But there always is this element of surprise, [from people] who are like: Wow, hes there. If so many of us are experiencing [rape and sexual assault], we all should learn to be there. Its lush words are accompanied by the specter of all that might have beenthe shadow of the path that was, without Millers say, so violently bent in another direction. You knew about his life. And Im just so glad to continue to watch different creative projects come into existence, and the reason theyre coming into existence is because people are making the space for them. But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I alone was not enough. Habituated as we are to the preposterous scrutiny that a victim of sexual assault must endure, both in the legal context and in the public sphere, we are careful to stay excruciatingly close to the facts of the crime. If Im not taking care of myself and giving them the time and space to emerge, then they have to sit with their arms crossed inside me where its murky and human., That summer, struggling to function and sleep, she drew a picture of two bicycles and taped it over her bed to remind myself that there was a point in time when two people knew for a fact that I deserved to be protected, even if I didnt understand how to help myself. Later, she drew the faces of the jurors who found Mr. Turner guilty as a way to document these people who saw me and bore witness to my story and spit me out in a place where I knew I would be able to recover.. You are learning, finally, how to fight back. There are parts of her own story that Miller doesn't even know about. He served three months. The Asian American Museum was the first institution that approached me to say, We know your story. Verified. I want to promote this idea of perpetual healing, she said. Making friends as an adult is hard. The character is on a journey, Ms. Miller said of her simple line drawings. On thepublic-speaking (or now Zoom) circuit, she is regularly introduced as activist and author or writer and artist., Nor does Ms. Millerseem to be chasing the standard sales-driven successes of the art world. People doubt her as a female roofer: Were proving them wrong every day, She rescues baby squirrels: Theyre quite destructive. Tell me about that. The value of rage. Art. On Tuesday, she let the world know that her real name is Chanel Miller. Chanel Miller. The Real Housewives of Atlanta The Bachelor Sister Wives 90 Day Fiance Wife Swap The Amazing Race Australia Married at First Sight The Real Housewives of Dallas My 600-lb Life Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Chanel Miller, who was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner at Stanford University in 2015, said she was full of joy when she met Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, who rescued her the night of the assault. He opened up about his favorite sandwich. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a degree in literature, according to her publisher. The story opens right before the attack, on Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015. It is also to mistake the survivor as the person whose actions are on trial. Emily Doe endures demeaning treatment from Turners defense attorney during cross examination. She also encouraged her children to draw on walls of their house, and Ms. Miller laughs about her first commission being a peace-sign globe, nodding to John Lennon, that she painted in her younger sisters bedroom. I think it speaks to the fact that we speak and we dont know where its going to hit, or how, or who. Local Domestic Violence Shelters resource guide. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. The effect is often to dehumanize the survivor. Its like the rope to lower myself is longer because I can draw. She was speaking from her apartment in New York, where she moved with her longtime boyfriend the week before the city issued a stay-at-home pandemic order, giving her more time for art-making. I could trace in the air the curl of his hair, still unkempt at the time of his booking for the sexual assault of an unconscious young woman on Stanfords campus in January of 2015. Ad Choices. Chanel Miller's new memoir 'Know My Name' provides an unflinching look at assault and the justice system meant to guard against it. I have moved beyond him as an individual. I wanted to be known as Chanel, Miller writes, in all my fumblings, my confusion, managing everyday life. Emily Doe, Miller allows, was defiant and courageous. She seemed to have all the answers. But she was not Chanel Miller. Doris Tate, the mother of Sharon Tatethe eight-months-pregnant actor who was killed by followers of Charles Manson in 1969used statements of impact every time one of the murderers came up for parole. She describes one of them like this: My handlebars strobed, light shooting out in every direction, preventing me from dissolving into the darkness.. I have been astounded by the warmth. And if he wasnt going to do that, then I had to sit down and figure out what I was going through, identify why I was hurting and how to move on from it. He was sentenced to six months in prison, prompting a public outcry and widespread demand for the judge to be recalled. It is the actions of Emily Doe that are dissected in the news. But she says its not quite that direct, representing any state of being resigned, she said. You start curled up and might curl up again and again, but you have the tools needed to wobble your way back up.. And the series itself is an eight-episode answer to the question of why three out of four sexual assaults go unreported. I did not come into existence when he harmed me. A new mural in San Francisco is her. 163 posts. The word "victim" calls to mind someone meek, someone hurt, someone who can't fend for herself. When all damages were typed up and laid out it was staggering. Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission. Step into that. Having the ability to step out of your own reality is really important to constantly remind yourself that there are multiple realities that exist out there, and yours is temporary. Miller uses the book to reclaim her story and humanize herself. In newspapers she was described as the "unconscious intoxicated woman." Did any of that inspire you to go from Emily Doe to Chanel Miller? She is Chanel Miller, now twenty-seven. