Chanel Miller, Survivor at the Center of Brock Turner Case, Comes Forward
Chanel Miller, the sexual assault survivor at the center of the Stanford swimmer Brock Turner case whose victim’s statement generated international sympathy and outrage, has come forward in a new interview with 60 Minutes. The interview marks the first time Miller has publicly revealed her name and her face.
Miller, who was identified during the trial as Emily Doe, gave the interview to 60 Minutes in advance of the publication of her upcoming memoir, Know My Name, which is scheduled for release on September 24th.
In a clip from the upcoming segment, Miller reads from a victim’s statement she read to the judge at Turner’s sentencing hearing, in which she addressed Turner directly.
“You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me. In newspapers, my name was ‘unconscious, intoxicated woman.’ Ten syllables and nothing more than that,” she says, addressing Turner. “I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity, to relearn that this is not all that I am, that I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster.”
In 2015, Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, then 20, was seen by two graduate students sexually assaulting Miller behind a dumpster at a frat party. Miller was unconscious at the time of the assault. When Turner tried to run away, the two students detained him and called the police. Turner later told authorities that he did have sexual contact with Miller, but that it had been consensual.
In 2016, a jury found Turner guilty on three charges, including assault with intent to commit rape and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. While prosecutors initially asked that Turner be incarcerated for six years, Judge Aaron Persky, who was presiding over the case, sentenced him to just six months in county jail, arguing that the extended sentence would have a “severe impact” on him and saying he did not think Turner would be “a danger to others.” Turner served just three months of this sentence before his release.
Persky’s sentence generated international outrage, with many arguing that Turner’s privilege as a young white man insulated him from being punished for his crime. Protesters successfully called for Persky’s recall, marking the first time in nearly 80 years that a California judge had been removed from the bench by voters.
Miller, too, was outraged by Persky’s sentence, which she referred to as “gentle.” In a victim’s statement that was later published by BuzzFeed and went viral, Miller spoke to the trauma she had endured as the result of her assault. “My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.”