Cornell rape accuser 'under siege' online, says lawyer
The lawyer for a 20-year-old woman alleging a Cornell fraternity assault says she is under online siege as New York's attorney general takes over the probe.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Lawyer says Cornell rape accuser faces severe online harassment
- Victim, 20, was allegedly intoxicated and given ketamine
- New York Governor appoints Attorney General Letitia James to probe
- Online sleuths' attempts to unmask her lead to mistaken identities
The lawyer representing a woman who alleges she was assaulted by seven men at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 2024 has revealed that his client is facing an intense siege of online hostility following a civil lawsuit that pushed the case into national prominence.
In an interview with the BBC's US partner CBS, attorney Giovanni Giuffra stated that his client, who was 20 years old at the time of the alleged incident, was incapable of providing legal consent because she was heavily intoxicated upon arriving at the fraternity house.
Giuffra also noted that she had been pressured into consuming the drug ketamine prior to the alleged assault. These remarks emerged concurrently with New York Governor Kathy Hochul's decision to appoint state Attorney General Letitia James to spearhead the investigation.
This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable, and then at every turn she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her.
Kathy Hochul, New York Governor
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Governor Hochul further vowed to eliminate a state legal loophole that complicates the prosecution of rape charges if an alleged victim voluntarily ingests alcohol or drugs. These developments coincided with public outrage voiced by Cornell students during a heated public hearing regarding the handling of the case.
Concurrently, efforts by internet users to track down and expose the woman's identity accelerated after a political commentator threatened to unmask her, arguing that her anonymity was unfair while the accused men were publicly named despite facing no criminal charges thus far.
This high-profile case highlights ongoing systemic issues surrounding campus sexual assault in the United States, particularly the legal ambiguities regarding consent when intoxicants are involved. It also illustrates the dangerous repercussions of online vigilantism, where internet sleuths attempting to track down suspects frequently cause collateral damage and endanger innocent individuals.
Online investigators attempting to locate the addresses of the so-called Cornell Seven resulted in at least one severe case of mistaken identity. According to The Free Press, an active-duty US Marine Corps sergeant who shares the same name as one of the accused men was mistakenly served with the woman's lawsuit, subjecting him to a torrent of abuse and threats.
Source: BBC World
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