CHARLOTTE, N.C. (FOX 46) — After 20 years, Queen Amani Miller is coming out of the shadows.
“I was too afraid. Totally, too afraid. How do you as a child really go back to say my teacher is sleeping with me? Is raping me and now, I’m pregnant by my teacher?” Miller said.
Miller says it all started at Johnson C. Smith University during a summer program called “Upward Bound” when she was 14 years old.
“It was just awful. He was coming there, praying on me but then going back to a family and then to know that here I’ve gotten pregnant by you and you have a wife,” Miller said.
Just this December, she filled a police report and confronted her abuser 49-year-old Michael Peterson.
“He did not apologies. It’s like he did not care that he did this to me,” Miller said.
Miller says she reached out to the Human Resources Department at JCSU before filling the charges and they admitted to her they had fired Peterson 20 years ago for similar allegations.
“He did this to me but I am even more upset at Johnson C. Smith University and the Upward Bound program because they knew that these things were happening,” Miller said.
A JCSU spokesperson tells FOX 46:
“Michael Peterson was employed by the University from 1998-1999. The University has fully cooperated with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in its investigation. We have no further information to provide as this is an ongoing CMPD investigation.”
Miller says she was inspired to come forward because of recent events in the “Me Too” movement.
“Empowered and inspired by the gymnasts and that’s why I wear this shirt because I’m a survivors. These gymnast never knew that their stories was going to reach a girl like me but it did and I needed that. It helped me, so just maybe my story might help another. I’m hoping,” Miller said.
