In a California courtroom in 2016, Chanel Miller read her victim impact statement to the man who sexually assaulted her, thinking it was certain he would go to prison for at least two of the six years the prosecutor requested.
But minutes after she made it through the statement without crying, the shocking verdict came in for former Stanford University student Brock Turner, who’d sexually assaulted Miller outside a fraternity party in 2015: Sixmonthsin jail.
“I felt a visceral anger toward myself for this dramatic outpouring, this batsh-t touchy-feely monologue. I’d failed.”
Miller’s statement punctured Turner’s defense that he was drunk. It also took aim at a society and justice system that stacks the deck against sex assault victims. After the verdict was read, she writes, “I bent my statement into smaller and smaller squares, hiding it in my purse.”
Ultimately, Turner served just three months in jail for the assault.
In explaining his decision, Judge Aaron Persky cited Turner’s youth, his intoxication, and the “severe impact” a long sentence would have on him. The sentence drew widespread criticism, leading California voters to recall Persky from his position in 2018.
After all Miller had been through, Turner’s light sentence was devastating.
“They tell you that if you’re assaulted, there’s a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found,” she writes. “Most victims are turned away at the base, told they don’t have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high.
Chanel Miller.Bethany Mollenkof
Chanel Miller.Courtesy Chanel Miller
In the years since the assault, Miller says she worked on her book and rediscovered a sense of self-worth Turner took from her.
“I was slowly teaching myself self-compassion again,” she told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “And yeah, realizing that I deserved to be treated much better.”
She added, “I thought I deserved time to cultivate myself and figure that out for myself before I could present myself to other people.”
“I felt so worn out, and the statement seemed of such little consequence, that I didn’t care much where it ended up, as long as my name wasn’t on it,” she writes in her book.
But the searing, 12-page letter went viral, drawing praise as a critique of rape culture and a precursor to the #MeToo movement. Within 20 minutes, the post had racked up 15,000 views. Now, more than 20 million people had read it. TheBuzzfeedreporter forwarded Miller the supportive emails that poured in.
“Almost every message I received opened with someone telling me the location of where they were crying,” she writes.
source: people.com
