Sunday Blog 207 – 2nd November 2025
This Sunday Blog comes with a trigger warning. I’m going to talk about sexual assault so if that is not the right topic for you today, please scroll on.
This week I had a major breakthrough with a stale writing goal. The kind that gets written out in long hand, month after month in my diary, my goals book, my to-do list. And I fail over and again to start the wretched thing. And then this week, not only did I start it, I finished it. A shitty first draft anyway. I’m talking about a book proposal, because now my manuscript is kind of done-ish, I can’t slacken. The difficult path of finding a publisher is ahead of me, hypnotic in its dizzying peak.
My completed-ish manuscript intertwines my memoir debriefing the home invasion and assault I survived on 10th May 2002, with imagined scenes of the same events through the (unknown) perpetrator’s perspective.
A book proposal forces you, among many things, to consider other titles which may be similar to yours, or would be shelved next to your book. Know My Name was one of those suggested on a google search, and I accordingly included it in the draft proposal. Then I reflected I should actually read the book rather than just borrow its plumes to fluff out my document.
And so, I’ve been glued to Know My Name all weekend. It’s a gripping, well-written memoir by Chanel Miller. You may recall her case in the US, very unusual in that there were two witnesses, two guardian angel men who discovered an unconscious Chanel being sexually assaulted by Brock Turner. Brock was a promising swimmer on campus, but these men saw him for what he was. They chased him, tackled him and held him until police arrived and therefore, he was brought him to justice. Without them rescuing Chanel, the assault no doubt would have been worse, and she would have had no chance of progressing a case through the court system
Chanel anonymously published her 7,000 word victim impact statement at the time of Brock’s meagre sentencing, and she ignited a public outcry. She has since written the powerful memoir which I’m half way through. There are many terrible moments, and yet what made me sob this morning was this;
It had never occurred to me that the system itself could be wrong, could be changed or improved. Victims could ask for more. We could be treated better.
Know My Name, Chanel Miller, page 139
From the very moment I became a victim, I had a say. Within seventy-two hours, I’d sent a three page letter of feedback about the process of undergoing a forensic examination. I gave feedback to the police, the the DPP. Over time, I joined in state and national reform initiatives. It never occurred to me that I didn’t have a voice.
Sure, I was 36-years-old, not in my twenties when it happened to me. But something about Chanel’s silencing got to me.
How very precious it is to have a voice. How we must all nurture and amplify our voices. Life will never be perfect, but improvement in how we treat each other is always an option. Always.