Christine Blasey Ford pens honor for Chanel Miller

Professor Christine Blasey Ford penned a blurb for Chanel Miller in Time magazine’s 100 Next list, thanking her for advocating for sexual assault survivors and for her courageous testimony against Brock Turner, who was convicted of sexually assaulting her in 2016.

Miller’s face and name were never shown at the trial, where she was listed as “Emily Doe.” But her powerful victim impact statement has been widely shared. In 2016, 18 members of the House took turns reading portions of the letter, adding it to the Congressional Record.

The reading was organized to support victims of campus sexual assault and bring attention to legislation that would require the Education Department to list institutions under investigation for sexual assault issues, The New York Times reported. 

Blasey Ford, who testified before lawmakers last year after accusing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when the two were in high school, honored Miller in the list published Wednesday.

{mosads}“Mark Twain wrote, ‘Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” Chanel Miller embodied courage long before writing her powerfully moving book, “Know My Name,” Blasey Ford wrote.

“As ‘Emily Doe,’ she courageously testified against the man who sexually assaulted her and read her victim-impact statement in court, looking right at him. ‘You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.’ And when her statement went viral, she gave millions of survivors their own ‘today,’ ” Blasey Ford continued. 

Turner faced a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison after being convicted of three felony counts of sexual assault. He was sentenced to six months in jail but served 90 days after his sentence was reduced for good behavior.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was recalled in 2018 for the sentence, which was widely criticized.

Miller described the “dehumanizing trial,” as attorneys questioned her allegations and injuries after the attack in a video shared with the Time honor. She called on the public and the media to “humanize” victims, after many news outlets focused on Turner’s academics and accomplishments on the swim team at Stanford University.

“I know it is possible to achieve justice without fully dehumanizing the victim, and that’s what we need to figure out. We obviously know how to humanize the perpetrator. I watched it happen repeatedly, to see his character so fully rounded out. It they can do that for him, they can learn to do that for me,” Miller said.

If you are a sexual assault survivor you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or reach it online at hotline.rainn.org/online.