Girls cast reads Stanford sexual assault survivor's essay

Glamour recently named the Stanford sexual assault survivor as one of their Women of the Year, and she penned a powerful essay for the magazine about the aftermath of her incredibly moving court statement going viral.

Glamour then recruited Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, and Zosia Mamet of HBO’s Girls to bring her words to life and read the essay aloud in a powerful new video.

The essay reflects on the time after BuzzFeed released her statement in full, and the media circus surrounding her Jan. 18, 2015 assault by Stanford swimmer Brock Turner began. “You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy…my own voice, until today,” “Emily Doe” wrote in the original essay (she has chosen to remain anonymous). Her words were viewed more than 11 million times within four days and read on the floor of Congress.

Doe also writes about a particularly hurtful comment she read that had some staying power. “One comment managed to lodge harmfully inside me: Sad. I hope my daughter never ends up like her,” she writes. “I absorbed that statement. Ends up. As if we end somewhere, as if what was done to me marked the completion of my story. Instead of being a role model to be looked up to, I was a sad example to learn from.”

The essay ends with a plea to hold people accountable for their actions, namely Persky, who doled out Turner’s sentence.

Watch the Girls cast read the essay below.