Chanel Miller is an American writer and artist based in San Francisco, California and New York City, New York. She first came into the public eye anonymously after she was sexually assaultedon the campus of Stanford University in 2015 by Brock Allen Turner. The victim impact statement she wrote and read at her assailant's sentencing hearing the following year went viral after it was published online by Buzzfeed, and was read 11 million times within four days. Miller was referred to as Emily Doe in court documents and in media reports until September 2019, when she relinquished her anonymity and released her acclaimed memoir Know My Name which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in the Autobiography category. She is credited with sparking national discussion in the United States about the treatment of sexual assault cases and victims by college campuses and court systems. She is also a public speaker.
Early life
Chanel Miller was born in 1992 in Palo Alto, California. Her mother emigrated from China to become a writer and her father is a retired therapist. She has a younger sister. She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies where she graduated with a degree in literature in 2014.
2015 assault and victim impact statement
On the evening of January 17, 2015, Miller accompanied her sister to a Kappa Alpha fraternity party at Stanford University; later that night, two Stanford graduate students found Miller lying on the ground behind a dumpster with another Stanford student, 19-year-old Brock Turner, on top of her. Miller was unconscious, with alcohol in her system. When he tried to flee, Turner was caught and held down on the ground by the other two men as they waited for police to arrive. Turner was arrested and indicted on five felony sexual assault charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. In 2016, he was convicted of three of these charges and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment—a sentence which sparked public outrage due to its leniency. Sentencing judge Aaron Persky was recalled two years later. The 7,137-word-long victim impact statement by Miller, who was referred to in court documents and media reports as "Emily Doe" for the sake of her anonymity, was published by Buzzfeed on June 3, 2016, the day after Turner was sentenced, and was reprinted in other major news outlets such as The New York Times. The victim impact statement was read 11 million times in four days after it was published, going viral.
''Know My Name''
In September 2019, Miller relinquished her anonymity. She was interviewed on 60 Minutes, where she was reunited with the two Swedish graduate students who had stopped her assailant. Miller wrote a memoir entitled Know My Name, which was published by Viking Books, became a best-seller. It was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by the Washington Post and was nominated for Best Memoir & Autobiography at the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards. The New York Times also selected Know My Name for its "100 Notable Books of 2019."
Legacy
Miller's story and the legal case "sparked a nationwide discussion about rape on college campuses and how survivors were not being heard", and "became part of the intense debates around rape, sexism and sexual misconduct over the past years," including the Me Too movement. On November 1, 2016, Glamour named Miller a woman of the year for "changing the conversation about sexual assault forever", citing that her impact statement had been read over 11 million times. Miller attended the award ceremony anonymously. In November 2019, after the publication of her book, Miller attended Glamour's award ceremony again, where she was again recognized as a Woman of the Year. She delivered a poem on stage, in which she advocated for the well-being of sexual assault survivors. She was listed as an influential person in Time's 2019 100 Next list.
