- Stanford sexual assault survivor Chanel Miller said the overwhelmingly positive response to her victim impact statement during the Brock Turner trial was “like medicine.”
- “Reading these was like feeling the shame dissolve,” she told “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
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The overwhelmingly positive response to her powerful victim impact statement that went viral was “like medicine,” Stanford sexual assault victim Chanel Miller told “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
During her first televised interview, Miller talked about the assault she suffered at the hands of Brock Turner in January 2015, and how she has been dealing with the trauma since then.
She described how, before the sentencing, she was asked to write a victim impact statement. She delivered that statement at the hearing, only to learn that the judge had decided to sentence Turner to just six months in prison.
That sentencing, on the low end of the spectrum, left her in "shock." At the same time, Buzzfeed asked her to if they could publish her statement in full. She agreed, but wasn't sure what the response would be.
"I didn't think it would take off anywhere and I actually felt really vulnerable again, thinking, 'Why am I putting myself out there one last time? Who's going to sit and read through this entire thing?' But then the views started trickling in, and by the end of the day, it was a million," Miller recalled.
The day after the sentencing, the same day Buzzfeed published her statement, Miller said she started receiving letters of support people had sent into the courthouse, many from sexual assault survivors like herself.
"Reading these was like feeling the shame dissolve," she said.
Miller's memoir, "Know My Name," comes out on Tuesday.
Watch Miller read her victim impact statement in full here »
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org/online and receive confidential support.
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- A once anonymous woman at the center of the Brock Turner Stanford University rape case has revealed her identity in a new memoir
- California judge who was recalled for his light sentence of Brock Turner is now asking his supporters to pay his $135,000 in legal fees
- Brock Turner's lawyer is appealing his sexual assault conviction by claiming he wanted 'outercourse'