turner’s Father, From Another Father. Pavlovitz writes that "Brock is not the victim here. His victim is the victim. She is the wounded one. He is the damager."

Pavlovitz's blog, johnpavlovitz.com, has been overwhelmed with readers and responses — "Keep refreshing if you get errors," Pavlovitz tweeted Wednesday to frustrated would-be readers.

Dan Turner, in a letter to the judge seeking probation for his son, wrote that Brock, now 20, will never again be "his happy-go-lucky self." Turner said his son has been anxious, depressed and no longer enjoys his favorite foods.

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“His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve,” Turner wrote in a letter seeking a term of probation for his son, a member of the Stanford swim team before he was kicked out of school. “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life.”

Pavlovitz sees it differently. He writes the victim will be dealing with the pain of the attack "far longer than the embarrassingly short six months your son is being penalized." Pavlovitz adds "the fact that you seem unaware of this fact is exactly why we have a problem."

"There is no scenario where your son should be the sympathetic figure here," he says, adding that "the idea that your son has never violated another woman next to a dumpster before isn’t a credit to his character. We don’t get kudos for only raping one person in our lifetime."

Pavlovitz says he does not believe Brock Turner is a "monster." But he says Brock Turner must register as a sex offender and otherwise pay a steep price because he acted like one.

"You love your son and you should. But love him enough to teach him to own the terrible decisions he’s made, to pay the debt to society as prescribed, and then to find a redemptive path to walk, doing the great work in the world that you say he will," Pavlovitz concludes. "For now though, as one father to another: help us teach our children to do better — by letting them see us do better."