LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
Chanel Miller had become the symbol of rape victims on campus, students whose institutions persist in downplaying the charges. The young woman will finally have her name on a commemorative plaque in Stanford, California. The management of the university accepted its conditions: the piece of land where the aggression took place in 2015 was transformed into «Contemplative garden ". The garbage cans behind which it was discovered unconscious, replaced by a fountain and benches. And at the end of November, after weeks of student protests, Stanford finally approved the message she had chosen to be on the plate. A challenge to the aggressor, a revenge on the infinite guilt of rape victims. "You have taken my value, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my confidence, my own voice – till today. "
Chanel Miller has long been anonymous. Justice had given him an alias: Emily Doe. In 2016, the lawsuit against his attacker had fascinated America. Brock Turner, 19, was one of the star athletes at the university, a future Olympic swimming champion »repeated his friends, as if the speed of his fathoms could relativize his behavior. She ? We did not know much except that she was 22 years old and did not even remember the facts. On January 17, 2015, she and her sister went to a Stanford Kappa Alpha Fellowship party, one of those fun-out evenings where high alcohol students rub " each other. She had woken up in the hospital, underwear undone, pine needles in her hair, surrounded by nurses doing all kinds of tests in the depths of her intimacy.
The trial was between those who argued that the student had already paid enough for his actions and that it was unfair to scapegoat the culture of rape on campus. On the other hand, those who refused to be moved by the actions of a privileged young man, imbued with his "male superiority" and refusing to apologize. Brock Turner was convicted of sexual assault unanimously by the jury. He had been sentenced to six months in prison, released after three, a sentence deemed scandalously light by the defenders of Chanel. "Imagine that the crime was committed by a young 19-year-old Hispanic working in the kitchen of the fraternity. Will the end of the story be the same? ? she asks today.
