Actor T.J. Miller is the latest in a long line of Hollywood stars and movie mogul who have been accused of sexual assault and violence against women.
Miller, who plays a notorious villain on HBO's "Silicon Valley," has been dogged with accusations of sexual assault since he was in college. Now that accuser is coming forward about her experience in an interview with the Daily Beast.
“He just tried a lot of things without asking me, and at no point asked me if I was all right,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, recalled. “He choke[d] me, and I kept staring at his face hoping he would see that I was afraid and [that he] would stop...I couldn’t say anything.”
Over the years the news of Miller has spread through Hollywood and stand-up circles, but Miller has denied it, instead, calling himself a victim. He turned it around on his accuser, saying that once his relationship with his now-wife became public the accuser came forward.
"Sadly, she is now using the current climate to bandwagon and launch these false accusations again," the couple said in a statement. “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.”
Despite the claim that these allegations are new, George Washington University did hold a student court hearing about the incident while the two were in school. It also isn't isolated to her. Five other GW women confirmed her story, which included two separate incidents. Two of the women confess that they were in the off-campus house in which the incident occurred. They testified in the student court hearing about violent thuds and seeing bruises on the accuser.
Three other former students say that they tried to help the accuser after the incidents. Two were former roommates who were in the house, heard what happened and saw the accuser the following day.
The first time something happened, she remembers the two fooling around when Miller began "shaking me violently" and punched her in the mouth during sex. She woke up with a fractured tooth and bloodied lip, she said. Miller told her she was falling down drunk the previous night.
“I couldn’t bring myself [at the time] to believe this had happened,” she said. “It was me not wanting it to be true.”
In a second incident, the accuser was told she couldn't participate in receSs. She was saddened and turned to Miller as a confidant. When she encountered him at another college party, the two left to go back to her apartment. They engaged in consensual sex but Miller became violent again. In that incident, she said that she didn't drink but two drinks at the party and the "five-hour" ordeal is "crystal-clear" in her memory.
“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."
She was "choking audibly," she recalled. She said that her roommates could hear what was happening and rushed to knock on her bedroom door. They asked if she was OK and she only responded, "I don't know. I'll talk to you in the morning."
He pulled her back into the bed where more things unfolded.
“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," she continued. He used the bottle at one point to penetrate me without my consent.”
She said that she "froze" and "wasn't prepared" for it. She admitted she "didn't want to believe it was happening." Miller left at approximately 5 a.m. the following morning and she told her roommates about what happened. Both of the former housemates corroborated the story and testified to GW university in the hearing.
When the Daily Beast first reached out to Miller about the story, the couple accused the alleged victim of trying to break them up when they were in college. According to them, the accuser was "plotting for over a year before making contradictory claims and accusations." They went on to allege that she was removed form a college comedy troupe because of her "disturbing behavior." According to the Millers, the accuser became fixated on their relationship and told other students on campus "I'm going to destroy them" and "I'm going to ruin him." The alleged victim denies the claims.
The Daily Beast noted that if she was eager to "settle a score" with Miller it didn't manifest publicly. When the site first began looking into the story the accuser didn't want to come forward. It was only after the #MeToo movement began that she decided to speak with the site. The #MeToo movement was started by women who have shared their stories and announced the names of those who harassed, attacked or assaulted them.
While nothing publicly had been done or said, female comedians got wind of the accusations and at least four comedians and bookers said they had heard of the alleged crime at GW. Those who had heard about it warned other women in stand-up comedy about Miller. Others know about the incident because Miller talked about them himself. He denied the rumors in those conversations. At other times, Miller would allegedly crack jokes about punching a woman he knew in college, two other comics independently recalled.
“It is unfathomable to me that he doesn’t understand that he actually put me through something I have to live with, 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,” the accuser said.
