{"id":1718,"date":"2019-08-01T09:32:44","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1718"},"modified":"2020-04-22T01:13:58","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T01:13:58","slug":"emily-doe-victim-impact-statement-2015","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/30-the-recent-past\/emily-doe-victim-impact-statement-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Doe (Chanel Miller), Victim Impact Statement (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On January 18, 2015, Stanford University student Brock Turner sexually assaulted an unconscious woman outside of a university fraternity house. At his sentencing on June 2, 2016, his unnamed victim (\u201cEmily Doe\u201d) read a 7,000-word victim impact statement describing the effect of the assault on her life.\u00a0[Note: Chanel\u00a0Miller\u00a0identified\u00a0herself\u00a0publicly\u00a0as\u00a0Emily\u00a0Doe in September 2019.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On January\n17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and\nI sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I\nwas working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at\nhome by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her\nfriends. Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to\ndo, so why not, there\u2019s a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go,\ndance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked\nthat undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige\ncardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself \u201cbig mama,\u201d because\nI knew I\u2019d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and\ndrank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly\nlowered since college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next\nthing I remember I was in a gurney in a hallway. I had dried blood and bandages\non the backs of my hands and elbow. I thought maybe I had fallen and was in an\nadmin office on campus. I was very calm and wondering where my sister was. A\ndeputy explained I had been assaulted. I still remained calm, assured he was speaking\nto the wrong person. I knew no one at this party. When I was finally allowed to\nuse the restroom, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to\npull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my\nhands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was\nnothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my vagina and\nanything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced. I still don\u2019t\nhave words for that feeling. In order to keep breathing, I thought maybe the\npolicemen used scissors to cut them off for evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, I felt\npine needles scratching the back of my neck and started pulling them out my\nhair. I thought maybe, the pine needles had fallen from a tree onto my head. My\nbrain was talking my gut into not collapsing. Because my gut was saying, help\nme, help me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shuffled\nfrom room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing\nbehind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers\nthat said \u201cRape Victim\u201d and I thought something has really happened. My clothes\nwere confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various\nabrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the\npine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down,\nthey said it\u2019s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs\ninserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed\nright into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my\nvagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought\nthere\u2019s no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in\nmy body, he ran but was caught. He\u2019s going to settle, formally apologize, and\nwe will both move on. Instead, I was told he hired a powerful attorney, expert\nwitnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about\nmy personal life to use against me, find loopholes in my story to invalidate me\nand my sister, in order to show that this sexual assault was in fact a\nmisunderstanding. That he was going to go to any length to convince the world\nhe had simply been confused\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of\ntaking time to heal, I was taking time to recall the night in excruciating\ndetail, in order to prepare for the attorney\u2019s questions that would be\ninvasive, aggressive, and designed to steer me off course, to contradict\nmyself, my sister, phrased in ways to manipulate my answers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My damage\nwas internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy,\nmy energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 I am no\nstranger to suffering. You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was \u201cunconscious\nintoxicated woman\u201d, ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I\nbelieved that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name,\nmy identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a\ndrunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All\u00ad\nAmerican swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so\nmuch at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was\nput on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

… Finally,\nto girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with\nyou. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for\nyou. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote,\n\u201cLighthouses don\u2019t go running all over an island looking for boats to save;\nthey just stand there shining.\u201d Although I can\u2019t save every boat, I hope that\nby speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that\nyou can\u2019t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small\nassurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are\nimportant, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to\nbe valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful\nand nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you.\n\nSource: Emily Doe, \u201cVictim\nStatement to Brock Turner,\u201d June 2, 2016. Available online via BuzzFeed (https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/katiejmbaker\/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra).\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 18, 2015, Stanford University student Brock Turner sexually assaulted an unconscious woman outside of a university fraternity house. At his sentencing on June 2, 2016, his unnamed victim (\u201cEmily Doe\u201d) read a 7,000-word victim impact statement describing the effect of the assault on her life.\u00a0[Note: Chanel\u00a0Miller\u00a0identified\u00a0herself\u00a0publicly\u00a0as\u00a0Emily\u00a0Doe in September 2019.] On January 17th, 2015, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":820,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1718","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1825,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1718\/revisions\/1825"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}