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CEDAR FALLS — Sexual assault survivor Chanel Miller continues to heal, recover and reclaim her identity. She has used her courage and power to become the person she is now and is determined to grow into the person she wants to be.
The award-winning author of “Know My Name” has learned “to speak my story aloud. I will be seen and open about who I am,” Miller told an audience of about 400 people at the Riverview Center’s fifth annual Luncheon of Light Friday at Bien VenU Event Center in Cedar Falls.
Riverview Center provides sexual assault services and crisis and emergency services in 14 Iowa counties, including Black Hawk, Benton, Bremer, Clayton, Fayette, Chickasaw, Howard, Jones, Linn, Allamakee and Winnesheik.
Services are free and include 24-hour crisis hotlines, legal, medical and social service advocacy, counseling, therapy, transition and basic needs assistance.
Miller’s “amazing grace and resilience” impressed Executive Director Gwen Bramlet-Hecker, who also praised Miller for using “her experience as a platform to move forward and inform others.”
In the eight years since her assault, Miller’s purpose has become greater than her fear.
On June 2, 2016, Stanford University athlete Brock Turner was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 22-year-old unconscious woman outside of a fraternity house. When Miller, known as “Emily Doe” read her victim impact statement, the 7,000-word description of the assault’s effect on her life went viral.
“I tried to push it out of my mind, but it was so heavy I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t interact with anyone. After work, I would drive to a secluded place to scream. I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t interact with anyone, and I became isolated from the ones I loved most,” she said in the statement that BuzzFeed News published unedited.
“My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today,” she said that day in court.
On Friday at the Riverview Center, Miller recalled, “It was read by millions of people when less than 10 people really knew who I was. I felt too soft and porous to come forward.” If she could be identified, Miller thought, she would immediately “ingest” comments being made in the media and online.
When she left the courtroom after reading her statement, “I folded it up, and then folded it and folded it again until it was small and tucked it into my purse.”
Turner was found guilty of three felony counts of sexual assault with a maximum sentence of 14 years. But Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail; he served three months.
Miller was disappointed by the sentence, but didn’t go public with her real name until 2019. “When the case got through, I thought I’d seal it away and never talk about it again,” she said, until she had a child and that child “turned 18 and I would take it out and say ‘this is what happened to Mom.’”
Instead she wrote a best-selling memoir, “Know My Name.”
Miller realized she was able to recount her experiences “without shaking my foundation.” In many ways she was traumatized by the legal and health care systems and initially thought her assault “was something to be embarrassed about. To be assaulted was to be weak and vulnerable. Now I’m proud that I lived my first year after the assault able to wake up every day.
“The world can be a hard, terrible and unforgiving place. Sometimes you feel like not living. But I made a rule to not exit life, because life can also be beautiful,” she said.
Writing her book became “an anchor that I could grasp, that had a grasp on how I felt about everything and I would not be so easily swayed by public opinion. The details of what happened haven’t changed, but what they meant has changed over time,” Miller explained.
Miller is also an artist who has written and illustrated her first children’s book, which will be released Tuesday by Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers. “Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All” is the story about a 10-year-old detective and the mystery of missing socks.
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Author and artist Chanel Miller speaks with KWWL's Elizabeth Klinge during keynote appearance at the Riverview Center Luncheon of Light at the Bien VenU Event Center in Cedar Falls on Friday.
Author and artist Chanel Miller speaks with KWWL's Elizabeth Klinge during the keynote appearance at the Riverview Center Luncheon of Light at the Bien VenU Event Center in Cedar Falls on Friday.
Audience members listen as author and artist Chanel Miller speaks with KWWL's Elizabeth Klinge during the keynote appearance at the Riverview Center Luncheon of Light at the Bien VenU Event Center in Cedar Falls on Friday.