UPDATE: On September 4, 2019, the woman once known as Emily Doe revealed to the New York Times that her name is Chanel Miller. She shared the story of her life and recovery following the trial in her memoir, Know My Name.

*It started with a simple sentence: “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.” Maybe you read the powerful words—part of a “victim’s impact statement” the young woman who’d been sexually assaulted at Stanford University had prepared to read to her attacker in court. The facts of the case were harrowing: On January 18, 2015, after a party, “Emily Doe,” as she came to be called, had been sexually assaulted by freshman Brock Turner as she lay unconscious behind a dumpster; two men passing by on bicycles saw the crime and tackled Turner as he ran away.

But it was Doe’s take-no-prisoners telling of what happened afterward—the relentless victim-blaming; the favoring of Turner, a student athlete—that changed the conversation about sexual assault forever. “Future reference, if you are confused about whether a girl can consent, see if she can speak an entire sentence,” she wrote to Turner. And this: “I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party…while you are the All American swimmer at a top university…I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt.… You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.”

After Turner was convicted last spring, the judge sentenced him to just six months, saying anything more would have “a severe impact on him.” But Doe’s words circled the globe. Within four days her statement had been viewed 11 million times; it was read aloud on CNN and the floor of Congress. Rape hotlines experienced surges in both calls and offers of volunteer help. And importantly, California closed the loophole that had allowed lighter sentences in cases where the victim is unconscious or severely intoxicated. We all know the statistics: One out of every six females will have someone rape her—or attempt to. Doe sent those women a message: I am with you. Glamour is honored to name Emily Doe a Woman of the Year; here, for the first time, she tells what happened next. —Cindi Leive

Martin Klimas

From the beginning, I was told I was a best case scenario.