"For now, I am every woman," she said in a statement in June. Now, the Stanford rape survivor, otherwise known as Emily Doe, has written a new essay about finding strength and solidarity in the fallout.
"I yelled half of my statement," she wrote in a letter as a Glamour Woman of the Year. "So when it was quickly announced that he'd be receiving six months, I was struck silent. Immediately I felt embarrassed for trying, for being led to believe I had any influence. The violation of my body and my being added up to a few months out of his summer. The judge would release him back to his life, back to the 40 people who had written him letters from Ohio. I began to panic; I thought, this can't be the best case scenario. If this case was meant to set the bar, the bar had been set on the floor."
Doe continues, describing the public's reaction to her moving, historical speech in court, then the inevitable shaming, including one particularly cutting comment: "Sad. I hope my daughter never ends up like her."
"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. 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."
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