RedHanded - Episode 383 - The People vs. Brock Turner

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

The world’s media painted Brock Turner as a promising young swimmer – an Olympic hopeful with everything to lose. Whereas his anonymous victim was identified only from the police report: a blackout-drunk girl, passed out by some bins at a frat party, claiming sexual assault.Turner’s expensive team of lawyers did everything they could to further debase and defame the victim’s testimony. But they hadn’t counted on coming up against Chanel Miller. Miller’s unflinching impact statement started a movement worldwide, and became a kind of rallying cry for survivors of sexual assault – and her book, ‘Know My Name’, reclaimed the narrative once and for all.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. It's January and actually I don't think we did this on purpose or if we did then well done us. It's just a week after the anniversary of when this case unfolded. So welcome to some January doom and gloom. Yep, January affluenza for you. Talent-o-enza. I'd say. So let's get started. Aluenza for you. Talentuenza.

I'd say. So let's get started. Saturday, the 17th of January, 2015 was the first day of Martin Luther King weekend and 22 year old Chanel Miller, who was living back home with her parents after graduating, was very glad to have her younger sister home. Tiffany was back in Palo Alto from college for the long weekend, and the girls spent the day together. Over tacos, Tiffany and her friend Julia mentioned a party on the Stanford University campus, not far from their family home.

Later, the girls' father cooked them dinner, and as they ate, more of Tiffany's friends arrived, with bottles of champagne. It's very bougie for, um… I was just gonna say that. Uni students. And Chanel had never really gone out to parties with her sister Tiffany before, considering herself more of a mother figure than a sister. Plus, this was a frat party, it was going to

be full of freshers and Chanel had already graduated, she was 22. So yeah, Chanel was a bit unsure about whether she should go to this party or not but she wanted to spend time with her sister so she thought what the hell, threw back a shot of whiskey and decided to go. So the girl's mum took them to said party. It was a seven minute drive and she dropped them off just after 11 p.m. and the sisters walked past tall pine trees to a large house. Inside about 60 solo cup holding freshers were already there. Chanel, Tiffany and her friends barely knew anyone. But soon they got into the swing of things. They sang, they danced on chairs and on tables

and even had a freestyle rap battle. I've got to say maybe it's just like this Americana. It certainly wasn't really like a part of the scene when I was at uni. Oh no. Maybe it's more Americanized now, but this is very alien. No, we did have, I mean, we had societies, but it's different. And we had, we had parties at halls, like student halls, but we, we weren't living in like big sorority or frat houses that you could turn into a party palace. Anyway, eventually this house party was filled with more than 200 people. Chanel, struggling, found some vodka and she knocked it back. She felt out of place, she'd outgrown sticky floors and doing wheeze outside in the bushes,

which I wish I could say the same, but I haven't yet. But having said that, Chanel was only about ten minutes away from home and she was having a reasonable time. Later out on the back patio with Tiffany, her sister, one of Tiffany's friends and three men, Chanel was handed another beer and from then Chanel's memory of that night is totally blank. Everything else she had to piece together from national news reports. Because everything that happened over the next few hours would be poured over. Every moment, every drink, every look, every decision and every single word said was the

subject of endless scrutiny. Because four hours later, Chanel came to, under bright hospital lights, covered in abrasions, bruises, dirt and pine needles. She had been sexually assaulted. The way that the world learned about this case was that an anonymous blackout drunk girl, who was found passed out by some bins, was trying to ruin the name of a future Olympian. And after 15 torturous months, relentless court appearances, comment sections filled with vitriol, and members of her attackers legal team sparing no punches.

The judge's final decision shocked the world. Chanel's powerful impact statement started a movement and became a kind of rallying cry for survivors of sexual assault. It was read in Congress, repeated around the world, and even reached the White House. All before anyone even knew Chanel Miller's name. But here's a name you will know. Brock Turner and his team had hoped that the shame of the incident would keep the victim quiet. But they hadn't counted on coming up against Chanel Miller.

And when we say, in episodes, read the book, we always mean it. But this time, we really mean it. Or you can listen to it, like me. It's read by Chanel herself, and she's just a phenomenal writer. And it's a brilliant book by anyone's measure. So stay tuned to Red-Handed FM for the full story. And then go and read Know My Name for a powerful meditation on sexual violence from the victim's point of view. To tell our story, we'll return to those lost hours in the early morning of the 19th of January 2015. After Chanel, Tiffany and their friends had all been on that back porch together, Tiffany had had to go and take care of one of her friends who was too drunk and she had to take her back to a Stanford

dorm to try and get her to sleep. Tiffany could see that Chanel was drunk and acting a bit silly, but Tiffany also figured that her big sister would be okay for a bit on her own. Tiffany doesn't strike me as a irresponsible person. So when Tiffany returned to the house after dropping her friend off at her dorm, she found police clearing the party due to a noise complaint. She then went and asked around to see if anybody had seen a girl who looked like her. Tiffany checked every room of the house and tried calling Chanel's phone again and again, but to no avail.

