Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted behind a dumpster outside a Stanford frat party by Brock Turner. She wants to tell her story
- Chanel Miller’s memoir, out this week, will ‘reclaim the story of her sexual assault’ by Brock Turner, the ex-Stanford student who attacked her in 2015
- ‘I felt no parent was going to want me as a role model if I’m just a discarded, drunk, half-naked body behind a dumpster,’ Miller has said
Chanel Miller, the woman who was sexually assaulted while she lay unconscious behind a dumpster outside a Stanford fraternity party in 2015, said that messages from other survivors helped heal shame from both the rape and the trial of her attacker.
The world knew her as Emily Doe for years, Miller said on CBS’s 60 Minutes, because she thought revealing her identity would “absolutely humiliate” her and end her dream of writing children’s books.
“I felt no parent was going to want me as a role model if I’m just a discarded, drunk, half-naked body behind a dumpster,” Miller said in the interview.
“Nobody wants to be that.”
But after her 13-page victim impact statement went viral in June 2016, activists credited Miller with helping spark the #MeToo movement.
The 27-year old with a literature degree revealed her identity earlier this month while preparing for the release of her memoir, Know My Name, available Tuesday.
She revealed not just her name but also details about her life: that she is half Chinese, grew up in Palo Alto and is a writer and artist.
She also released a photograph of herself and disclosed that she lives in San Francisco.
He wasn’t trying to rape her, he was attempting ‘outercourse’, says Turner’s lawyer
Her attacker Brock Turner, a former student and swimmer at Stanford University, was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person and penetration of an unconscious person.
He faced up to 14 years in prison but was sentenced to six months in county jail. He served just three for “good behaviour”.
The sentencing for three felonies shocked Miller, and she said the focus on what Turner had to lose as an competitive swimmer frustrated her.
She pointed to the toll on her health, as well as how young men of colour have served longer sentences for non-violent crimes.
Recalling online comments about the 2015 assault at Stanford University, Miller acknowledged she blacked out from drinking alcohol and addressed victim blaming.
“Rape is not a punishment for getting drunk,” she said in the interview with Bill Whitaker.
“And we have this really sick mindset in our culture, as if you deserve rape if you drink to excess. You deserve a hangover, a really bad hangover, but you don’t deserve to have somebody insert their body parts inside of you.”
Former California governor Jerry Brown signed two bills inspired by the case, which created mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted of a similar crime and expanded the definition of rape to include other definitions of penetration.
Judge who gave Stanford rapist Brock Turner lenient sentence is ousted from job
“That’s democracy in action. Within 90 days the law was changed, all because of her words and her strength,” Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Alaleh Kianerci said on 60 Minutes.
Voters also recalled Aaron Persky, the judge who sentenced Turner, in June 2018 – making him the first California jurist recalled from the bench in 86 years.
One in five US women is raped at some point in their lives, and one in three is a victim of sexual violence involving physical contact, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Miller’s memoir out this week will “reclaim the story of her sexual assault,” publisher Viking Books said in a press release earlier this year.
The book begins with what Miller remembers of that night – how having drinks at a college party with her younger sister devolved into a nightmare.
She describes the horror of waking up in a hospital with no underwear on, no memory of what happened, and no one willing to tell her.
Father of Stanford rapist describes assault on woman as ‘20 minutes of action’
She also expresses alarm over the way photos of her naked body were splashed in court for everyone to see. When her father saw a police photo of her lying behind the dumpster, she writes, it seemed to him that she was dead.
She saves an especially pointed critique for the intensive process by which rape victims are questioned, and even smeared, as she relates being painted in court as a liar and a drunk.
“It never occurred to me that the system itself could be wrong,” she writes.
Additional reporting by The Washington Post
