Kathleen Osborne

Systemic Coach & Trainer. Loving, proud wife, mother and grandmother. Connected to all that is, was and will be.

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

🤎💜💙🩵💚🩷❤️🧡💛🤍 https://t.co/3mArctXDrh

[Debra Rossiter 🇨🇦🇬🇧🐶😷 @DebraRossiter1]

@AdamKinzinger

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

She was 23 years old. The man convicted of assaulting her was a Stanford University swimmer with a promising future, a scholarship, and a courtroom filled with people speaking on his behalf.

Under California law, he faced a possible prison sentence of up to 14 years.

Instead, the judge sentenced him to just six months in county jail.

She responded by writing more than 7,000 words and reading every one of them in court.

In the end, the sentence did not become the lasting legacy of the case. Her words did.

In January 2015, after a fraternity party near Stanford University, two graduate students spotted a man assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. They confronted him, chased him when he tried to flee, and held him until police arrived.

The woman remembered nothing. She woke up in a hospital with pine needles tangled in her hair and no idea what had happened.

During the legal proceedings, she was identified only as Emily Doe.

In March 2016, Brock Turner was convicted on three felony counts related to sexual assault. California law allowed for a sentence of up to 14 years in state prison.

On June 2, 2016, Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail, saying that a longer sentence could have a severe impact on his future.

Turner ultimately served three months before being released.

Before sentencing, Emily Doe stood in court and read a victim impact statement that stretched beyond 7,000 words. It began with a line that would become widely known:

"You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today."

She described sitting in a hospital examination room pulling pine needles from her body. She described the shock of learning details of her assault through news reports before anyone had explained them to her.

On June 3, 2016, BuzzFeed published the statement in full.

Within just a few days, it had been read by more than 11 million people.

It was translated into multiple languages, shared around the world, and even read aloud on the floor of the United States Congress.

Thousands of survivors reached out to say her words had expressed emotions they had never been able to put into language themselves.

Stanford law professor Michele Dauber later led a campaign to remove Judge Persky from office.

In June 2018, California voters recalled him, making him the first judge removed by voters in the state in more than 80 years.

That same year, California had already enacted new laws requiring prison time for sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated person and expanding the legal definition of rape to include digital penetration.

For more than three years, the public knew her only as Emily Doe.

Then, in September 2019, she revealed her identity.

Her name was Chanel Miller.

Her memoir, Know My Name, became a New York Times bestseller and received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the California Book Award.

The first layer of this story is simple. Chanel Miller wrote a courtroom statement that endured far longer than the sentence handed down in her case and became part of the public record that followed.

The second layer is how quickly those words echoed beyond the courtroom, contributing to legal reforms in California, the recall of the judge who sentenced Turner, and a national conversation about how sexual assault cases are handled.

The third layer is the one that still matters today. For many survivors who wonder whether speaking out can make a difference, Chanel Miller's testimony remains one of the strongest examples of how a single voice can reach far beyond the walls of a courtroom.

Chanel Miller was once known only as "Emily Doe."

Today, she is remembered by her own name—and for the words that changed far more than one case.

If her story has stayed with you, feel free to share your thoughts respectfully in the comments

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

He told his students to go to the windows.
Get out. Jump if you have to.
Then Liviu Librescu walked to the classroom door and pressed his body against it.
He was 76 years old. He weighed 140 lbs
The gunman was in the hallway.
It was April 16, 2007. A Monday morning. Solid mechanics class at Virginia Tech, Room 204. Twenty-two students, most of them 19 or 20 years old.
At 9:45 AM, gunshots echoed through Norris Hall. Room by room, the shooter was working his way down the corridor.
Liviu heard it. He understood immediately.
He had survived the Holocaust. He had survived a labor camp. He had spent decades living under Communist oppression. He knew exactly what evil sounded like.
He told his students to escape through the windows. Second floor — it was a drop, but they'd survive. Then he walked to the door and held it shut with his body.
The shooter tried to force it open. It wouldn't move.
He fired through the door. Wood splintered. Bullets came through.
Liviu stayed.
Behind him, students were climbing out the windows. Dropping to the ground. Running. One by one, all twenty-two of them got out.
The shooter kept firing through the door.
Liviu held it shut until every student was safe.
Then the bullets killed him.
When police arrived, they found his body at the door.
All 22 of his students survived. Not one was injured.
Liviu Librescu was born on August 18, 1930, in Ploiești, Romania.
He was Jewish. In 1941, when he was eleven years old, Romanian authorities sent him and his family to a labor camp. His father died there. Liviu survived. When the war ended, he was fifteen.
He went back to school. Studied engineering. Earned a doctorate from the University of Bucharest.
But Communist Romania had no interest in allowing a Jewish intellectual to succeed. He was blocked from academic positions. Passed over for jobs he deserved. He applied to emigrate. The government kept refusing.
Finally, in 1978 when Liviu was 48 years old — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened. Romania let him go.
He had spent most of his adult life trapped in a country that didn't want him.
In Israel, he taught at Tel Aviv University. Published over 300 papers. Became an international expert in aeroelasticity — the science of how air flows over aircraft wings.
In 1985, Virginia Tech offered him a position. He moved to Blacksburg, Virginia. He taught there for 22 years. His students loved him — demanding but kind, high standards, genuine care.
He was still teaching full-time at 76. Still publishing research. Still showing up every Monday morning for solid mechanics.
April 16 was the first day of Passover — the Jewish holiday celebrating liberation from slavery and oppression.
Liviu Librescu died on the day his tradition sets aside to celebrate freedom.
He spent his entire life escaping death and oppression by luck, by persistence, by the intervention of others. And on his last morning, he chose to stand at a door so that twenty-two young people could have the future he had fought so hard to reach.
He could have run. He could have hidden. He could have climbed out a window with his students.
He chose to stay.
The Virginia Tech shooting killed 32 people that day — the deadliest school shooting in American history at the time.
Room 204 had zero casualties.
Because a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor held a door with his body until every student behind him was gone.
His funeral was held in Israel. Students from Virginia Tech flew across the ocean to honor him. The Israeli government awarded him the Star of David Medal posthumously. Virginia Tech named a scholarship in his memory.
His son said his father died the way he lived — protecting others.
A man who survived everything evil threw at him for 76 years.
On his last day, he made sure 22 kids survived too.
Professor Liviu Librescu. August 18, 1930 — April 16, 2007.
Holocaust survivor. Labor camp survivor.
302 published papers. 22 years at Virginia Tech.
22 students out the window.
He held the door.

