As America grapples with sexual assault on college campuses, the letter that a 23-year-old victim read to her attacker in court last week should be required reading.

"Emily Doe" delivered her victim impact statement, a searing 12-page letter, at Thursday’s sentencing of Brock Allen Turner. The former Stanford University varsity swimmer was convicted on three felony counts related to her sexual assault as she lay inebriated and unconscious in January 2015.

The victim – now survivor – made a last-minute decision that winter night to attend a party at Stanford’s Kappa Alpha fraternity. There she crossed paths with Turner – although with a blood alcohol level three times the legal driving limit, she testified that she didn’t recall meeting the freshman, much less consenting to sexual activity.

Turner, whose blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, was confronted by two graduate students who saw him sexually assaulting the unconscious woman behind a dumpster on campus. He unsuccessfully tried to flee the scene.

Now 20, Turner will serve six months in the county jail and be required to register as a sex offender.

Emily Doe’s words provide a wake-up call to the dangers women face across the nation:

"To girls everywhere, I am with you. Never stop fighting; I believe you. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

"Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you."

Look no farther south than Baylor University, whose female students have been dealing with similar violence.

Or to the release last week of a new study, published in the journal Violence Against Women, in which more than half the men who played an intramural or intercollegiate sport reported coercing a partner into sex. The online survey represents a single Division I university in the Southeast, but it reflects a nationwide problem that shows no signs of abating.

That’s why it’s important to read Emily Doe’s entire statement. The ugly, raw details of her physical and psychological injuries will leave you sick at your stomach. So will her months of emotional paralysis as she tried to get back to her "normal life."

And her description of the grueling judicial preparation painfully illustrates that truism of how rape victims are made to feel they are the ones on trial.

Yet she fought through it and somehow managed to keep this focus: "According to him, the only reason we were on the ground was because I fell down. Note: If a girl falls, help her get back up. If she is too drunk to even walk and falls, do not mount her, hump her, take off her underwear, and insert your hand inside her vagina."

Emily Doe also courageously confronts head-on the role of alcohol in sexual assault: "Alcohol is not an excuse. Is it a factor? Yes. But alcohol was not the one who stripped me … had my head dragging against the ground. … Having too much to drink was an amateur mistake that I admit to, but it is not criminal."

It’s beyond unjust that Emily Doe had this story to share. Yet in her attempt to sort through the suffering, she has helped us all understand why we can’t ignore this reality, on-campus or off. All of our daughters are counting on us to do better.

– The Dallas Morning News