How coming forward brought me back to myself

LAST YEAR, I PUBLISHED KNOW MY NAME, A MEMOIR ABOUT my experience being sexually assaulted on Stanford’s campus in 2015 and the trial that followed. For three years before the book’s release, I wrote while remaining anonymous, known to the public only as “Emily Doe.” Every day I typed alone in the quiet, my sole job being to extricate the story. In March 2019, I finished the manuscript. It was satisfying to have tied off loose ends, but I still had one dangling string. The decision sat heavy before me: keep hiding or disclose my name.

I was warned that stepping into the public would have permanent repercussions. You will be branded for life. Every eruption that had occurred during the trial would happen again, amplified. More reporters at our doorstep. The onslaught of online abuse. My face would live side by side with my assailant’s face, my image inseparable from his actions.

In the victim realm, we speak I could not spend my life tiptoeing.