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. But victim-impact statementsvictim, impact, each term so fraughtoften double as reclamations. When I started receiving interview requests, I felt genuinely angry and irritated that people were inquiring about me. Miller, caught in the gears of that system, is alternately prodded and pandered to and misled and misbelieved. The busted relationships. You write about doing stand-up comedy while waiting for your case to go to trial. The deputy tells her that "there is reason to believe you have been sexually assaulted.". Neither outcome reads, really, as a happy ending. And after his apology, the action he took was to file an appeal to try and reverse the verdict. But Know My Name is insistent in its very presence. Chanel Miller, survivor in Brock Turner rape case, opens up in memoir Survivor in Brock Turner rape case wants you to know more than her name Alia E. Dastagir USA TODAY 0:00 1:22 In January. In September, when Know My Name, her memoir about the assault was . You cant act like that. I loved that there were no boundaries. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The scariest part of what happened after the assault is that this identity was placed on me, she said. She has published her whimsical, cartoon drawings in the New Yorker, Time, and California Sunday Magazine, and earlier this month she made her museum debut with a 75-foot mural at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Know her name, know her voice. In the summer following the assault, she left for Providence to take a printmaking course at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she created oddball animals like a two-headed rooster inspired in part, she says, by the fantastical menageries of the Canadian artist Marcel Dzama. Chanel Miller, in her new memoir, Know My Name, situates victimhood as a conduit to expertise, and trauma as a mode of human insight. Chanel Miller said she didn't know she was sexually assaulted until reading a news article about Brock Turner's arrest 10 days after she blacked out and woke up in the hospital Sexual assault victim Chanel Miller finally met the Swedish graduate students who helped save her from Brock Turner Then, the story abruptly shifts hours into the future. The books title, aptly, is rendered in the imperative: Know My Name. But Miller situates victimhood as a conduit to expertise, and trauma as a mode of human insight. With each one that came forward, I was devastated. Some days, living with Lucas in Philadelphia for a spell, she barely leaves her bed. From luxurious hotel-style duvet covers to relaxed linen options. They are assertions of humanity. Know My Name is difficult to read in part because it is beautiful to read. And it functions, like Know My Name, as an indictmentnot just of assailants, but also of a process that inflicts so much in the name of justice. At the hospital, it had never occurred to me that it was important I was dating someone. Whats not possible is bearing them alone. We are not used to experiencing the daily facts of trauma through the extreme subjectivity of a memoir. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. Do you feel like the media is also starting to characterize you as more than what happened to you? We have tensed in awe and premptive concern watching victims on the stand, growing emotional. Everybody does. But, really, I had been in survival mode up until the verdict focusing so hard on staying afloat. In college, me and my little literature-major friends used to have metaphor battles. We get to know her anger, and her cheek. She kills it. If this is her first official art exhibition, she has been showing her work unofficially for years: Her mother, May May Miller, a writer who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and publishes fiction and essays as Ci Zhang, used to install her daughters work at home, at one point bringing thick gold frames from her job at the Palo Alto shop Frame-O-Rama. You dont know me, but youve been inside of me, and thats why were here today was Emily Does first transportive address to her assailant. Musk shared his vision to move the world to sustainable energy, but didn't offer much more. I think for a lot of people including me it takes a personal experience, or someone close to us sharing a personal experience, for us to take it seriously. [His conviction was upheld.] Eventually she starts imagining what people would say if she asked for help, questions that ring strikingly similar to the ones the defense asks her about the night of her assault: "What was she doing alone at night? I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. She talked about the aftermath of that terrible night, as well as the less well-known dimensions of her life, in an interview with The Washington Post. He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others., Read: Andrea Constand and the burden of being the only witness, We ask so much of survivors. I think all of these feelings that you experience are ultimately bearable. (Miller and her sister, Tiffany, after the attack, go to In-N-Out for burgers, because that was where we gravitated when one of us was upset or celebrating or heartbroken. Miller finds, though, that she is unable to taste the salt, the sweet, the tang.) My hope is that everyone can at least have the capacity to listen, that they will show up and be able to stomach witnessing, even if they cant fix it, even if they cant be there for the entire journey back to healing. What if hes a pervert?). Im really struck by the warmth of her work even when dealing with intense or violent subjects., Ms. Kwon describes Ms. Millersmemoiras a coming-of-age story, a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Itsdriving theme isnot wanting to be defined by her assault but seen more broadly as a sister, daughter, creator and more, and she resists being