A Cornell student\u2019s lawsuit has sparked feminist outrage and<\/em> raised urgent questions about why survivors so often need public pressure to make institutions act.<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-ilelael.nitrocdn.com\/iArqSTQyOJCAcmCEoQrhCUIOjYnkEEmQ\/assets\/images\/optimized\/rev-6900ecf\/msmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-1762566851.jpg\")
A Cornell University student on campus Nov. 3, 2023, in Ithaca, N.Y. (Matt Burkhartt \/ Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nContent warning<\/strong>: This piece includes graphic discussions of gang rape, as well as spoilers for the new A24 film <\/em>Primetime.<\/em><\/p>\nFeminists on the internet are erupting in rage and recognition after a former Cornell University student filed a lawsuit alleging she was pressured to take ketamine and was subsequently gang-raped for seven hours at a Cornell fraternity house.<\/p>\n
In her 101-page complaint, Doe, a former Cornell student who was 20 at the time of the attack, says she went to the Chi Phi house to meet a friend after a night out. Two fraternity members pressured her to take what they said was ketamine and began sexually assaulting her while she was unable to consent. One of the young men then posted \u201cfree pussy\u201d in a Snapchat group called \u201cChi Phi Actives,\u201d allegedly inviting<\/a> other members upstairs.<\/p>\nWhen Doe reported the assault to Cornell University police, the seven students accused in her complaint were given temporary suspensions<\/a>. After the police report, the fraternity chapter was placed on indefinite suspension. In the end, only two were expelled. The other five were assigned workshops and essay-writing assignments, according to The Washington Post<\/em>. (Cornell has not confirmed<\/a> the individual outcomes, citing federal student privacy law.) None of the seven men have been criminally charged<\/a>.<\/p>\nDoe suffers lasting damage from the assault, which she alleges took place a little less than two years ago, in October 2024. \u201cShe\u2019s not in college anymore because of this,\u201d Doe\u2019s lawyer Thomas Giuffra told local news outlet WCBS<\/a>. \u201cShe\u2019s barely hanging on for what these guys did to her.\u201d<\/p>\nNews about Doe filing the lawsuit broke right before Cornell\u2019s 2026 Family Weekend (Sept. 25\u201327), and both current and former students and parents are outraged. An online petition<\/a> with over 1,500 signatures pledges no more donations to the university without \u201caccountability for administrators,\u201d including firing \u201ccomplicit\u201d school officials; \u201ctransparency\u201d and public investigations; and \u201cremedy and prevention,\u201d including a public policy and stringent new policies. <\/p>\nOne alumna posted online: \u201cI will be donating exactly $0.07 this year. I don\u2019t want any confusion or false explanation why I\u2019m not sending my usual amount. I think an insultingly low donation sends a more pointed message than one skipped entirely.\u201d A commenter implored the alumna to instead \u201csend your regular donation amount to a rape crisis center instead. And send Cornell the receipt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feminists online were furious that the gang rape continued while everyone else in the Snapchat chat knew about it, and that once again, the punishment seemed more concerned with protecting the involved men\u2019s futures than seeking real justice for the young woman victim.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m no longer tired\u2014I\u2019m enraged by schools protecting boys, in fear of their future being wrecked,\u201d actor Florence Pugh posted<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cWhat about the life that those girls then have to endure, with the knowledge that his reputation is more precious than her truth? Or to feel that no one with the power to do something cares that you were abused. It\u2019s further soul-destroying.\u201d <\/p>\n\u201cYes, I think we actually should ruin the futures of adult men who drug and gang rape a woman, thanks for asking,\u201d another woman posted<\/a>. <\/p>\nThe story is breaking through the news cycle because it seems to have unleashed a familiar kind of feminist anger: at the men accused of sexual violence, at the people who may have stood by and at the institutions whose response is now under scrutiny. For many women reacting to the case, Jane Doe\u2019s lawsuit has become a way to name the culture that allows assaults to happen and makes survivors fight to be heard.<\/p>\n
The message described in Doe\u2019s lawsuit\u2014\u201cfree pussy\u201d to a large group of men, of so-called brothers\u2014raises a question that goes beyond the men she has accused: What kind of fraternity culture makes it possible to send that invitation to a group chat?\u00a0<\/p>\n
People saw it had a chance to challenge it or seek help. Silence in that moment matters, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually the playbook,\u201d Epstein survivor Jess Michaels said<\/a> in a survivor rally in Union Square about the gang rape, \u201cfrom private corporations to college campuses to government to churches to locker rooms\u2014same silence, same cases, rarely investigated, rarely prosecuted.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-ilelael.nitrocdn.com\/iArqSTQyOJCAcmCEoQrhCUIOjYnkEEmQ\/assets\/images\/optimized\/rev-6900ecf\/msmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/rally006-copy-1024x678.jpg\")
