Who Gets Humanized?

By: Siena Leis, I Have The Right To Intern

In January 2015, a 22-year-old Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted outside a Stanford fraternity party after blacking out. For years, she was publicly identified as “Emily Doe” while her case moved through trial, conviction, and a sentencing that gained national attention. While I was too young to hear about this while it happened, my mother remembers it viscerally. She was always shocked by the media’s stories, and by how insensitive they could be. In 2019, she published her memoir under her real name. 

This memoir hasn’t won awards and been read and revered by thousands for no reason. Miller’s writing is beautiful, heartbreaking, and reflective. While I was moved by every chapter, what struck me the most was Miller’s focus on the media coverage of her case. It was how much of this memoir is really about the media, and what its coverage did to her long after the rape happened.

The news is a constant presence throughout the memoir, almost a character itself. Miller first learns the details of her rape from news coverage. Outlets labeled her rapist, Brock Turner, as “the Stanford swimmer,” and his athletic and academic success were underscored as the most memorable thing about him in the public eye. Most of the online commentary Miller encounters throughout the judicial process is hostile toward her and favors her perpetrator, Brock Allen Turner, the former Stanford student later convicted of three felony sexual-assault charges involving her, even before the jury reaches a verdict.

While Miller’s name was legally protected, those of her close family and friends were not. The media reduces her down to a blacked-out, asking-for-it, out-of-place woman, while stating that Turner was a “three-time All-American swimmer,” an “excellent student and athlete,” and that the case was “very tragic,” not for Miller, but for Turner. (36) Later, Miller explains how overwhelmed she was by the public’s response to what the media was saying, and shares some of the conversation around it:

“He was only 19! She hooked up with a freshman? Doesn’t that make her the predator…There are women out there suffering real abuse and you want to call this assault…Not trying to blame the victim but something is wrong if you drink yourself to unconsciousness…” (47)

She describes the same phenomenon reinforced even after Turner’s guilt was verified:

“The stories about Brock running from police with a backpack full of Coors, rubbing up on girls, smoking weed, tripping on acid, photographing tits, were all absent from the image his loved ones and the media projected. The Washington Post called him squeaky clean and baby-faced, a rosy-cheeked cherub. The letter writers insisted he was misconstrued as a criminal. They called him an innocent man, fighting for his freedom. Fun loving. Not a malevolent bone in his body. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” (284-285)

The public’s opinion on the case didn’t waver until Miller released her 28-page victim impact statement after Turner was convicted. Only when she uncovered every traumatic detail of her case did people sympathize with her. The statement went viral, prompting new legislation and garnering reactions from public figures.  It shouldn’t take a viral, painstakingly detailed personal statement to convince the public that a convicted rapist is, in fact, a rapist, but that is exactly what happened. 

It’s tempting to read this as a story about one particularly bad set of headlines, but research on how sexual violence is covered in the media verifies everything Miller says. A CDC analysis of thousands of newspaper articles found that outlets inconsistently follow recommended language guidelines, often defaulting to terms like “accuser” and “accused” rather than more neutral framing. The report also found that articles rarely include information on prevention or consequences for perpetrators, meaning most coverage stops at the interesting details rather than considering sexual violence as the preventable public health issue that it is. 

Media portrayal of sexual assault functions as its own source of trauma for survivors. Being assaulted and being disbelieved and picked apart by an entire public conversation are two different forms of trauma, and Miller’s memoir makes it impossible to pretend that the second one is minor. 

A lot of work has been done to combat the trauma Miller writes about in her memoir. The 2017 Me Too Movement, for example, gave visibility to survivor stories and the volume of sexual assault cases in the country. However, survivors still face brutal legal battles and are routinely picked apart in comment sections. Outlets still sympathize with perpetrators. Coverage still rarely asks what could prevent this violence in the first place, focusing instead on the most click-worthy details of an individual case. 

So what responsibility does the news have when covering ongoing sexual assault cases? Should there be different standards for how the accused and the survivor are named, described, humanized?

What stayed with me most after reading Know My Name was not only what happened to Chanel Miller, but how much she had to give the public before people were willing to see her clearly. Her privacy, her memories, her pain, and eventually her own words became evidence that she deserved sympathy. At the same time, the person who harmed her was repeatedly given context beyond what he had done. He was an athlete, a student, a son, someone with a future. Miller was, for years, “Emily Doe.”

That imbalance is still present in the way we talk about sexual violence. Survivors are asked what they drank, why they were there, what they remember, why they did not react differently, and whether their pain looks convincing enough. Meanwhile, the people accused of harming them are often introduced through everything else they are. Media coverage does not just describe a case. It can shape whose humanity the public sees first.

Miller eventually reclaimed her name and told her own story on her own terms. But survivors should not have to write hundreds of  pages, publish a memoir, or reveal the most painful details of their lives in order to be treated with care. Maybe the question is not only how the media should cover sexual assault, but why survivors are still so often the ones being asked to prove that what happened to them matters.