Former Stanford student Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious and intoxicated woman. Photo / AP
Former Stanford student Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious and intoxicated woman. Photo / AP
The woman who read a searing statement at the sentencing of the college swimmer who sexually assaulted her at Stanford University— causing a public outcry that led to the judge in the case being recalled— has revealed her identity.
For years, Chanel Miller was known in legal proceedings as "Emily Doe," the woman assaulted while unconscious by Brock Turner outside an on-campus fraternity house. She identifies herself in a memoir, "Know My Name," scheduled to be released September 24.
The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of sex crimes, but Miller has identified herself. CBS will air an interview with her September 22, and the New York Times published a story about the book Wednesday.
Chanel Miller identifies herself in a memoir, Know My Name. Photo / via 60 Minutes
Miller's author page on Penguin Random House's website describes her as a San Francisco resident and a writer and artist with a degree in literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Many people were enraged when Turner was sentenced to six months in jail in 2016 after his conviction for felony sexual assault, more than a year before the #MeToo movement took off.
Judge Aaron Persky, who imposed the sentence, was recalled by voters in 2018, the first judge to be recalled in California since 1932.
"When people read her book, they will be impressed with her. They will be convinced that Judge Persky and Stanford University behaved very badly," said Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor who launched the recall campaign.
"Many victims of sexual violence are subjected to the same terrible treatment by courts and universities that Ms Miller experienced," she said.
To critics, Persky embodied an outdated judicial system that treated sexual assault too lightly and seemed overly concerned with the male attacker, in this case an athlete with a budding career.
Miller reads from her book on the programme. Photo / via 60 Minutes
A jury found Turner guilty of assaulting Miller while she was incapacitated by alcohol in January 2015.
In the wake of her traumatic experience, Miller gave a powerful statement against her rapist that made global headlines.
In the statement read out in court, she described waking up in a hospital after the attack covered in dried blood and bandages with no recollection of what had happened.
This image released by Viking shows Chanel Miller. Photo / AP
"You don't know me, but you've been inside me," she said in 2016. "You are the cause, I am the effect. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again. You knocked down both our towers, I collapsed at the same time you did. If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. Nobody wins. We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering."
The 7000-word statement was published in full by news outlets around the world, including in nzherald.co.nz, and was read aloud on CNN and by members of Congress on the House Floor to enter it into the national record.
She received letters from women across the world, saying she inspired them to reveal their own stories of sexual assault.
Miller's case and statement also inspired a change in California's sentencing law, a hard alcohol ban on Stanford's campus and the recalling of Persky by Santa Clara County voters.
Months after the sentence she told her story to Glamour magazine — still under the name "Emily Doe" — and was named its woman of the year.