Worried, Tiffany told herself that Chanel must have left to go and meet up with her friends downtown. At around the same time, two Swedish engineering grad students, Peter Johnson and Carl Fredrik Arndt, approached the party on their bikes. Just before they got there, they saw a couple lying on the ground by a dumpster. The woman was totally still and the man was on top of her, writhing and thrusting his hips into her. The unmoving woman was Chanel Miller and the man on top of her was Brock Turner. Chanel's dress was pulled up to her chest and her bra was pulled up. Her underwear and her phone

were on the ground nearby. The two Swedes shouted, what the fuck are you doing? She's unconscious! And as they approached, Brock Turner got up and ran. Peter and Carl Fredrick first stopped to check on Chanel, but soon Peter set off after Brock. Incredibly, even though Brock was a champion athlete, Peter caught up to him and ran out to his right side. Peter jutted out his right leg, grabbed Brock's body and threw him down to the floor. Brock Turner was laughing. Carl Friedrich caught up to help Peter to hold Brock to the ground and they told a group of nearby students to call the police and they held Brock

Turner down until the police arrived and when they did an ambulance did as well and paramedics shook Chanel, tried everything to wake her up. She was completely unresponsive. The only time she moved at all was when the paramedic pinched her fingernails. But this version is the only Chanel Miller that the world's media and an unforgiving courtroom repeatedly presented the world with. Whereas Brock Turner was always the multifaceted, caring, athletic, accomplished swimmer with a rich life to lose. And Chanel was just this blackout drunk party-goer passed out by a bin with no memory of what happened. But of course the

real Chanel Miller is a lot more than that. She grew up in Palo Alto. Her father is a therapist and her mother is a writer who's written four books in Chinese. Chanel had always wanted to write children's books and studied literature at UC Santa Barbara. After graduating, she got a job at a small tech startup in Silicon Valley, creating educational apps for children. She had a boyfriend, Lucas, who was at business school in Philadelphia. And by January 2015, Chanel had been out of college for seven months. When she woke up, under the bright lights of the Valley Medical Center in San Jose, her hands were crusted with brown blood. She had bandages on both

hands and pine needles tangled through her matted hair. She had cuts, grazes and all sorts of other abrasions all over her body. She was faced with nurses, the Dean of Students at Stanford and a police officer who said, you are in the hospital and there's reason to believe that you've been sexually assaulted. Chanel figured that they must have been mistaken and wondered when she could go home. When she was finally allowed to go to the toilet, she reached down and realised that her underwear was missing.

And then Chanel went back to sleep. When she woke up again, she was taken to the office of the sexual assault response team. She was asked to remove her clothes, which were then taken away. For the next few hours, Chanel underwent an unbelievably invasive series of examinations. They took photographs of every inch of her naked body, spread her legs to take more pictures, and to insert swabs and other testing materials into her vagina and anus.

They even painted her labia to identify abrasions. And this information, by the way, is all unflinchingly offered by Chanel herself in her book. And it is probably one of the most harrowing parts of the entire thing. Especially since, you have to remember, while all this is going on, Chanel still had no idea what had happened to her. The first time she even saw the word rape was just written on a form. She was asked endless questions, but when she asked any back, the responses were vague

and non-committal. Still, no one had told her directly what they thought had happened to her. As far as Chanel knew, no one had touched her beneath her clothes, and none of her body had been exposed. And she told herself that all this, all these things that were happening to her in the sartre, No one had touched her beneath her clothes and none of her body had been exposed. She told herself that all this, all these things that were happening to her in the SART were just a formality. Especially since her body was going into self-preservation.

Here's what Chanel says in her book on why survivors understand each other. Perhaps it is not the particulars of the assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after, the first time you are left alone. Something slipping out of you. Where did I go? What was taken? It is terror swallowed inside silence, and unclipping from the world, where up was up and down was down. This moment is not pain, nor hysteria, nor crying. It's your insides turning to cold stones. It is utter confusion paired with knowing. Gone is the luxury of growing up slowly.

So begins the brutal awakening. Chanel was interviewed by a detective for hours. What was she drinking? What brand was it? What time did she get to the party? Did she hook up with anyone? But when Chanel asked him what had happened, he stayed quite vague and said someone was acting really hinky around you. The officer also said that someone had been arrested and the man's

name and information were going to be made public. When Chanel asked why the man ran, the officer answered because something didn't look right. And that was all Chanel got. She knew that she must have passed out somewhere, and a suspicious man was somehow linked. That is terrifying. Truly. So who is this suspicious man? Well, we all know his name, it's Brock Turner, and he was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1995.

He was the youngest of three, and his family was a typical upper middle class one. His dad was an electrical engineer and his mom was a nurse. So far, so standard. But as will become tediously relevant throughout this entire story, Brock Turner was really good at swimming. There is this thing, isn't there, in American culture, we don't have it here, where if you're good at sport, even as a high schooler, you're a celebrity almost, and that's bonkers to me. You're just good at PE. It's always been something I can't fathom. And I think, obviously I've spoken

about this at length before, whereas your reality TV show fixes relationships, mine is Competitive Children. And watching the years of Dance Moms that I have watched, I think the American system for recreational activity is just a lot more codified in competition than ours is. I would never, I mean, I did poetry competitions and stuff, but that was kind of just something to do. But these kids, every weekend, competition. Oh yeah. I think like, maybe it boils down to two things, right? One side is when you're talking about things like NFL, football, it's that money. There's money in college football.

That is incomprehensible. They broadcast it on TV. Yeah. And adult people watch it and buy merch and buy tickets and all of this stuff. So there's so much money in it. So like, you know, those young footballers, you're grooming them from a young age. You want to get them in, you want them to win. It's big bucks.

And then I think the other side is the glory, right? It's like, if you're looking at a swimmer here in Brock Turner, who as we'll go on to find out was pit for the Olympics, you're thinking about how we grooming this talent from a young age so we can bring home as many goals as possible. And I think, look, in some ways, in cases we've covered, when you're really good at sports, yeah, okay, grades get changed, things like that, whatever. Like in harmless ways, that's pushed forward. In cases like this, you see how it's so much more sinister.

And also, you know, it can get you a free ride to university, which is massively expensive. Absolutely, absolutely. So of course, those people who are talented are going to push themselves to the utmost so that they can get whatever they can get with the talent that they have. Oh yeah, Darcy told me once she was like, you know, people try to game the system in a way that like kids will get really good at something obscure because there will be less people competing for the scholarship for like archery.

