Rape victim on '60 Minutes:' vNow -- everybody knows her name

SCREEN CAPTURE / CBS

Chanel Miller is interviewed by Bill Whitaker on '60 Minutes.'

ASAM NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE EDGE

For years, she was only known as Emily Doe, a pseudonym  for the victim raped on the Stanford University campus. Last night on national television, the victim spoke out as Chanel Miller.

In the half-hour interview with Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes that was aired Sunday (Sept. 22), Miller, whose mother is Chinese, recounted her ordeal from the night she was assaulted in 2015, the trial and her ongoing recovery.

Miller woke up in a hospital after blacking out at a fraternity party at Stanford not knowing what had happened to her. She admits she had drank a mixture of vodka, whiskey and champagne. She was unconscious during the attack.

Doctors examined the Asian American victim and told her she had been sexually assaulted. After her release from the hospital, Miller decided not to tell anybody, including her parents, until more details were unveiled. It took days before the story popped up on her social media news feed.

“In order to survive, you just shut everything down. You have to function. You have to go to work in the morning. So it’s much easier to just repress everything,” she told Whitaker.

“Yes. It was surreal having the news broken to me by the Internet. I was alone, sitting at my desk, surrounded by coworkers, reading about how I was stripped and then penetrated and discarded in a bed of pine needles behind a dumpster. And that’s how I figured out all of those elements. And they all added up. And I finally understood,” said the 26-year old author.

She acknowledges she had too much to drink, but doesn’t back down to those who may feel she had it coming.

“Rape is not a punishment for getting drunk," the Asian American writer told  Whitaker. "And we have this really sick mindset in our culture, as if you deserve rape if you drink to excess. You deserve a hangover, a really bad hangover, but you don’t deserve to have somebody insert their body parts inside of you.”

During the trial, Turner's lawyers portrayed their client as a star athlete, a potential Olympic swimmer whose life would be ruined if convicted. Upon conviction, Turner's father said his son should not have to go to prison for “20 minutes of action.”

During the sentencing portion of the trail, Miller was able to confront Brock in her statement in court. Her powerful hour-long testimony was published by Buzzfeed and it went viral as a statement in behalf of sexual assault victims around the world.

During the 60 Minutes interview, Miller read part of that testimony: "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. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something."

Brock Turner received six months in jail for sexual assault. He was released  after serving  only three months. The nation reacted with outrage to the high-profile case's light sentencing. Two years later, Judge Aaron Persky would be recalled by 60 percent of the vote.

Miller, who graduated from UC-Santa Barbara, wrote about her experience in a book due out Tuesday, (Sept. 24) by Viking Books, entitled "Know My Name."

Below is a portion of the 60 Minutes report. For the entire segment, click here.

Finally, Miller, concluded her victim's statement with a message to assault victims everywhere:

"And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, 'Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.' Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you."

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org/onlineand receive confidential support.
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