Courtney Wild (at the podium) at a rally at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 3, 2025. Second from right is Haley Robson and far right is Danielle Bensky. The rally was hosted by World Without Exploitation, ahead of a press conference with victims of Epstein and Maxwell, their friends and family, civilian supporters, and members of Congress. (Jenny Warburg)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cMen think they can absolve themselves from being part of rape culture because they don\u2019t rape,\u201d LA-based artist Johannah Toruno posted<\/a>, but \u201call men must examine their relationship to rape culture and reflect on how they uphold the normalization of rape.\u201d<\/p>\nAccountability cannot begin only after an assault becomes public. It also depends on whether peers are willing to confront cruelty toward women before<\/em> it becomes an accepted part of belonging.<\/p>\nRebecca Minor, a queer therapist and author of Raising Trans Kids,<\/em> posted online<\/a> in the wake of the news: The way we move forward involves changing the culture in which aggression in boys is rewarded. \u201cI want us to raise boys who create cultures with one another\u201d and \u201cwhere cruelty toward women costs you belonging instead of earning it.\u201d<\/p>\nThis can\u2019t just be a conversation that remains specific to Cornell\u2014because this isn\u2019t a crime that just happens at Cornell. I remember starting college shortly after a jury convicted Stanford swimmer Brock Turner of three felony sexual assault counts. In January 2015, Turner raped an unconscious woman, later identified as Chanel Miller, behind a dumpster outside a fraternity party on Stanford\u2019s campus. Two graduate students intervened and tackled Turner when he tried to run away. After his conviction<\/a>, he was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation, but instead served only three months before being released for good behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\nHis trial went viral\u2014even before the #MeToo movement\u2014along with the victim\u2019s impact statement to the judge and jury. I can still recall her words<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\u201cYou should have never done this to me \u2026 [and] you should have never made me fight so long to tell you. \u2026 But here we are. The damage is done, no one can undo it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The timing of Doe\u2019s case is poetic, what with the recent release of Lance Oppenheimer\u2019s Primetime<\/em>. The film explores the massive popularity of (and problematic end to) To Catch a Predator<\/em>, with Pattinson playing host Chris Hansen. The A24 film explores the strange-bedfellows alliance between the anti-pedophile vigilante group called Perverted Justice and the NBC television crew. Throughout To Catch a Predator\u2019s<\/em> three-year run, volunteers with Perverted Justice posed as children online. When men reached out to them, these actors would document when and how the conversations turned sexual and if asked, invite them to meet at a decoy house. There, Hansen confronted them with his iconic opener: \u201cHave a seat,\u201d and police officers arrested them when they tried to leave.<\/p>\n\n\u2026 Who benefits when the public must create the pressure that institutions should already feel?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-ilelael.nitrocdn.com\/iArqSTQyOJCAcmCEoQrhCUIOjYnkEEmQ\/assets\/images\/optimized\/rev-6900ecf\/msmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/robert-pattinson-primetime-090126-831e7d7f4e9244f5866fa7e9ac29479b-1024x576.avif\")
Pattinson as Chris Hansen in Primetime<\/em>. (A24)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut as the show grew in popularity, Hansen and his producers pushed to expose bigger and more well-connected men\u2014\u201cwhales\u201d as opposed to \u201cbottom-feeders.\u201d (This is a dramatization<\/a> from the film.) They found their \u201cwhale\u201d in local assistant district attorney Bill Conradt of Terrell, Texas, who was caught messaging \u201cDan,\u201d an actor posing as a young boy. Hansen and his team coordinated with police, who led a sting on Conradt\u2019s home. As the camera crew and SWAT team burst into his home, Conradt shot and killed himself in front of rolling cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\nAt its heart, Oppenheimer\u2019s film raises questions about justice driven by television ratings\u2014namely, justice driven by the Internet\u2019s greatest profit: attention. It also asks what happens when the demand to expose wrongdoing becomes entangled with the demand for an audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The circumstances at Cornell are different, but the question carries over: Who benefits when the public must create the pressure that institutions should already feel?<\/p>\n
But as pedophiles and predators continue to occupy the highest echelons of the U.S. government and walk free at universities across the country, Primetime<\/em> captures why public exposure can feel like the only recourse left when institutions fail to act.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Cornell case now has a consequential new development: This week, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten says his office is reopening<\/a> its investigation and acknowledged his office relied on campus police\u2019s investigation rather than conducting its own. As the feminist platform Cheer Up Luv posted Monday<\/a>: \u201cIt is both satisfying yet utterly depressing to see this case reopened, clearly because of the mass outrage on social media. Online activism is a powerful tool, but survivors shouldn\u2019t have to face trial by social media to receive justice. We should live in a world where gang rape is taken seriously.\u201d<\/p>\nPublic outrage helped bring the case back into view, but it cannot be the primary way that we seek justice. What matters now is whether Cornell and law enforcement answer the questions raised by Doe\u2019s lawsuit \u2026 and whether the next student who comes forward has to wait for the Internet to demand those answers.<\/p>\n
