Woman Sexually Assaulted by Brock Turner Says 'Rape Is Not a Punishment for Getting Drunk'
Chanel Miller — the “Emily Doe” who became a #MeToo movement champion with a powerful victim-impact statement against her assailant — has given her first television interview.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Miller, who went public with her real identity earlier this month, recalls her reaction to the March 2016 sentencing of Brock Turner, a former star swimmer at Stanford University. Turner was found guilty of three felonies for sexually assaulting her outside an on-campus fraternity party in January 2015, and served only three months in county jail.
“I was in shock,” Miller says. “So you’re saying I just put aside a year and a half of my life so he could go to county jail for three months.”
Miller, who lives in San Francisco and holds a degree in literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, adds: “There are young men, particularly young men of color, serving longer sentences for non-violent crimes, for having a teeny bit of marijuana in their pocket. And he’s just been convicted of three felonies … one month for each felony. How can you explain that to me?”
At the 2016 hearing, Miller read a victim-impact statement that quickly went viral online and was viewed by 11 million people in four days. “In newspapers, my name was ‘unconscious, intoxicated woman.’ Ten syllables, and nothing more than that. 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, while you are the All-American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty with so much at stake,” the statement said.
“It is enough to be suffering,” the statement said. “It is another thing to have someone ruthlessly working to diminish the gravity of validity of this suffering…. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again.”
RELATED: Stanford Sex Assault Survivor Reads From Inspiring Victim Impact Statement That Went Viral
Detailing the aftermath of the attack to 60 Minutes, Miller says, “[Rape] is not a punishment for getting drunk. And we have this really sick mindset in our culture, as if you deserve rape if you drink to excess.
She adds, “You deserve a hangover, a really bad hangover, but you don’t deserve to have somebody insert their body parts inside of you.”
Miller’s full interview with 60 Minutes airs Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS.
Miller’s new memoir, Know My Name, is set to be released on Sept. 24.