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

😥😢

https://t.co/4dp6XayPb0

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

https://t.co/X71s9jUFJV

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

En het gebeurt nog steeds!😢

https://t.co/xMnTv5T83m

[UAVoyager🇺🇦 @CrimeanVoyager]

Meet russia's torturer in a white coat: Vyacheslav Mykolaiovych Cherdantsev.

He didn't heal. He tortured.

A 48-year-old prison "doctor" at Penal Colony No. 7 in Pakino, he humiliated and abused Ukrainian POWs under the guise of medical examinations.

He drew penises on prisoners' faces with green antiseptic, forced naked men to hug, dance, and simulate sex during so-called medical examinations. He denied treatment for scabies, infected wounds, and broken bones. He beat them, humiliated them, and threatened them with rape.

Dozens of Ukrainian survivors who endured this hell independently identified him. Many were left psychologically shattered. One 23-year-old Ukrainian Marine died by suicide after enduring the abuse.

This is not a doctor. This is a sadist. This is a war criminal.

The investigative journalists at Skhemy identified him and revealed his face.

Cherdantsev belongs in the dock, alongside the entire system that enabled and protected him.

The world knows his face. Now he must answer for his crimes.
⬇️

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

https://t.co/vlWdXI4uNi

[Richard Woodruff 🇺🇦 @frontlinekit]

Caolan is a real fucking reporter. Missiles exploding behind him, and he keeps filming, while the entire Western media hides, closes its eyes, and pretends the war in Ukraine isn’t even happening.

Fucking thank you, @CaolanReports, for doing what the world won’t.

Slava Ukraini

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

🙏🏻🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

🙏🏻 https://t.co/UwFWf40YUO

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

🧡
https://t.co/2LZUHwUsyn

[𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 @politicsusa46]

Time to take a quick break from politics to enjoy the arts. I have featured Guillaume Juncar before, but I thought this was definitely worthy of your time.

The grace, the athleticism and core strength is outstanding.

🎥 TikTok - https://t.co/UNiNVdMfhp

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

A russian soldier called “Grom” raped Alisa Kovalenko for four days.

Before that, they beat her. They threatened to cut off her fingers and her teeth. They promised they would get to her parents, and to her boyfriend.

She was 27 – a documentary filmmaker who had come to Donetsk Oblast to film the beginning of Russia’s war.

A taxi driver turned her in.

Her partner, the French producer Stéphane Siohan, raised the alarm in the media. The public attention saved her. She was released. She carried what happened alone for more than a year before she could say it out loud – and then became one of the first women in Ukraine to say it anyway.

Russia expected that to break her.

In 2022, when they came back for the rest of the country, Kovalenko first got the heroes of her unfinished film to safety. Then she volunteered for the front – a mother of a small son, serving as an assault infantry soldier.

She put it as simply as it can be put:

“When you see even one form of Russian evil, you understand that it must be stopped at any cost.”

They wanted a victim. They got a soldier.

Source: Ukrainska Pravda

[Norm Clark @Normsmusic]

James Robison
What Joyce Carol Oates wrote to Elon Musk on Twitter. I am told it rattled him. I love it.
“So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

https://t.co/r3TGvAUSjh

[Kathleen Osborne @OsborneCoaching]

@Gerashchenko_en 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡
🇦🇺🇳🇱

[MΛRC VIDΛL @marcvidal]

Absolutamente increíble. Lo que hoy ha hecho Barcelona se recordará mucho tiempo. La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí y los que durante 140 años han creído en ello, lo merecían.