Resources to help survivors of sexual assault include the National Sex Assault Hotline (800-656-4673) and<\/em> The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) online hotline<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Content warning<\/strong>: This piece includes graphic discussions of gang rape, as well as spoilers for the new A24 film <\/em>Primetime.<\/em><\/p>\n Feminists on the internet are erupting in rage and recognition after a former Cornell University student filed a lawsuit alleging she was pressured to take ketamine and was subsequently gang-raped for seven hours at a Cornell fraternity house.<\/p>\n In her 101-page complaint, Doe, a former Cornell student who was 20 at the time of the attack, says she went to the Chi Phi house to meet a friend after a night out. Two fraternity members pressured her to take what they said was ketamine and began sexually assaulting her while she was unable to consent. One of the young men then posted \u201cfree pussy\u201d in a Snapchat group called \u201cChi Phi Actives,\u201d allegedly inviting<\/a> other members upstairs.<\/p>\n When Doe reported the assault to Cornell University police, the seven students accused in her complaint were given temporary suspensions<\/a>. After the police report, the fraternity chapter was placed on indefinite suspension. In the end, only two were expelled. The other five were assigned workshops and essay-writing assignments, according to The Washington Post<\/em>. (Cornell has not confirmed<\/a> the individual outcomes, citing federal student privacy law.) None of the seven men have been criminally charged<\/a>.<\/p>\n Doe suffers lasting damage from the assault, which she alleges took place a little less than two years ago, in October 2024. \u201cShe\u2019s not in college anymore because of this,\u201d Doe\u2019s lawyer Thomas Giuffra told local news outlet WCBS<\/a>. \u201cShe\u2019s barely hanging on for what these guys did to her.\u201d<\/p>\n News about Doe filing the lawsuit broke right before Cornell\u2019s 2026 Family Weekend (Sept. 25\u201327), and both current and former students and parents are outraged. An online petition<\/a> with over 1,500 signatures pledges no more donations to the university without \u201caccountability for administrators,\u201d including firing \u201ccomplicit\u201d school officials; \u201ctransparency\u201d and public investigations; and \u201cremedy and prevention,\u201d including a public policy and stringent new policies. <\/p>\n One alumna posted online: \u201cI will be donating exactly $0.07 this year. I don\u2019t want any confusion or false explanation why I\u2019m not sending my usual amount. I think an insultingly low donation sends a more pointed message than one skipped entirely.\u201d A commenter implored the alumna to instead \u201csend your regular donation amount to a rape crisis center instead. And send Cornell the receipt.\u201d<\/p>\n Feminists online were furious that the gang rape continued while everyone else in the Snapchat chat knew about it, and that once again, the punishment seemed more concerned with protecting the involved men\u2019s futures than seeking real justice for the young woman victim.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m no longer tired\u2014I\u2019m enraged by schools protecting boys, in fear of their future being wrecked,\u201d actor Florence Pugh posted<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cWhat about the life that those girls then have to endure, with the knowledge that his reputation is more precious than her truth? Or to feel that no one with the power to do something cares that you were abused. It\u2019s further soul-destroying.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYes, I think we actually should ruin the futures of adult men who drug and gang rape a woman, thanks for asking,\u201d another woman posted<\/a>. <\/p>\n The story is breaking through the news cycle because it seems to have unleashed a familiar kind of feminist anger: at the men accused of sexual violence, at the people who may have stood by and at the institutions whose response is now under scrutiny. For many women reacting to the case, Jane Doe\u2019s lawsuit has become a way to name the culture that allows assaults to happen and makes survivors fight to be heard.<\/p>\n The message described in Doe\u2019s lawsuit\u2014\u201cfree pussy\u201d to a large group of men, of so-called brothers\u2014raises a question that goes beyond the men she has accused: What kind of fraternity culture makes it possible to send that invitation to a group chat?\u00a0<\/p>\n People saw it had a chance to challenge it or seek help. Silence in that moment matters, too.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually the playbook,\u201d Epstein survivor Jess Michaels said<\/a> in a survivor rally in Union Square about the gang rape, \u201cfrom private corporations to college campuses to government to churches to locker rooms\u2014same silence, same cases, rarely investigated, rarely prosecuted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMen think they can absolve themselves from being part of rape culture because they don\u2019t rape,\u201d LA-based artist Johannah Toruno posted<\/a>, but \u201call men must examine their relationship to rape culture and reflect on how they uphold the normalization of rape.