pigeonholed professionally, too: These days she shows no desire to stick to one role. When trauma is transformed into art, there will always be a paradox at play: The arts existence is beautiful. . Its been nearly a year now since the public learned her name, and Miller has spent that time proving to the world that she is a fantastic writer and trailblazing activist. But ultimately, I needed to be able to not take life so seriously all the time. 267K followers. Back then, it was so difficult to put into words what was threatening to be lost. Her book delves into what it was like to endure a high-profile trial (in which Turner received a six-month sentence), but it also gives Miller the chance to present herself not just as a victim but as a full human being: a sister, a daughter, a girlfriend, an amateur stand-up comedian and a visual artist. Mariah Tiffany Last month marked five years since Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted on the Stanford. She has no gallery representation and mentions instead her desire to write a graphic novel or childrens bookone day,andtomake artworks for bleak courtroom settings, like the one she faced,to offer victimsnourishment or companionship., She said her New Years resolution for 2020 was to fail as much as possible, making things that are really crappy and undeveloped until maybe they can be good. 5. How many beers did she have? The fact that theres many more like him out there that continues to anger me. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The pain of this process couldnt be worth it. But it shouldnt have to exist at all. A new mural in San Francisco is her museum debut. I clicked again, my screen filed with two blue eyes and a neat row of teeth, freckles, red tie, black suit. But the trauma of the assault the year after graduating, and of being cast in the stereotypical victim role by the media, made drawing feel more urgent. This same system though turns Brock into an innocent young man with his whole life ahead of him(Opens in a new tab). 2. Never mind the book. Policemen were summoned, a Stanford dean was awakened to come see if he could recognize me, witnesses asked around; nobody knew who I belonged to, where Id come from, who I was. The book finds Miller first trying to figure out what happened to her after she attended a fraternity party with her sister, who was visiting for the weekend, and a few friends (one of them attended Stanford; Miller, living in Palo Alto at the time, decided to tag along with the group, just for fun). How important do you think this process of learning to love the little things again is on the path toward recovery? Turner was a first-time offender, promising student and swimming champion. "It's a sign that you have stepped onto your own side. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. 157 following. It ended with Turner sentenced to six months in jail. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. In literature, we might call him the protagonist. She navigates a justice system that routinely demeans her while insisting that it is acting in her interest. "It was stunning, the effects rippling out wider than I could have ever imagined," Miller writes after reading her friends and relatives' sentencing hearing letters. There's Miller's sister, Tiffany, who was there the night of the assault. But she doesnt say morethat she was the victim, she was the author, she was the person whose words had captured something sad and true about this moment. At the time, Miller was a 22-year-old recent graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and living in Palo Alto with her parents. Even before now, when I was in college working around campus sexual assault, and wrestling with my own negative experiences with sex, your victim-impact statement was always in the back of my brain, holding me steady. Soon enough, irresponsible media outlets are publishing Maries picture, accusing her of false reporting; she loses friends and her job and her confidence and her place in the world, all because she did not stay silent. Comedy? Miller goes to a taqueria with her friends. Sometimes people put me on a pedestal for the final level of evolution for a survivor: Youve achieved what you needed to achieve, youve healed, Ms. Miller explained. To me, apology means nothing without action. She reproduces questioning from the transcripts of the trial, in effect, giving readers the most comprehensive summary of the legal proceedings. "I thought of my pain like my personal rain cloud; reading those letters was like watching the whole sky turn an inky black. The vinyl mural, I was, I am, I will be, printed from her drawing, consists of three panels showing a simply rendered character she says the perfectly circular nostrils reflect her Asian heritage on a journey through physical and emotional states. "I saw Stanford athlete, saw raping, saw unconscious woman. It was important to make Turner famous. Unbelievables title, like Know My Names, makes a concise argument about subjects and objects. If Know My Name had been shaped in these slicker formsa corrective, a tell-allreaders sympathetic to Miller would have readily received her rage, whatever her tone. A surprise pregnancy and marriage Xander (Paul Telfer) wakes up from his drunken bender married to con artist Chanel (Precious Way). When Chloe arrives at Basic Black, she tells Nicole that Brady is working from home because of her. During the trial, for example, the defense asks Miller questions about what she had for dinner and how often she blacks out. But this is a chance to embrace that aspect of myself publicly. The Unintended Consequences of the Stanford Rape-Case Recall, The Dehumanizing Sexism of the Harvard Mens Soccer Teams Scouting Report, Sexual-Assault Survivors Confront Senator Jeff Flake. If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org(Opens in a new tab). Since were so deeply in it, it will be a long time before we can step back, really look at it, assess it, and figure out how it will continue to affect our daily lives. We learn that Miller was on lockdown during Elliot Rodgers misogyny-driven