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Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So yes, Brock Turner, very, very good at swimming. He entered his first swimming championship at the age of 12, and still, apparently, to this day, at the time of recording, holds a record in Ohio for the fastest 500 metres. He competed in national competitions while still at high school, and led his local team to the state championships two years in a row. Also in high school, Broc Turner did his fair share of recreational drugs, including weed and LSD.

Texts even show him excited to try candy flippin', which I'd never heard of, but apparently it's when you take LSD and ecstasy at the same time. Which sounds intense. And I am surprised by that, because a lot of high school athletes who are really serious about it don't go anywhere near drugs and drinks and things like that. But Brock Turner, you know, he's an all rounder. He just thinks he's invincible, doesn't he? That's the whole crux of it.

And things were going well for him. He got into Stanford University, who have around a 4% acceptance rate, making it one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Yeah, Stanford's serious business. Now as for how good his grades were, we don't really know, but I think it definitely helped that he was a championship athlete because he got in on a full swimming scholarship. In 2012, Brock Turner raced in the US trials for the London 2012 Olympics, and he was very much on track to represent his country on the international stage. And like Hannah said, I think he was feeling pretty invincible. But in the early hours of the 19th of January 2015, Brock Turner the Invincible was found grinding on top of an unconscious, half-naked woman behind a dumpster. Later that same morning he was interrogated by police and it's worth

noting before we go on that this was the story he told just hours after the assault when it should have been the freshest in his mind, it had only just happened. And this account I'm gonna give you was taken from Brock Turner before he'd spoken to any lawyers. Brock Turner said that he had no idea who the victim was, that he wouldn't be able to identify her. He said he'd met her outside the frat house and they'd started kissing. After a while, he said that she took his hand and led him away. Outside, he put his hand between her legs and she seemed to enjoy it, and then he said that she took his hand and led him away. Outside he put his hand between her legs and she seemed to enjoy it and then he said quote, I just got up and the

next thing I know this guy was on top of me saying he just called the cops and I don't know why. And then Brock Turner told police that he didn't run away from the Swedes. Also summoned by police was Tiffany, Chanel's sister. She had remembered a blonde guy that had followed Chanel around the party all night. He was about 5 foot 11, with curly hair and blue eyes. He was clean shaven, with acne, and was wearing a backwards baseball cap. The man kept coming up to Chanel, putting his hands around her hips. Occasionally he'd even push his face into hers without saying a word, with his eyes wide open.

He'd lunge in, stop making out with her cheek, and occasionally go for Chanel's lips. According to Tiffany, Chanel had pushed him off, only for him to return later and do it again. At her local station in San Luis Obispo, four days after the attack, Tiffany was shown a series of photos sent in by the Stanford Police Department. It was a carousel of different white guys with acne, and she was asked to identify the aggressive man

from the party. Tiffany identified photo number four, the one of Brock Turner. And when asked how sure she was, Tiffany said, 100%. After that, neither Tiffany nor Chanel were contacted with any more information. No police, no medical professionals, and no offers of counselling or therapy. In the end, Chanel found out the rest of the story, along with everyone else. Almost two weeks after the attack, Chanel was sitting at her desk. Despite the radio silence and despite having no idea what happened to

her body that night, she had to just shut those questions out. Life went on. And most people in her life had no idea that anything had happened at all. So it's lunchtime, Chanel sat at her desk, scrolling through a sandwich menu. Then she clicked back to the homepage of the Mercury News and saw the headline, Stanford swimmer arrested, charged with felony sex assault. And the article detailed the assault of an intoxicated, unconscious woman and Chanel knew it was her. The article mentioned debris that was found in her vagina and mentioned a foreign object being inserted into it. The article told Chanel that she was found with her dress

gathered around her waist, with her bottom half totally exposed and her bra pulled up to expose her breasts. It told her that her underwear was found a few feet away in the dirt, and it also told her that she had been penetrated. That was how Chanel Miller learned that she had been raped by Brock Turner. Although her name had been kept anonymous, his name was public knowledge. And Chanel looked at a picture of his smiling face staring back at her from the top of the page. As Chanel read more and more reports, she noticed even more details about exactly how many drinks she, as the unconscious blacked out victim, had had that

night and what kind. How did they know, she wondered? Well, as a police officer later confirmed to her, as soon as her police report was filed, the entire thing became available to the public, including the media. The same day the news broke, Chanel got a phone call. It was the deputy district attorney, Alaleh Kianesi, who said that she would be handling the case. Kianesi said that the rape kits performed on Chanel Miller

hadn't been processed yet. So she would include charges for rape, which at the time, and this is important, it becomes important later, only meant in the legal definition as penile penetration. And she did warn Chanel that those charges could be dropped later if Seaman wasn't found. Kiannesi also told Chanel not to talk to anyone, that Turner's team may be disguising themselves as supporters or investigators for the court and contacting her and her family. The following day, more news reports came in, based on Brock's police interview, and every mention of him was surrounded by his achievements.

He was the Stanford swimmer, the Olympic hopeful, the privileged athlete and student. And look, if what happens later didn't happen, that this is all used as a way to give him an easier ride, spoilers, I'd be like, yeah, okay, they're mentioning it because they're like, how could this person who had this much do something like this in that context? Yeah. They're like, oh my God, it's a shock. Look at everything you had.