\u201d<\/p>\n Accountability cannot begin only after an assault becomes public. It also depends on whether peers are willing to confront cruelty toward women before<\/em> it becomes an accepted part of belonging.<\/p>\n Rebecca Minor, a queer therapist and author of Raising Trans Kids,<\/em> posted online<\/a> in the wake of the news: The way we move forward involves changing the culture in which aggression in boys is rewarded. \u201cI want us to raise boys who create cultures with one another\u201d and \u201cwhere cruelty toward women costs you belonging instead of earning it.\u201d<\/p>\n This can\u2019t just be a conversation that remains specific to Cornell\u2014because this isn\u2019t a crime that just happens at Cornell. I remember starting college shortly after a jury convicted Stanford swimmer Brock Turner of three felony sexual assault counts. In January 2015, Turner raped an unconscious woman, later identified as Chanel Miller, behind a dumpster outside a fraternity party on Stanford\u2019s campus. Two graduate students intervened and tackled Turner when he tried to run away. After his conviction<\/a>, he was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation, but instead served only three months before being released for good behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n His trial went viral\u2014even before the #MeToo movement\u2014along with the victim\u2019s impact statement to the judge and jury. I can still recall her words<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cYou should have never done this to me \u2026 [and] you should have never made me fight so long to tell you. \u2026 But here we are. The damage is done, no one can undo it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The timing of Doe\u2019s case is poetic, what with the recent release of Lance Oppenheimer\u2019s Primetime<\/em>. The film explores the massive popularity of (and problematic end to) To Catch a Predator<\/em>, with Pattinson playing host Chris Hansen. The A24 film explores the strange-bedfellows alliance between the anti-pedophile vigilante group called Perverted Justice and the NBC television crew. Throughout To Catch a Predator\u2019s<\/em> three-year run, volunteers with Perverted Justice posed as children online. When men reached out to them, these actors would document when and how the conversations turned sexual and if asked, invite them to meet at a decoy house. There, Hansen confronted them with his iconic opener: \u201cHave a seat,\u201d and police officers arrested them when they tried to leave.<\/p>\n \u2026 Who benefits when the public must create the pressure that institutions should already feel?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But as the show grew in popularity, Hansen and his producers pushed to expose bigger and more well-connected men\u2014\u201cwhales\u201d as opposed to \u201cbottom-feeders.\u201d (This is a dramatization<\/a> from the film.) They found their \u201cwhale\u201d in local assistant district attorney Bill Conradt of Terrell, Texas, who was caught messaging \u201cDan,\u201d an actor posing as a young boy. Hansen and his team coordinated with police, who led a sting on Conradt\u2019s home. As the camera crew and SWAT team burst into his home, Conradt shot and killed himself in front of rolling cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n At its heart, Oppenheimer\u2019s film raises questions about justice driven by television ratings\u2014namely, justice driven by the Internet\u2019s greatest profit: attention. It also asks what happens when the demand to expose wrongdoing becomes entangled with the demand for an audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n The circumstances at Cornell are different, but the question carries over: Who benefits when the public must create the pressure that institutions should already feel?<\/p>\n But as pedophiles and predators continue to occupy the highest echelons of the U.S. government and walk free at universities across the country, Primetime<\/em> captures why public exposure can feel like the only recourse left when institutions fail to act.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Cornell case now has a consequential new development: This week, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten says his office is reopening<\/a> its investigation and acknowledged his office relied on campus police\u2019s investigation rather than conducting its own. As the feminist platform Cheer Up Luv posted Monday<\/a>: \u201cIt is both satisfying yet utterly depressing to see this case reopened, clearly because of the mass outrage on social media. Online activism is a powerful tool, but survivors shouldn\u2019t have to face trial by social media to receive justice. We should live in a world where gang rape is taken seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Public outrage helped bring the case back into view, but it cannot be the primary way that we seek justice. What matters now is whether Cornell and law enforcement answer the questions raised by Doe\u2019s lawsuit \u2026 and whether the next student who comes forward has to wait for the Internet to demand those answers.<\/p>\n Resources to help survivors of sexual assault include the National Sex Assault Hotline (800-656-4673) and<\/em> The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) online hotline<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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