Vice President Joe Biden Says Stanford Sex Assault Victim's Words 'Forever Seared on My Soul'

— -- Vice President Joe Biden says words from the woman who was sexually assaulted by former Stanford University student Brock Turner "are forever seared on my soul," according to an open letter responding to her statement in court.

“I do not know your name — but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed,” Biden wrote in the letter, which ABC News has obtained.

His letter was in reaction to Turner’s sexual assault case, which garnered national attention.

Turner received a six-month sentence in county jail and three years of probation despite being convicted of three felonies in the January 2015 case. He maintains that the encounter was consensual.

“I am filled with furious anger — both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth,” Biden stated. “Your bravery is breathtaking.”

The open letter was first published by Buzzfeed News.

The vice president has taken the administration’s “It’s on Us” campaign across the country to speak out against sexual assault on campus, a message reiterated in his open letter.

“You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where 1 in 5 women is sexually assaulted — year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye,” Biden wrote. “The statistics on college sexual assault haven’t gone down in the past two decades. It’s obscene, and it’s a failure that lies at all our feet."

In the letter, Biden praised the two men who helped stop the assault at Stanford.

“Thanks to you, I know that heroes ride bicycles,” he wrote. “They did not worry about the social or safety implications of intervening, or about what their peers might think. Those two men epitomize what it means to be a responsible bystander.”

“I do not know your name — but I will never forget you,” Biden wrote to the woman, adding that he believes the conversation her case has stirred “will have helped to change the world for the better.”

Stanford University called the incident “horrible” in a statement but said it “did everything within its power to assure that justice was served.”

“Once Stanford learned the identity of the young woman involved, the university reached out confidentially to offer her support and to tell her the steps we were taking,” the school said in a statement. “In less than two weeks after the incident, Stanford had conducted an investigation and banned Turner from setting foot on campus — as a student or otherwise. This is the harshest sanction that a university can impose on a student.”