Read the book Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Examine her victim impact statement.
Please refer to the lecture “Chanel Miller Know My Name” on Canvas. Review each of the discussion points and statements regarding the book Know My Name.
In your analysis, consider: a) Was she treated fairly? b) Is the system of adjudicating sexual assault just to survivors of assault? c) What do you feel for Chanel? d) How can the system be changed to be more fair?
It was the perfect case, in many
ways–there were eyewitnesses, the
defendant ran away, physical
evidence was immediately secured.
But her struggles with isolation and
shame during the aftermath and the
trial reveal the oppression victims
face in even the best-case scenarios.
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Her story illuminates a
culture biased to protect
perpetrators, indicts a criminal
justice system designed to fail
the most vulnerable, and,
ultimately, shines with the
courage required to move
through su ering and live a full
and beautiful life.
She was known to
the world as Emily
Doe when she
stunned millions with
a letter. Brock Turner
had been sentenced
to just six months in
county jail after he
was found sexually
assaulting her on
Stanford’s campus.

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Her victim impact
statement was posted on
BuzzFeed, where it
instantly went
viral–viewed by eleven
million people within four
days, it was translated
globally and read on the
oor of Congress.
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Thousands wrote to
say that she had
given them the
courage to share
their own
experiences of
assault for the rst
time.
https://chanel-miller.com
https://chanel-miller.com
https://chanel-miller.com
https://chanel-miller.com
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Possible Re ection/
Discussion Points for
Assignment 2
1. After Chanel Miller was
sexually assaulted by Brock
Turner on the Stanford
University campus in January
2015, she tried to keep the
attack secret from most of
her family and friends.
2. As details of the crime were
reported—two grad students on bikes
had spotted Turner on top of the
unconscious Miller behind a dumpster;
when he ran, they chased him down—
she remained publicly anonymous.
3. Yet in the months afterward, Miller
writes in her memoir, one of the only
people she wanted to share her
experience with was a hometown friend
who had survived something similar, only
to be informed there was not enough
evidence to pursue a criminal case.
4. When Miller told her friend that
prosecutors in Santa Clara County,
California, had decided to charge
Turner with sexual assault, her friend
leaned over and held her. Then she sat
back, looked Miller in the eye, and said,
“This is your opportunity.”
5. Miller seized it. Driven in part by
the knowledge that most sexual
assault survivors never get a chance
to hold their assailants accountable
in court, Miller spent the next year
cooperating with police and
prosecutors, sticking with the
criminal legal process, despite the
pain, embarrassment, and retraumatization that came along with
it.
7. Miller, then known only as
Emily Doe, wrote a victim
impact statement that went
viral after it was published by
BuzzFeed.
8. While Miller’s victim impact
statement sparked outrage about
Turner’s brief jail sentence and the
deference he received as a white
Stanford athlete, the outrage that
builds over the course of her book
is not directed at Turner, or even
Judge Persky, but at a justice
system that requires victims to go
through hell all over again.
9. Miller’s experience is largely a
story of the system working
exactly as well as it was
designed to. The detective who
handled her case did not bungle
or neglect the investigation. The
prosecutor did not decline to le
charges.
10. Their jobs were made
easier by abundant evidence:
eyewitnesses, phone
records, and a rape kit that
was tested, not destroyed, in
addition to Miller’s own
testimony.
11. And unlike the perpetrators
of 98 percent of all sexual
assaults reported to law
enforcement, Turner was
convicted and sent to jail. Miller,
meanwhile, had a solid support
system—a victim advocate,
access to therapy, and a small
circle of encouraging family and
friends.
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12. Yet this best-possible
outcome did not provide Miller
with a sense of justice or solace.
Just the opposite: From the
moment she woke up in the
hospital following her attack, her
decision to pursue a criminal
case in icted additional harm on
her.
13. There was the discomfort
and humiliation of the rape kit
exam, which Miller would
describe viscerally in her
victim impact statement as
“long, pointed beaks inside
me” and “a Nikon pointed
right into my spread legs.”
