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Amanda Nguyen was aiming for the stars when she was accepted as a student at Harvard. She dreamed of becoming an astronaut. 

But in her senior year of college, she was raped. That propelled her into a public role as activist to change an infuriating gap in the law when it comes to rape survivors. 

“When I found out that my rape kit could be destroyed, untested, in six months — even if the statue of limitations was 15 years — I felt like that was against everything I was taught about the criminal justice system,” she told Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. 

“It was [at] that moment that I decided I would actually be fighting the criminal justice system to reform it, because that was my definition of justice — to make sure that no one else would go through what I had to go through.” 

Nguyen’s new memoir, “Saving Five,” is an inspiring, infuriating and ultimately hopeful testament to how one courageous woman fought the system and won. 

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Amanda Nguyen dreamed of being an astronaut, but a sexual assault her last year at Harvard revealed a damaging gap in the law for rape survivors.

Amanda Nguyen shares how her sexual assault propelled her to activism in new book

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