In a powerful and emotional interview with CBS News' 60 Minutes, Chanel Miller, who was sexually assaulted in 2015 near a Stanford University frat house, described her relationship to her body and to "Emily Doe," the pseudonym used to refer to her in legal proceedings.
"I did not want that body. I did not want to own that body or occupy it. I did not want to have anything to do with that image," Miller said.
After she was assaulted by then 20-year-old Brock Turner, two students found her unconscious near a dumpster.
"I pretended it wasn't mine," she continues. "It was Emily's. She's this abstract entity who belongs to the case. I thought 'That's not me. That's not Chanel.'"
60 Minutes posted the above video online in conjunction with a longer interview with Miller, which aired on television on Sunday.
In another online clip, Miller, who was 22 at the time, described how the sexual assault trial against Turner wasn't about truth.
"I just know he was found humping my unmoving body, and I was being asked what the name was of the taqueria that I went to for dinner and if I had one taco," she explains. "Why am I being interrogated about meaningless facts when we already have explicit evidence?"
Though Turner, then a student athlete on the swim team, was found guilty, he only served three months of a six-month term.
In the clip, Miller went on to succinctly pick apart the way the criminal justice system prosecutes sexual assault. "Instead of investigating the crime that's at-hand we interrogate the victim and go after her character and pick her apart and openly defile and debase her," Miller explained. "And you just have sit on the stand while this is happening and nobody can object. Nobody can say 'That's enough.' I can't say 'Don't talk to me like that.' You just take it."
You can watch the full television interview here. Miller's memoir of the events, Know My Name, will be released Tuesday.
Topics Social Good
