NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A former Vanderbilt University football player received the minimum sentence of 15 years in prison on Friday for the dorm room rape of an unconscious female student.
Brandon Banks was convicted of aggravated rape and aggravated sexual battery in the 2013 rape, which a teammate recorded and shared with friends in California.
Prosecutors had asked Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins for a longer prison term, but said they weren’t surprised, given the judge’s similar sentences for two other former players. Assistant prosecutor Jan Norman read a letter from the victim, requesting the toughest sentence allowed under law. In Tennessee, aggravated rape is punishable by 15 to 25 years in prison.
Banks blamed others for the 2013 rape and portrayed himself as the victim instead of taking responsibility, the victim wrote, noting that Banks even went to college campuses with rape charges pending against him, to give his perspective during sex-assault talks for male athletes.
“The only conclusion is that he either hasn’t been paying attention to anything I’ve said or done over the last four years, or that he is doing it in spite of me and the pain he continues to cause,” the victim wrote. “It doesn’t matter how righteous he continues to feel, he is doing it against the will of the person he gang-raped in the first place.”