After she was assaulted while unconscious, Miller’s life split in two. She became known as ‘Emily Doe’ – and her assailant served just three months in prison. Now she’s ready to tell the world who she really is

It has been just over three weeks since Chanel Miller allowed her name to become public and the 27-year-old is still trying to adjust. For a while, it seemed as if everyone she had ever known was going to email. “Hi! We were in bio-chem class together, how are you doing?!” she’d read. Or: “Hey, I always knew you’d write a book!” She smiles at the bleak comedy of a situation which no one, least of all Miller herself, knows quite how to handle. At some point in the emails, every sender would jettison the pleasantries and make the awkward turn towards saying: “I’m sorry.”

Around midnight on 17 January 2015, Miller was spotted by two students at Stanford University being sexually assaulted by a third student as she lay unconscious on the ground behind some bins. She was 22, a recent graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, working in her first job at a tech firm and living with her parents in Palo Alto. Earlier that evening she had, on a whim, agreed to accompany her younger sister to a fraternity party at Stanford University, a 10-minute drive from the house. By the early hours of the morning, Miller was in a hospital having her vagina and anus swabbed by police doctors – and 19-year-old Brock Turner was in custody.