But obviously we know how the story goes. It just makes me so sick to my stomach. And I think, you know, in the world today, there is a bit of an attitude of like, ugh, what are the feminists whinging about? It's fine now, it's fine. It's not. It's not fine. And there's a thing happening on TikTok at the moment. There's a singer called Paris Paloma and she wrote a song years ago, which is called Labour. And firstly, BOP. And it's about that feeling of only existing to facilitate the existence of men. And

there are all of these videos of her performing at live in these theaters and there's just hundreds of women screaming it back at her. Like and it's you know that so many people identify with that and we need it like keep challenging stuff keep assessing, keep watching. And stuff like this is, I just think we cannot say that we live in a world where men and women are treated equally because we don't. From the very beginning, all of the coverage of what happened to Chanel Miller was focused not on what Brock Turner did, but on what he had to lose. The photos supposedly reporting a sexual assault showed Turner in his goggles and his cap,

slicing through the water like a fish man. He was the fallen athlete from one of the US's most prestigious schools. He had a name, a face, and an inspiring story to go with it. And again, in some ways, I'm like, it's good. They name him, they shame him, they talk about the university, like shame beyond all of these things. And again, if it ended there, I'd understand why they make such a big point of his bio, but that's not where it ends for him.

And that's the trouble. It's looking back on all this with hindsight. And on the other hand, Chanel was just a series of bad decisions. And like us, when Chanel Miller learned that, she felt sick. Brock's only chance of being acquitted was to prove that what happened was consensual. So he had denied everything. He'd hired one of the area's best lawyers, someone called Michael Armstrong, of the very expensive Paolo Alto firm Nolan Armstrong and Barton. And Nolan and Armstrong and Barton were coming

for Chanel. Perhaps even worse than the news reports were the comments. Comment sections at the best of times are something to be avoided, but this time we can't ignore them. Oh, it's just awful. Here we go. What was a 22 year old even doing at a frat party? Why was she alone? Didn't her age make her the predator? What was her mother thinking? What did she expect from frat boys? Wasn't this just part of the

college experience? What? Oh yeah, we all get raped. Fuck sake. That one's the weirdest one for me. That is the weirdest one. The rest of them I kind of expect people to say shit like that. Now I'm like, what? Yeah, but the question that the comment section had over and over again the most was why did she get that drunk? The amount that Chanel had to drink that night was a huge part of this case and we'll get to the impact that it had on the trial later on. And just to be clear, Chanel has never denied being drunk or lied even about how much she had to drink that night. But as Chanel says herself, and I do think this is a fair

point, the punishment for getting too drunk is a hangover, not sexual assault. Chanel eventually brought herself to tell her boyfriend and her parents. And despite their love and support, she felt totally alone. She became furious, withdrawn and deeply depressed, had frequent panic attacks. And she'd sit at her desk at work and just stare at the screen. And at home she couldn't sleep. And physically Chanel began to break down. What's more, she continually had to miss work at short notice for

court appearances and hearings or police interviews was endless. And she had to ask her sister Tiffany to constantly miss classes and even delay her final exams, only for the court dates to be postponed on the day. Chanel was endlessly running out to her office stairwell to take long phone exams, only for the court dates to be postponed on the day. Chanel was endlessly running out to her office stairwell to take long phone calls, every single one of which meant she had to relive another painful detail. Chanel started turning up late with no explanation and no one had any idea why. And months passed like that. I think very reminiscent to the case that we have just covered of Ellen Greenberg.

It is once again, it feels to me, where a victim is being re-victimized by the justice system. Exactly. And it's like, it's what Giselle Pelico said when she's asked why she came forward because she didn't have to, she could have been kept totally anonymous. And she was like, I will not let this be shameful for me. And this case was front page news. And Chanel was absolutely terrified of anyone finding out that she was the quote unquote, Stanford rape victim.

Then known just as Emily Doe. She felt dirty and embarrassed. And also you'd have this feeling she's told her family and her boyfriend, but this feeling of being a burden, like, I can only imagine that if this was me, I'd be like, oh my God, I've made everyone who loves me feel so sad that this happened to me and you know, she's pulling her sister out of school to help her. Like so many things are going on for Chanel that I can't even imagine the burden of the emotions that she would have been feeling at this stage.

Something else that I saw that has radicalized me, there is, I've spoken about poet Olivia Gatwood before, I love her and she does like spoken word poems and they're great. And she, I watched one that's about, it starts off with, if every woman in the world stopped buying cosmetic objects or procedures, every economy in the world would collapse overnight and she basically is like talking about all of the things that women are expected

to do to appear attractive which is what it is and then she ends it. It's so good and it's like a call to arms basically. She ends it by saying thank you for making us invisible because that way you'll never see us coming. I know. Goosebumps. So yeah, Chanel's going through a lot at this point and she was also terrified that this whole chapter of her life was going to destroy her dream of being able to write children's books. In her mind, she thought no parent would ever want her as a role model, some drunk, half-naked

body behind a dumpster. But to keep herself going, Chanel tried to hold onto something else she remembered about that night. That she had been saved. Two men who had seen what was happening immediately knew that something was wrong, and they had done the right thing. She remembered hearing that those two Swedish grad students had broken down in tears several times during their police interviews. And without them, the police would never have known Brock Turner's true identity because Chanel Miller was passed out.

And also, who knows how much worse the attack would have been had they not intervened. Chanel left her job and moved across the country. First to Rhode Island for an art program and then to Philadelphia to stay with her boyfriend until the hearing. While she was in Philadelphia, Chanel barely got out of bed. But soon, she distracted herself with new experiences. She started doing stand-up, of all things, and learned how to scuba dive. Once, when a hearing was delayed on the day,

