A woman has come forward with a handful of brutal sexual assault allegations against Silicon Valley alum T.J. Miller today. The Daily Beast spoke with an anonymous woman who came forward with accusations that Miller choked, punched, and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions while at college at George Washington University, and several George Washington graduates and acquaintances have corroborated her story. Here’s an excerpt from the anonymous woman’s story (The Daily Beast identifies her as “Sarahâ€) – be warned it’s very graphic:
But months into their relationship, which started in the fall of 2001, Sarah said the first troubling encounter took place. She recalled having “a lot to drink†and admitted that there are “parts of [the incident] I don’t remember.†She stressed that “it is important to me to cop to that… [and] I’m not interested in forcing a pretend memory on anyone… 15 years later, I remain terrified of accusing someone of something they didn’t do, but I have a visual and physical memory of that.†However, Sarah said she has a distinct memory that as they were “fooling around†at her place, Miller began “shaking me violently†and punched her in the mouth during sex. Sarah said that she woke up the following morning with a fractured tooth and a bloodied lip. When she asked Miller about it that morning, he claimed, according to Sarah, that she had simply fallen down drunkenly the past evening.
Here’s another excerpt:
“We started to fool around, and very early in that, he put his hands around my throat and closed them, and I couldn’t breathe,†she recalled. “I was genuinely terrified and completely surprised. I understand now that this is for some people a kink, and I continue to believe it is [something] that should be entered into by consenting parties. But, as someone who had only begun having sexual encounters, like, about three months earlier, I had no awareness this was a kink, and I had certainly not entered into any agreement that I would be choked. “I was fully paralyzed,†Sarah continued. Sarah claimed that she was “choking audiblyâ€â€”to the point that her roommates could hear what was happening and rushed over to knock on her bedroom. Sarah said she then got up and walked to her door in a robe, and one of her roommates asked if everything was OK. “I don’t know,†she responded, before shutting the door, “I’ll talk to you in the morning.†“He pulled me back to bed and more things happened,†Sarah said. “He anally penetrated me without my consent, which I actually believe at that point I cried out, like, ‘No,’ and he didn’t continue to do that—but he also had a [beer] bottle with him the entire time. He used the bottle at one point to penetrate me without my consent.â€
According to The Daily Beast’s report, Sarah reported the incidents to the campus police nearly a year later, and after a few weeks of the case being handled by George Washington’s “student court,†the university informed Sarah that “the issue had been resolved.†Sarah did not go to the police because “there was no remaining physical evidence,†telling The Daily Beast, “I was not ready to reconcile the events taking place with the person I had known. It was so disorienting and so physically traumatic.†Miller and his wife Kate responded to the allegations with the below joint statement:
We met this woman over a decade ago while studying together in college, she attempted to break us up back then by plotting for over a year before making contradictory claims and accusations. She attempted to discredit both of our voices and use us against one another by trying to portray Kate to be a continuous abuse victim of T.J. (further efforts to hurt the two of us). She was asked to leave our university comedy group because of worrisome and disturbing behavior, which angered her immensely, she then became fixated on our relationship, and began telling people around campus “I’m going to destroy them†& “I’m going to ruin him.†We are confident that a full consideration of accounts from and since that time will shed light and clarity on the true nature of not only this person’s character, and also on the real facts of the matter. We stand together in stating this is nothing more than an unfortunate resurgence of her lies designed to wreak havoc on two happily married people in the public eye. She began again to circulate rumors online once our relationship became public. Sadly she is now using the current climate to bandwagon and launch these false accusations again. It is unfortunate that she is choosing this route as it undermines the important movement to make women feel safe coming forward about legitimate claims against real known predators. We stand together and will not allow this person to take advantage of a serious movement toward gender equality by allowing her to use this moment to muddy the water with an unrelated personal agenda. We feel we all have an obligation now more than ever to prevent people from using reporters to spin lies into headlines, and focus instead on what is real. We both champion and continue to stand up for people everywhere who have truly suffered injustice seeking to have justice brought into their lives.
Despite Miller’s claims, several sources told The Daily Beast that Sarah had no intentions of making the allegations public and was “actively avoiding media inquires,†but she ultimately changed her mind thanks to the #MeToo movement. In addition to speaking with Sarah’s roommates and fellow GW grads, The Daily Beast spoke with several comedians, producers, and bookers who confirmed that Miller’s behavior has been a rumor in comedy circles for years – sometimes even brought up by Miller himself, who had been known to “crack jokes about punching a woman he knew in college.â€
“It is unfathomable to me that he doesn’t understand that he actually put me through something I have to live with,†Sarah told The Daily Beast, “that I never would’ve chosen, that completely, completely set the tone for my sexual adult life, that I actively had to spend years and years… un-programming.â€
Read the full report over at The Daily Beast.