When she left the hospital after being sexually assaulted while unconscious on Stanford University’s campus in 2015,Chanel Millerhad no idea what had happened to her.
“I’d only been told that a guy had been acting ‘hinkey’ around me. Just ‘around’ [me],” Miller says in an exclusive interview withOprah WinfreyonSuper Soul Sunday, on theOprah WinfreyNetwork, airing Sunday, Sept. 29 at 11 a.m. ET/PT.
“I thought, ‘Oh, there must have been an odd guy at the party who’d been setting off red flags.’ … I had no idea there was any direct relation to me, or that he had made any contact with my body.”
At that point, Miller realized why she had debris in her hair, and the full horror that she’d been sexually assaulted dawned on her.
“And I immediately said, ‘That’s not me.’ I refused to accept that reality,” she says.
“And if I had a choice, I would have just said, ‘I don’t want it. No thank you.’”
But Miller persevered during the painful legal process that ultimately led toTurner’s 2016 conviction on three counts of felony sexual assault.
Courtesy OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network
Before he was sentenced, Miller confronted Turner with apowerful victim impact statementshe’d written, which punctured Turner’s defense that he was drunk and also took aim at a society and justice system that stacks the deck against sex assault victims. The searing, 12-page statement — published under the pseudonym “Emily Doe,” — went viral, drawing praise as a critique of rape culture and later as a precursor to the #MeToo movement.
Chanel Miller.Bethany Mollenkof
Prosecutors had asked that Turner serve six years behind bars, but the judge sentenced him to six months, and hewound up serving just threemonths. The lenient sentence drew widespread criticism and led to the recall of the judge. For Miller, it was devastating.
Chanel Miller’sSuper Soul Sundayepisode airs Sunday, Sept. 29 at 11 a.m. ET/PT.
source: people.com