Chanel was told that the DA would not cover any more flights for her. And she couldn't afford a new flight. So she moved back home. The hearing finally took place in late 2015. This was a preliminary trial held without a jury to determine whether there was enough evidence to take the case to Big Boy trial. And it was there that Chanel Miller saw Brock Turner in the flesh for the first time. He was sitting just a few feet away. Again, every detail was gone over. The night, the attack, her examination in hospital. Chanel was shown photos from the scene, ones that she'd never seen before, and asked if she'd ever

shown any interest in hooking up with Brock Turner. She said no, that she'd never even seen him before. Michael Armstrong, from Brock's Defence, went in on the attack, trying to slip Chanel up and trick her into getting details wrong. Chanel was asked a total of 322 questions in all. But the news reports mentioned only two things, that she had cried at the hearing and how drunk she'd been on the night of the attack. And it would be months and months before the trial itself. It was delayed time and time again. And every time things were rearranged, life for Chanel had to be postponed. At the end, when they finally got

to trial, Chanel would have to face her abuser and recount it all over again. And look, there is an important part of this story that we do have to talk about. There are a lot of people on the internet at the time this was going on, accusing Chanel of just doing all of this for attention or to drag down Brock Turner. Which I think in this scenario is really strange because there's no connection between the two of them. There's no like bad blood. There's no like motive that is obvious for Chanel to try and ruin Brock's life. And in this case, unlike in

many other situations, there were two witnesses who saw what happened, who chased Brock Turner down. So to cope with all this bile being flung her way, Chanel said she went to a therapist, almost like a personal trainer. A therapist is a personal trainer. 100%. Until eventually the day came. It started on Monday, March 14th in 2016. 15 long months after the assault took place. Brock Turner stood charged with three felony sex crimes. Assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman,

sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. It says foreign object in the law but what we actually mean is Brock Turner's fingers. Under the California Penal Code, a foreign object includes fingers if the alleged victim doesn't know that those fingers are penetrating her. And since no semen was found, there was no evidence of intercourse and since rape was defined under the law as penile penetration, the rape charge against Brock Turner had to be dropped. Still, the charges stated that he intended to rape Chanel but was

stopped before he could. There were some facts that everybody agreed on. Brock Turner had been seen gyrating on top of a highly intoxicated woman, he had put his fingers inside her, and when she was found, she was completely unresponsive. So really, the only questions were, did Brock Turner believe that Chanel was conscious and that she had consented? Kiannesi, the DA, brought 12 witnesses, including first responders, the nurse who examined Chanel, the two Swedes, Tiffany and her friends, and Chanel's boyfriend Lucas. Lucas mostly testified on the after effects of the ordeal and how it had impacted Chanel. A forensic biologist testified that Chanel's DNA was found on some of Brock's

fingers and fingernails. And that they were brown-red stained. Chanel's swabs and samples all tested positive for blood, and a nurse described abrasions consistent with penetrating trauma. From the hearing, Chanel knew that Brock's team would be playing hardball, but nothing could prepare her for their downright cruel approach at trial. UFO lands in Suffolk, and that's official, said the News of the World. But what really happened across two nights in December 1980, when US servicemen saw mysterious lights in the forest near RAF Woodbridge and claimed to have had a close encounter with

an actual craft? Encounters, a new podcast available exclusively on Wondery Plus takes a deep dive into one of the most famous and still unresolved UFO encounters to ever take place in the UK. Featuring shocking testimony from first-hand witnesses, hosts, journalist, podcaster and UFO researcher Andy McGillin, that's me, and producer Elle Scott take us back to the nights in question and examine all of the evidence and conflicting theories about what was encountered in the middle of a snowy Suffolk forest 40 years ago. Are we alone? Encounters is a podcast which is going to find out. Listen to Encounters

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Michael Armstrong, who's representing Brock Turner, his main tactic was, once again, to discredit and shame Chanel, to lean in on her intoxication and lack of memory. Armstrong said that since Chanel had no memory of the hours in question question the only person who could account for the evening was Brock Turner. Armstrong called a toxicologist who estimates that Chanel's blood alcohol content had been at least 0.241 which is three times the legal driving limit. Turner's blood alcohol was twice the legal limit. But as the Swedes testified, Brock Turner was sober enough to talk, to run and to laugh. Mostly though, the toxicologist said that it was not easy to draw firm conclusions. While some people can drive a car at 0.4,

someone in a coma or close to death could still register 0.38. Brock's team even paid $10,000 to someone who calls themselves a blackout expert. And this totally made-up person testified that Chanel could have been able to consent even if she didn't remember. Even as DA Kiannesi questioned Chanel on the events that night, Armstrong constantly objected to everything he could. He wanted to strike everything important, as either hearsay or personal knowledge. And this kind of shit fucking annoys me so much.

Increasingly, I spend quite a lot of my time watching court proceedings for different cases that we're covering. Oh my fucking god, it is so annoying when you have the defence counsel constantly screaming or even in some cases the prosecution constantly screaming, objection, objection, objection to everything. And you see the judge getting pissed off sometimes. It's just a tactic, but it is so disruptive. And I think they don't understand

that sometimes you can also clearly see the jury getting incredibly fucked off with it. Oh yeah. So during this trial Chanel was asked again and again about her invasive medical examination. She described it all in front of dozens of strangers and then those sterile, intimate photos of her body were shown to the entire courtroom. Another photograph showed her as she was found, her body left half naked by the dumpster. Armstrong grilled Chanel about her partying at college and her previous blackouts. And Chanel, again, didn't try to cover anything up.

She admitted that she had blacked out from drinking before, maybe like four times. Which honestly, like, she's graduated. I don't think that's that much. No. Armstrong also tries to trip Chanel up, trying to make her contradict herself on insignificant details. Chanel later said the trial was, quote, not a quest for justice, but a test of endurance. And we've seen this before, the weaseliest of underhand point scoring. And yeah, it's hard not to feel when you're watching situations like that, where it's just constant berating of the people in the stand and also the constant screams for objection, that it isn't making a mockery of the judicial process.

