A ‘five-hour’ encounter with choking, a bottle – and rebuffed housemates
The comedian and actor TJ Miller allegedly punched his sex partner in the mouth, fracturing her tooth, during a consensual encounter in 2001, when he was a George Washington University student and she was taking classes there but not matriculated.
Days later, she took him back to her apartment – because he “was still someone she believed she could turn to in a time of stress and vulnerability” – and he allegedly choked her during another consensual “five-hour” sexual encounter.
Her housemates heard the sound of her choking and knocked on her door, she told The Daily Beast. Despite calling herself “fully paralyzed” during the incident, she got up to answer the door and tell them she’d talk to them “in the morning.”
Then she says she returned to the man who had broken her tooth and choked her on consecutive occasions days apart:
“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.”
Why didn’t she get up? She “froze.” One of her housemates told The Daily Beast that “she did indicate that she was OK. Whatever response she gave, we felt we didn’t have to intervene further, at least at the time.”
She declined her housemates’ offers the next morning to go to the hospital or the police. She said she met Miller again days after the alleged choking incident, where Miller said he thought “I was into it.”
Miller and his wife have categorically denied the allegations, saying the unnamed accuser “began again to circulate rumors online once our relationship became public,” and he’s told friends “over the years that he was wrongfully accused,” according to the publication.
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A Change.org petition created by GW student Sophie Ota, a former intern for the McClatchy newspaper chain and current intern for Planned Parenthood, demands the university rescind Miller’s degree.
It reminds the private university that it took the same action last year for comedian Bill Cosby’s honorary degree, and said GW must “need to send a clear message that GW stands with and believes victims of sexual assault.”
It’s approaching 150 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon, though only a few “reason for signing” comments claim a connection to the university. Ota also retweeted news that Miller’s show on Comedy Central was swiftly canceled following the Tuesday report.
https://twitter.com/SophieOta/status/943166457009065984
Student made ‘uncomfortable’ while testifying: ‘They were challenging me’
Miller’s accuser is bringing up these 16-year-old allegations specifically because of the #MeToo movement, but the university’s handling of the student conduct proceeding that followed her contemporary allegations is also under scrutiny.
Nearly a year later she reported her allegations to police, though the complaint ended up in an unidentified “student court.” (The Daily Beast, which seems to take a trauma-informed approach to explaining the accuser’s responses to Miller’s alleged behavior, is vague on whether she actually cooperated in a police investigation, saying she didn’t want to tell police because all physical evidence was gone.)
Her housemates said they testified on her behalf about the loud noises coming from the room during the alleged choking incident. The only identified housemate, Katie Duffy, said she was made “uncomfortable” because “they were challenging me” on why she didn’t do more to help the accuser if Duffy were so worried. (Miller had a lawyer present, but The Daily Beast doesn’t specify whether the lawyer was allowed to actively represent Miller.)
The accuser was asked pertinent questions in response to allegations about unexpected rough sex during an otherwise consensual encounter: what she drank and how much prior to both incidents, and if she and Miller had previously discussed “erotic asphyxiation”:
After a trial period that lasted a couple of weeks, Sarah said that the university told her that the issue had been resolved.
The school cites the oft-abused Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as its rationale for not turning over a potential campus police report or records from the conduct proceeding. (“Knowledgeable sources” told the publication Miller was “expelled after he graduated.”)
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The accuser said most of their shared social circle sided with Miller – they were in the same GW comedy troupe – and four of those unnamed people told The Daily Beast they didn’t believe he could do what she accused him of doing.
The publication ran the Millers’ full statement, which says the accuser “attempted to break us up back then by plotting for over a year before making contradictory claims and accusations,” including the false claim that now-wife Kate Gorney was a “continuous abuse victim”:
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.”
The Daily Beast portrays the accuser as reluctant to come forward as it started reporting on overheard allegations. It says: “Only weeks after the advent of the #MeToo movement did that seem to change.”
But for years she spread her allegations far and wide in the comedy community – to the point that Miller started defensively rebutting them in private gatherings. Two sources said “independently” he had joked about “punching a woman he knew in college.”
Read the article and petition.
h/t GW Hatchet
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