T.J. Miller Allegedly Sexually Assaulted and Punched a Woman in College

Comedian and Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller was publicly accused of sexual assault on Tuesday by a woman who said he choked her, beat her during sex, and penetrated her without her consent, the Daily Beast reported.

Miller denied the allegations, slamming what he called “false accusations” in a joint statement along with his wife.

The woman in question told the Beast she and Miller were friends at George Washington University, his alma mater, when they studied there in the early 2000s. They had grown close after spending time together in a college comedy troupe, she said, and wound up in a relationship. But a few months after they started seeing each other in late 2001, things allegedly went completely off the rails.

After a night of what Miller’s alleged victim described as heavy drinking, the two went back to her house and started “fooling around,” she said. It began as a consensual hookup—but while they were having sex, Miller allegedly started “shaking me violently” and punched her in the mouth. She told the Beast she woke up with a fractured tooth and a bloody lip, and that when she asked Miller about what happened, he claimed she had taken a drunken fall.

Days later, Miller allegedly came home with her from a party, and the two started having consensual sex. She told the Daily Beast she’d only had two drinks that night, and that her memory of what happened next was “crystal clear.”

“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 said. “I was genuinely terrified and completely surprised.”

She said she was “fully paralyzed” and “choking audibly,” prompting her housemates to knock on her door to see if she was OK. She said she sent them back to their rooms.

“He pulled me back to bed and more things happened,” she 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.”

The better part of a year later, the woman said, she brought her story to GW’s in-house judicial system. A few weeks after the beginning of the school’s hearings—during which the woman and two of her housemates testified against Miller, and he appeared with a lawyer—the proceedings ended. She was told the issue had been dealt with, and to her knowledge, he was never disciplined, graduating in 2003. (Some sources told the Beast he might have been expelled after completing his degree in an attempt to appease the woman.)

In their statement, Miller and his wife framed the accusations against him as a hit job, saying that his alleged victim had tried to “break us up” back in college with “contradictory claims and accusations.” The Beast also spoke to college comedy friends of Miller’s who insisted he would never engage in this kind of violence against women.

“We are confident that a full consideration of accounts from and since that time will shed light and clarity on the true nature of not only this person’s character, and also on the real facts of the matter,” the Millers wrote. “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.”

It’s still unclear if the allegations—which the Beast suggested the comedian may have joked about in subsequent years—will affect Miller’s career. He was set to appear in Underwater with Kristen Stewart and Deadpool 2 with Ryan Reynolds.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.