It just feels like they were trying to win by diminishing Chanel as much as possible. Both the defence and the prosecution are of course necessary in a court like this, but it's hard not to feel like this is an example of how not to do it. Reading about these moments, it's easy to forget that Chanel was not the one who was on trial. Turner, the actual defendant, testified on the second week of trial, dressed in a navy blazer. I'm sure you've all seen it. Turner said that Chanel had been conscious and he'd never intended to rape her. He did admit to laughing but only because he found the situation so ridiculous. The only recorded statements that Brock had given in the entire 15 months between the incident and the trial was his police

interview and in that, let's recap, he had denied running away and he said he had no memory of who Chanel was, even immediately afterwards. But since then, he and his team had learnt that Chanel had blacked out and she couldn't remember anything. So now Brock Turner's story was different in a few very important ways. He said that he remembered meeting Chanel

and dancing with her inside the house. He said he'd asked her back to his dorm room and that they left together. Then they started making out and Chanel had tumbled to the ground laughing. He asked if she could touch her and she said yes. And then the worst new detail of all. Under oath, Brock Turner said that he had removed Chanel's underwear, fingered her for a minute and Chanel

had had a noisyn. Well I know he's lying straight away. No, fuck off. Are you fucking kidding? You little pleb. Oh my god. Like. I'm getting quite upset. I mean, it's not even, he's like, it's like Rodney Alcala when we covered the dating game killer. It's like, he can't even just leave it at like, I didn't do anything or yes, I did that but she was consenting. It was, oh, she also had an orgasm, et cetera. Like it's, it's all just like this backhanded, self-ulatory, self aggrandizing behaviour.

For Chanel, living through this trial was like being assaulted all over again. Later she wrote, he claimed that I orgasmed after one minute of digital penetration. The nurse said there had been abrasions, lacerations and dirt in my genitalia. Was that before or after I came? So let's get back to his disgusting alibi. Turner said that all the thrusting had made him feel queasy, so he got up and that's when he heard a man next to him and was scared because this man was speaking in a foreign language.

Terrifying. The two men tackled him and broke his wrist. He now admitted running. When Kiannesi pointed out that this contradicted his police statement, he said that that had been a lie. Despite the constant nitpicking on every detail of what Chanel said, every inconsistency, no matter how trivial, Brock Turner had now said that he'd lied to the police, and he had a whole new story.

And he wasn't the one who was blacked out. Chanel wrote what she realised in that moment. The rules of court would not necessarily protect me. Swearing under oath was just a made-up promise. Honesty was for children. Brock would do and say whatever he needed. In Kianursi's closing statements, she ran through the inconsistencies in Brock's story and the deliberate misrepresentation of facts by his defence team, and also the fact that his running away

strongly implied guilt. In Kiannesi's closing argument, she said the following. He may not look like a rapist, but he is the face of campus sexual assault. Then, after eight gruelling days, it was over. And they were told to wait for a verdict. After two days of deliberation, the jury of eight men and four women found 20-year-old Brock Turner guilty on all three counts of sexual assault. As the verdict was read, Turner looked straight at the floor. His mother cried out through the silent courtroom and stamped her foot. Brock Turner walked out of the courtroom on a $150,000 bail, pending sentencing two months later. And that sentence would be decided by Judge Aaron Persky.

Much of the press immediately started talking about Brock Turner's jeopardised career, saying there was still time for him to appeal. But Chanel felt a release, unloading all of the emotions she'd carried for so long. Shortly after the trial, Chanel was asked to write a victim impact statement, a letter to the judge to inform his decision when it came to the sentencing. And at first she struggled. It wasn't the writing. She had studied literature for four years at uni. She knew how to write.

But how could she put it all, the impact of this entire situation, into one letter? And it took one last injustice to make all the pieces fit. During those weeks between the trial and the sentencing, Chanel got a phone call from a woman from the probation department who asked her a series of strange questions. At one point, Chanel revealed to the woman that she had been a student at UCSB, where Elliot Roger had gone on his misogynistic rampage, killing six people and injuring 14 others.

And Chanel said to this woman that Roger had never got the help he needed. Chanel also said that she hoped Brock wouldn't slip deeper into hatred and go on to punish more women. She hoped that he'd get the right help in prison. To which the woman replied, So you want no more than a year? Chanel was confused. She'd said nothing of the sort.

But the voice pointed out that Chanel had said jail and that county jail had a one year maximum sentence. Prison on the other hand, had no maximum. Which I think is something that people overlook a lot, especially in the true crime space, prison and jail are not the same. And I think a lot of people forget that. No. And you know, Chanel's using those interchangeably like a lot of people do because she's not a true crime

podcaster. Yeah. And she's just said the word that feels natural. I mean, podcasters get it wrong all the fucking time. So yeah, when she's confronted by this, by the woman on the phone from the probation department, she says she didn't know how to answer that. But the woman said she understood and said,

you did great, and then hung up. A few days later they learned that the woman had twisted those words. She'd offered a lenient sentence to the judge saying that Chanel only cared about Brock's treatment rather than his incarceration. In the report Chanel's input was reduced to one paragraph. Things like, I just want him to get better, I don't experience joy from this, and then an entirely made-up conclusion, he doesn't need to be pine bars. So Chanel's incredible strength was twisted into a passive apathy. The report also included 40 letters from Brock's hometown in Ohio, all testamies to his good

character, and it also noted Brock's sincere remorse and empathy for the victim. Even though he'd spent the entire trial saying, that's not what happened. Needless to say, in his own statement, Brock had not changed his version of events at all. He said, coming from a small town in Ohio, I've never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol. Get fucked. Chanel, like me, was incandescent with rage. And she promised herself to use that anger

to feel it all at once. And she stayed up all night going back over her notes she'd been keeping on her phone throughout the whole process. And by 7am Chanel was done. A few days before the sentencing, Chanel gave her 12-page statement to the prosecutor. The sentencing took place on the 2nd of June 2017, and Chanel stood to read her statement. Only the first line was addressed to the judge. The rest was addressed directly to Brock.

