Bowen Turner Raped Three Women And Got Probation

Once again the headlines throughout South Carolina are focused on the state’s “injustice system” though this time is not about the Murdaugh Murders. This is about 19-year-old Bowen Turner, accused of raping three women between 2018 and 2019 but given just five years’ probation on a single charge of first-degree assault and battery thanks to Judge Markley Dennis.

One of those victims was Dallas Stoller who committed suicide in November 2021 due to alleged bullying from classmates for reporting the rape. Bowen Turner raped Dallas Stoller in 2019, six months after he’d been accused of raping another girl, and yet despite the availability of physical evidence and witness testimony—as well as an affidavit from Dallas Stoller—the sexual assault charges against Turner were dismissed, because Stoller had died.

No one seems to care that she died of a self-inflicted wound after being raped.

Worse, is that while  out on bond in Stoller’s case—and just 41 days after his lawyers successfully argued to have his ankle monitor removed—Bowen Turner was accused of raping Chloe Bess.

Bowen was placed on house arrest for the rape of Stoller, but between November 2021 and February 2022, he violated that court order more than 60 times; he visited a golf course, he went to friends’ houses; he even went to Dallas Stoller’s grave. And though the court order called for his immediate arrest upon violation, the Second Circuit Solicitor’s Office—which appears to have known about the violations since early March—failed to act.

Instead, at the end of March, a hearing was scheduled for early April 8 to address the violations, and yet that hearing turned out to be not about violating his house arrest, but about a plea deal put in place by his attorney, Brad Hutto, who happens to be a powerful state senator.

In that plea deal, Turner’s first-degree criminal sexual assault charge was reduced to a first-degree assault and battery charge, even though Chloe Bess was willing to testify that she had been raped. Funny, though, because the plea deal now states that Bowen Turner just “harmed” or threatened to harm Chloe Bess, the same girl Brad Hutto slut-shamed in court in 2019, claiming she had consensual sex with Turner. Turner’s deal requires him to adhere to the rules of the sex offender registry for the next five years, and if he does that, the serial rapist will not have to register as a sex offender.

These are the facts of the cases against Bowen Turner … from the two young women who spoke out:

Dallas Stoller knew Bowen Turner. They were classmates and their families knew each other. They had the same friend circle, which was why they were both at the same party on Oct. 7, 2018.

Stoller admitted to drinking at the party, btu at some point her friends noticed she’d gone missing. One of her friends searched the woods and found Dallas Stoller lying on the ground unresponsive, and Bowen Turner standing over her  pulling his pants up.

Dallas Stoller’s mother picked her up shortly after she was found and took her to a hospital. She was badly beaten, bloody and bruised, one of her eyes was completely bloodshot from strangulation, and her was black and blue from strangulation.

Dallas completed a sexual assault exam at Medical University of South Carolina and identified her attacker as Bowen Turner. In January 2019, Turner was arrested and charged in Dallas’ case.

It was during the investigation, that Dallas’ family learned that Bowen Turner had been accused of another rape in April 2018 in Calhoun County. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division [SLED], investigated a third sexual assault accusation made against Turner, but no charges were filed in that case. 

But Bowen Turner, under arrest for raping Dallas Stoller, was released on a $10,000 bond and ordered to wear an ankle monitor. Three months later, his attorneys asked to have his ankle monitor removed, even though there was ample evidence that Turner violated his probation,  and the solicitor’s office and the judge agreed.

In early June 2019, Bowen Turner was accused of the rape of Chloe Bess.

Chloe Bess had gone out with a group of friends and her twin brother, but after a miscommunication, her brother and best friend left the party without her to get food. Chloe stepped outside to call her best friend and that’s when Bowen Turner found her.

Bowen Turner lived down the street from Chloe Bess and attended church where Bess’ father was the pastor, but they weren’t good friends. Bess told Turner she was going to leave, but he kept telling her not to leave; she found that strange and says:

“And then I just remember him pulling me into, like a tree line. There was a truck parked there. The next thing I know, I’m on the ground, and he’s a lot bigger than me, I only weigh like 115 pounds, … and so there was not much I could do at that moment in time.”

Chloe Bess says she tried to scream but nothing came out, and that’s when Bowen Turner raped her. After the assault, Chloe Bess got up and ran as fast as she could, hiding in the bushes and calling her friend.

Chloe Bess also had a sexual assault exam at the hospital and reported the assault to authorities and named Bowen Turner as her rapist.

Turner was again arrested. Though he was initially denied bond, his attorney, Brad Hutto, argued that Turner didn’t belong in the Department of Juvenile Justice because he “wasn’t a gang member.”

A judge placed Turner on house arrest with strict guidelines, and we already know how that went down; Bowen Turner, a privileged white rapist ignored the law and did as he pleased.

But what did Dallas Stoller and Chloe Bess do? Well, they endured significant bullying from people in the Orangeburg community, who posted comments on social media with the hashtag #FreeBowen. It was so bad for both girls, they changed schools.

Chloe Bess moved out of South Carolina state , while Dallas Stoller transferred from the College of Charleston to the University of South Carolina Beaufort, where the bullying continued until she took her own life last November.

How does this happen? How does a serial rapist get off so easily?

Well, in South Carolina, circuit court judges are ”elected” by state lawmakers, many of whom are trial lawyers. This system gives attorneys who are also legislators an unusual amount of power because the judges who rule in their cases also need their support for reelection. These legislator-attorney’s roles also grant them access to public agencies that non-legislator attorneys might not have, and it is because of this system that legislator-attorneys—many of whom are handsomely paid for their services—are particularly well-positioned to defend their clients. Critics of the system say these attorneys aren’t hired for their legal skills so much as they are for their influence.

In the case of Bowen Turner, it appears to have been either money well-spent or the perfect storm.

Prosecutor David Miller is highly respected in his field and has a long list of accomplishments in his career, but Miller has sought to become a circuit court judge and so would need support from members of the legislature … like Bowen Turner’s attorney, Brad Hutto, who has been a state senator since 1996.

In addition, Bowen Turner’s father, Walt Turner, was an investigator with the 1st Circuit Solicitor’s Office at the time Turner was charged, making him another familiar face in the Orangeburg Courthouse.

Then there’s Judge Markley Dennis who is known as a judge who is inherently friendly to defendants. According to news reports from 1994 to the present, Judge Markley Dennis has a history that includes controversial decisions:

In 1995 he sentenced a father, who admitted to raping his daughter from the age of 5 until she was 14, to therapy.

In 2000, Dennis was criticized for the light sentences he handed out to the perpetrators of one of the biggest public embezzlement scandals at the time in Sumter County. More than $3 million was stolen, misspent and misappropriated by more than a dozen Sumter school district administrators, and yet one of the men, a popular coach who was facing up to 25 years in prison, was given just 90 days in jail. The coach was ordered to pay $45,000 in restitution despite the more than $200,000 he’d been accused of taking.

The sick part of this is that these so-called legislator-attorneys defend this kind of bull shit by saying this is “how things work.”

Bowen Turner can rape three women in South Carolina, but not face charges in one case because the victim killed herself waiting for her day in court, and not face charges in the other case because a state Senator slut-shamed the girl.

It really isn’t the heat, it’s the stupidity.

Bowen Turner is a rapist. Everybody needs to know that.

And Brad Hutto needs to know that when Bowen Turner rapes again, and I’ve no doubt he will, that crime will be on his hands, too, because he used his influence over a judge to get a rapist off.