14. It took months before
she learned whether she
technically had been
raped because her kit
was stuck in the crime
lab’s backlog of DNA
evidence.
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15. Court dates were repeatedly
pushed o , adding to her
anticipation and dread. In part
because of the unpredictability
of the schedule, she gave up
working full-time. (Miller was
not a student at the time of the
assault.) Participating in the
trial exacted a deeper toll.
16. She writes in her book that
her character became “an
asset my DA would need,” and
that she had to be on her best
behavior, because Turner may
have hired a private
investigator to watch her and
gather potentially discrediting
material.
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17. While preparing for trial and
cross-examination, she became
terri ed of making any choice, no
matter how small, that Turner’s
defense attorney might use to
impugn her character. Posting a
smiling picture online, or having a
drink, could be seized on to argue
she had never really su ered from
the assault.
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18. After learning about the sentencing
recommendation, Miller poured her rage into
the 12-page, single-spaced victim impact
statement that would later be read into the
Congressional record and on broadcast news,
turning “Emily Doe” into an avatar for the pain
and anger of survivors everywhere. But it
didn’t appear to make much di erence. Persky
limited the amount of time she had to read her
letter, and then he chose to follow the
probation department’s recommendation
based on her misconstrued wishes.
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19. “You ask us to sacri ce our sanity to
ght outdated structures that were
designed to keep us down,” she writes,
defending survivors who choose not to
report sexual assaults to law enforcement,
and calling out the expectation that
survivors must endure the unbearable in
order to hold their perpetrators
accountable.
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20. Over time, she came to regard the harms
the system in icted on her as xable, not
inevitable. It helped to see her experience as
a test case. “I could convert my pain into
ideas, could begin brainstorming alternate
futures for victims,” she writes.
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21. The point of challenging the
institutions that put Miller through hell
isn’t to make the legal system more
therapeutic for victims. Healing and
recovery are part of an ongoing
process outside the courtroom: Miller
writes about nding comfort in small
kindnesses—a winking court reporter,
the cheerful nurses who administered
her rape kit—and in revisiting her
memories as part of writing this book.
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22. But the courtroom is the place
to send a message to the Brock
Turners of the world. “I know better
than to think my peace arrives
when the gavel hits, when the
handcu s clink shut,” Miller writes.
“We don’t ght for our own happy
endings. We ght to say you can’t.”
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23. According to Miller’s account, she told
the o cer that she wanted Turner to own
up to what he’d done and get therapy while
incarcerated. Miller later discovered the
o cer had interpreted her comments to
mean that Turner should be given a
“moderate” county jail sentence.
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24. After intense media attention and a 16-day
trial, a jury convicted Turner of three counts of
felony sexual assault. Judge Aaron Persky
sentenced Turner to six months in county jail,
probation, and sex o ender registration,
rationalizing that anything tougher would have
a “severe impact” on the Olympic swimming
hopeful.
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25. Finally, there was the
sentencing. After Turner was
convicted, she received a call
from a probation department
o cer to interview her as a
routine part of a sentencing
recommendation.
26. California changed its laws to
impose mandatory prison
sentences for sexual assault
perpetrators whose victims are
unconscious or intoxicated, and
voters recalled Persky from the
bench.
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27. To add insult to injury, the o cer
checked o Miller’s race as white
without asking. Miller, who is half
Chinese, felt that mistake re ected the
indi erence with which she had been
treated.
28. Know My Name never quite reaches
the point of envisioning that di erent
reality for survivors. But by its end,
Miller makes a powerful case for
overhauling a system that retraumatizes
victims of sexual violence even in
successful cases, perpetuating the
feedback loop that discourages victims
from coming forward to seek justice.
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29. At rst, it didn’t occur to Miller that the
system she was enmeshed in could be
changed, much less challenged. But the
successful campaign to recall Persky—the
rst successful judicial recall in California in
86 years—helped shift her perception of the
possible.
30. This best-possible outcome did not provide
Miller with a sense of justice or solace. Just the
opposite: From the moment she woke up in the
hospital following her attack, her decision to pursue
a criminal case inflicted additional harm on her.
END

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