In 2016, Brock Turner, a Stanford University student and an all-star swimmer, raped another college student at Stanford, while she lay unconscious after a campus party on a Saturday night. Her identity was kept secret to protect her; in the criminal lawsuit that followed she was known only as Emily Doe. In the sentencing phase of that trial, she bravely wrote and read – in open court – directly in front of her attacker, a ‘victim impact statement’, which to this day remains one of the most searingly powerful and important pieces of writing on this issue.
After the judge inexplicably let Turner off with a slap on the wrist, that focused many of us on the issue even more, especially with how we deal with the apparent inability or unwillingness of our culture to understand and deal with rape culture and with the privileged men who commit these crimes.
The firestorm of criticism that followed opened up a space for men to examine these issues and to change their behaviors and for us all to change what and how we teach our children.
Now – three years later – Emily Doe is back. And she has a name that she is now ready to share with the world: Chanel Miller. And “Chanel [] knows how to write. And Chanel knows how to draw….”
“Nobody wants to be defined by the worst thing that happened to them….No one gets to define them. You do. You do”
—
Photo Credit: Chanel Miller/YouTube
The post ‘Know My Name’ Victim Tells Survivors: ‘My Name is Chanel, and I Am With You’ appeared first on The Good Men Project.