rampage at the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. You cant run away from it. Persky said he understood how her "life has been devastated by these events. Its inappropriate to laugh it hurts your credibility. Miller graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto in 2012, where she was a star volleyball player. Finally, the figure is standing and advancing. Marie, one of the shows protagonists and its most revealing cautionary tale, is initially disbelieved by the detectives who are investigating her case; they do not seem to understand how trauma can lodge itself in the brain, searing some memories and making others fade away. The woman who was then known only as Emily Doe read a victim-impact statement at the sentencing hearing of Brock Turner, the man who had been convicted of sexually assaulting her after a party at Stanfordwhile she was unconscious, on the ground, next to a dumpster. She did it at such a high cost. She shirks expectation with a deliberately detached tone that may mirror how she has processed the events of her life. It was important, if you were invested in the promise of his innocence, to stress the toxic bacchanalia of the American campus, to mourn his future, to call him the Stanford swimmer. And it was crucial, if you saw him for what he was, to uncover how affluence safeguards abusers. Stories that brim with optimism. She made drawings she calls joyful at particularly trying moments during the run-up to the 2016 trial of Mr. Turner, a former Stanford student who was found guilty of three felony charges for sexually assaulting Ms. Miller when she was unconscious. And instead of him saying, Youre too much, I dont know whats going on, he said, Okay, I need to sift through this rubble and find you beneath there. "I began planning; I would stop in the bright cone of a streetlight as soon as the last guy veered off. Youre on a bench, and an old man offers you a bell pepper. Marci Kwon, a Stanford professor who included Ms. Miller in her course on Asian-American art, said she found a recent comic strip called The Dangerous Myth of the Model Minority that Ms. Miller posted on Instagram to be especially powerful. But I could also breathe easier, because I was figuring out that it was possible to exist in the world and not have the story of what happened to me be the single story that would overshadow me the rest of my life. Chanel Miller near her home in New York, on July 27, 2020. . Miller's statement went viral. Where was she coming from? Three years later, the woman who crafted that viral testimony has released another kind of victim-impact statement. In the new Netflix show Unbelievable, the series climactic scene is not, revealingly, the apprehension of the rapist who has terrorized multiple women across multiple states, and who has eluded capture for years. Emily Doe finds out that photos of her naked body were shown in court. Miller: Isnt that wild? The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. The least you can do is bear witness. At the sentencing hearing, Miller read a powerful and lengthy statement about the effect the assault had on her life. The interest in Turner was voraciously cultural. Four years ago, Chanel Miller, still known as Emily Doe in the sexual assault case against Brock Turner, wrote a 12-page victim impact statement so powerful that it went viral on BuzzFeed and landed her a major book deal. She created this whimsical scene before starting the excruciating process of writing the victim impact statement as a way of clearing her head and also reconnecting to a talent that has been a source of strength since childhood. Drawing was a way for me to see that I was still there, before I went to a darker place again, Ms. Miller said slowly and thoughtfully by Zoom. Emily Doe goes to Kohls, searching for the proper blouse for trial. For years, Chanel Miller was known only as "Emily Doe." In 2015, she was sexually assaulted after a Stanford University party. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Miller humanizes Turner. It was a really slow process of coming into being. The book was not only a powerful testament to the cruelty of the criminal-justice system for survivors, but also something of a roadmap for the difficult, often nonlinear process of healing from trauma. Emily Doe unwound the literary problem; she eclipsed the narratives that hinged on appraisals of the social worth of her assailant; she wrote the strongest story of what to her must have felt like nothing so crafted. She's since met the pair for dinner. You can fight and fight and for what?, Unbelievable involves a sentencing. The courts need her poised, showing the level of anger that makes her seem believable but not hysterical. Miller: After. So that was wonderful. Now Miller is telling her story in a new book due out on Sept.24 called Know My Name. I had never seen this man before. In our culture, apologies are still rare. She tries to be a good victim . Turner, who could have gotten 14 years in federal prison, was sentenced to six months in county jail. Does Prince Harry Have Any Revelations Left to Share? Hillary Clinton was so touched that it even inspired part of her concession speech. When I have public events, they show up and hold the space for me. In Know My Name, she observes her own ordeal by adopting the stance of a reporter, a media critic, and an activism-minded theorist. In the center it is in a lotus position and the tears have been transformed into an energy field. All inquiries thru team on website. 60 Minutes/AP But shes more than that, too. I was trained to always be worried about ulterior motives and not to trust that others intentions were good. Imagining Radical Futures Through Art and Technology. Local Domestic Violence Shelters resource guide. Always find one good thing. There is no more self-effacing sobriety, no more conclusions plastering confusion and fury. On the walk, she slowly realizes that because she lives farthest away, she would be left to walk home in the dark alone. He did. "I felt powerful, intimidating, insane," she explains. I attended a party at Stanford.