The Stanford sexual assault survivor has written another powerful essay. With it, she spoke out against victim-blaming.
It was previously reported that Brock Turner was released from jail early Friday morning, Sep. 2. He only served three months of his six-month sentence, which has faced backlash for its leniency.
In a piece for Glamour's "Women of the Year" issue, Emily Doe, as the Stanford sexual assault survivor is known, talked about how she was told that her case was "a best case scenario" because it had "forensic evidence, sober unbiased witnesses, a slurred voice mail and police at the scene." Apparently, she already had everything on her side but it still was not a "slam dunk."
"I thought, if this is what having it good looks like, what other hells are survivors living?" she wrote. "I'm barely getting through this but I am being told I'm the lucky one, some sort of VIP."
She recounted how she was silenced as the sentence was announced. She felt embarrassed for believing that she had influence. "I began to panic; I thought, this can't be the best case -scenario," she noted. "If this case was meant to set the bar, the bar had been set on the floor."
After her letter to her attacker was published on BuzzFeed, Emily Doe received a lot of support not only in the U.S. but from other parts of the world. However, one comment managed to shake her up again: "Sad. I hope my daughter never ends up like her."
Nonetheless, she drew strength from the people who were with her throughout the tumultuous journey - those who saw her fully to the end. "So now to the one who said, 'I hope my daughter never ends up like her,' I am learning to say, I hope you end up like me, meaning, I hope you end up like me strong," she wrote.
"I hope you end up like me proud of who I'm becoming. I hope you don't 'end up,' I hope you keep going. And I hope you grow up knowing that the world will no longer stand for this. Victims are not victims, not some fragile, sorrowful aftermath. Victims are survivors, and survivors are going to be doing a hell of a lot more than surviving."
