Chanel Miller was 22 when she was sexually assaulted at a Stanford University frat party in 2015. Within 24 hours, she had decided to press charges against the assailant, unaware that the next four years of her life would be spent in court. Brock Turner would eventually become known as the “Stanford swimmer” accused of sexual assault while Chanel Miller’s identity was kept hidden, known only to the world as Emily Doe. We spoke with Chanel Miller about her recent memoir entitled “Know My Name” where she describes the four long years it took to sentence Turner and the traumatic impact it had on her and her family. She recalls feeling almost excited to share the 12-page victim impact statement she had prepared that would later go viral, but quickly realized that she would be “constantly discredited and diminished” during her time in court. “I was spoken about in terms of how many shots I had that night, or how many times I’ve blacked out previously in my life,” she says. “All other traits were dismissed. But that’s all I got to exist as and present myself as inside the courtroom.” Turner would later be sentenced to six months in county jail for sexual assault, but would only serve three of those months.