And she read it straight at him. It began, Your Honor, if it is alright, for the majority of this statement, I would like to address the defendant directly. Then she turned to Brock and said, You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today. Now you can read the whole thing online and we strongly suggest that you do. Because it's really, really important and it is so well written and it is absolutely worthy of your time even though it is going to break your heart. And as you're reading it, just remember that Chanel Miller had the strength to stand in a court of law and

read it, facing her attacker. The entire time, Brock kept his gaze firmly on the floor. Brock was then called to read his and it was the first time that Chanel had heard his voice. Brock Turner's statement consisted of ten short sentences on how much he regretted the hurt he'd caused, without actually acknowledging any fault. Then Brock Turner's family read their statements about how broken he was by the verdict. And Brock Turner's father, who is called Dan Turner, said, this is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.

I mean, obviously he's going to be completely disgusting because he raised Brock Turner, but it's astonishing. And also you can do loads of things in 20 minutes. I don't, I mean, did nobody check this? Nobody cast their eye over the kind of shit these people were gonna say? Because look, Brock Turner's statement, despicable, but if I was his defense counsel, that's exactly what I would have told him to say. Keep it short, keep it sweet, don't fucking waffle on and certainly don't acknowledge any guilt but say that you're sorry. Who the fuck let his dad say this shit? Got more. Got more shit. Dan Turner said that his son's life had been deeply altered forever

and he will never be his happy-go-lucky self with that easy-going personality and welcoming smile. And then he said that the best solution was to have quote people like Brock educate others on college campuses about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity. And he flat- out denied that anything violent had happened. I'm shaking. Then it was over to the judge. And a lot has been said about Judge Aaron Persky, so let's get into it. Once the statements had all been read, Persky started by acknowledging Chanel's words and sympathising with her experience. But then, pretty swiftly, he turned to the defendant's good character. He noted that Brock Turner was young, with no prior offences or weapons, that he had already faced consequences,

he'd been expelled from Stanford, and he'd had to register as a sex offender and was subject to a lot of media attention. And the judge even referenced Turner's glowing future and said the prison would have a severe impact on his life. And he said the alcohol had affected his judgment and there was less moral culpability since Turner had been so intoxicated. That is wild. I don't even have the word. The maximum sentence, remember, was 14 years. And Chanel's team were hoping for at least six.

But Persky sentenced Brock Turner to six months in county jail and probation. That meant that with good behaviour, Brock Turner could and did walk free in 90 days. Chanel was in shock. After a year and a half of putting her whole life on hold, leaving her job, having to attend court at a moment's notice, undergoing degrading examinations and brutal interrogations about her character over and over and over again for months, it still wasn't over. When Kiannursi first read Chanel's statement, she was blown away. Kianerci had worked with the county's sexual assault unit for years,

and had never seen the victim's experience so perfectly expressed. She asked Chanel if she could share it anonymously, and Chanel agreed. So soon after, the 12-page statement was published in full on Bosfeed. And Chanel gave them a quote as well. So soon after, the 12 page statement was published in full on Bosfeed. And Chanel gave them a quote as well. Even though the sentence is light, hopefully this will wake people up. I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder.

In four days, that statement, written by Chanel Miller, was read 11 million times. The statement was shared around the world, was published in newspapers, and read aloud in its entirety on CNN. Members of Congress read it aloud in the Capitol. People uploaded videos of themselves reading it to YouTube. It was translated and used by protest groups around the world. Chinese feminist activists used it to start a campaign on Weibo. Filmmaker Ken Burns compared it to the I Have a Dream speech.

Joe Biden, then Vice President, even wrote Chanel Miller a letter from the White House. It said, I see you. You have given them the strength they need to fight. And so, I believe you will save lives. And when Chanel got a new therapist and mentioned to this therapist that she'd been sexually assaulted, the therapist actually urged her to read this statement, not knowing that Chanel was the one who'd written it. Wow.

Thousands of emails and letters of support addressed to Emily Doe flooded the courthouse and made their way to Chanel. She rationed them out, reading a few every night. She says that reading them was like medicine, like the shame had dissolved. Probably worth reminding you of the date we're talking about here. The statement hit Buzzfeed on June 3rd, 2016. The Harvey Weinstein allegations and ensuing MeToo hashtag campaign all started the following year and Chanel's letter expressed what so many women had never told anyone

especially when it came to campus sexual assault. It was estimated at the time that 35% of female college students had had at least one sexual experience without their consent. And also that around 20% of those women had been victims of attempted or completed rape. A White House task force found that just 12% of campus assaults were reported. Activists called campus sexual assault in the US a nationwide epidemic. Stanford later paid out $150,000 to Chanel and to her sister. The Stanford Daily, which is a student paper, wrote, even at one of the world's finest academic institutions, there exists a belief that sexuality is to be claimed and conquered. Things were changing, and soon,

we all came for Judge Aaron Persky. Almost as soon as Brock Turner's sentence was handed down, Michelle Dorber, a professor at Stanford Law School, launched a campaign to remove Persky from his job through a recall election. Dauber wrote in the Washington Post, It is the fact that judges like Persky often exercise discretion in favor of defendants like Brock Turner that preserves a system in which poor and minority defendants receive

long sentences. It was an extremely contentious and hard-fought campaign. And we'll get it to why. Crowds gathered, chanting outside courts. Dorber went on the news and spoke at press conferences. And it worked. 62% of voters voted to recall him, making him the first judge to be recalled from the bench in California in more than 80 years.

It was the first real electoral expression of the MeToo movement. I was thinking really hard about MeToo the other day, and I remember, because when it happened it was still the Facebook age. I haven't had Facebook for years. But everyone was posting, you know, hashtag me too, which obviously what that means is you are saying I have also been sexually assaulted. And I really remember feeling quite hesitant about posting it at the time. And I thought about why that was. And then I realized I was like, oh, because I don't

want to be perceived as one of those women that's making a fuss. And I, you know, that's so fucked. So fucked. So let's keep talking about this fucking judge. He should have known better. And it was a gutting end to a gruelling legal battle. And he did have a reputation for being super lenient when it came specifically to college athletes, including a gang rape

by members of a college basketball team. But then on the other side, you had many people, including quite a lot of liberals, arguing the importance of guarding the independence of judges. And even Kionersi herself was against the repeal, saying, if we were to recall every judge we disagree with, then we would have no judges.

Campaigners believed that repealing Persky would make judges less independent and more afraid to be lenient. And even though the campaign focused on sexual assault, the increased sentence lengths were mostly driven by non-sexual, non-violent crimes. So whatever happened to Aaron Persky? violent crimes. So whatever happened to Aaron Persky? He went on to become a girls tennis coach at San Jose High School. But the students were having absolutely fucking none of it.

They circulated a petition. It got 3000 signatures and he was sacked. But we really, really do not want to take away anything from the enormously positive changes that Chanel's story had on the world. Because the notoriety of that sentencing meant that a lot of desperately needed and really significant changes were successfully pushed through. For example, California introduced mandatory minimum prison sentences for anyone convicted of assaulting a person who is unconscious or intoxicated. And I think that is the way to do it, right? I think recalling judges exactly like Kiannesi said leaves all sorts of risks. We've talked about this before, this idea of like,

well, you can't have a judge or a jury system. And then when they make a decision, you don't like be like, well, that's wrong. You have to have the independence of the judge in order to know that justice is being done. And yes, of course, in this case, justice wasn't done, but a minimum sentence safeguards the judge from doing stupid lenient things like this, but also stops them from being forced into making overly aggressive sentences. Absolutely. And you know, a perfect system does not exist. And things like this, judges like him, are the price you have to pay.

Yeah. And again, you know, it's like Chanel says. She says herself, when I was looking for hope, I had to remember that Brock Turner did this to me, but two other people saved me. The jury found him guilty. They did the right thing. The judge under sentences him. He goes and gets another job. The students there are like, no.

So as difficult and gruelling as this case is, I really, you know, implore everybody take what Chanel is also saying. Other things that happened, the state also expanded the definition of rape to include non-consensual sexual penetration. This was to broaden it beyond just penile penetration. With these in place, this same case would have landed Turner with a rape charge and at least three years in prison. These changes were made within 90 days of the sentencing.

All because of Chanel's words and strength. Kiernesi sent Chanel a framed copy of this signed document, which she says is, quote, like a certificate that granted me the right to sleep peacefully. Knowing this botched sentencing would not be repeated and I began to believe again in justice. And as for Brock Turner, who after we finished recording this as a name I will never say again. He filed an appeal in December of 2017, which was 172 pages long. And according to the New York Times, 60 of those 172 pages were to do with Chanel's level of intoxication. The appeal argued that he had only ever intended to have outer course.

I beg your pardon. Never out of it. Never out of it. What? Your fingers were inside her. They put them. Look how much I am shaking. Oh my god. So angry.

We don't need to go back over all of it. Especially because this appeal was unanimously rejected by three judges. An associate justice wrote the jurors reasonably could have inferred from the evidence that if Brock Turner wasn't stopped quote he would have exposed himself and raped her. There was also plenty of evidence that Brock Turner knew that Chanel was unconscious and also he lied to a detective about running away. And since the decision was unanimous, it's very unlikely that it can be appealed again.

Turner moved into his parents' house in Ohio, and as a sex offender, he's required to register at the local sheriff's office every 90 days for the rest of his little miserable worm life. And so we return to Chanel, who at this point was still only known to the world as the anonymous victim Emily Doe, who wrote that letter that changed so much. Well, Emily Doe was awarded the 2016 Glamour Woman of the Year award, and Chanel says the anonymity, quote, let me have a life in which this never happened, and the chance to define herself beyond the nameless, faceless, half-naked body from this case. But in 2019, Chanel bravely revealed her name and identity for the first time. Chanel's memoir, Know My Name, was released in 2019.

It was a New York Times bestseller and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for an autobiography. And remember her being sure that her lifelong dream of becoming a children's writer was over, for the only time, Chanel was wrong. Magnolia Woo Unfolds It All, written and illustrated by Chanel Miller, was published by Penguin Random House just last year, 2024. It's all about a girl who lives in a laundrette and goes on adventures hunting down lonely old socks.

And according to Chanel, it's all about relying on the kindness of other people. And it also hit the New York Times bestseller list. And Chanel told the New York Times a few years ago that she of course still feels her trauma, but what's changing is the time that it takes me to come back from it, and my ability to get on my own two feet each time it ambushes me again. Let's burn it all to the fucking ground. I'm raging.

She's fucking so inspirational. She's amazing. You should absolutely go read her victim impact statement and also her book. Absolutely. As much as we can tell you the story, we can never make you understand what Chanel truly went through, which she does in amazing detail in that book, which is called Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Go buy it, read it and whether you've got kids or not, buy Magnolia Wu unfolds it

all too. Why not? And that's it guys. That is the story of Chanel Miller. And sorry, it's been a pretty dark January on the injustice front, but at least he has to register every 90 days. I love that. That makes me happy. That does bring me some joy. Not as much joy as the Petrol and matches I'm about to go and buy. Well, watch out for that. And if Hannah's in prison for arson, I will see you next week. Goodbye. Bye. So get this, the Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons.

Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah, check out her record as mayor. Oh get out of here, she even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes, she sounds expensive. Bonnie Cromby and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you.

A message from the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC party. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.