By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2026-10-01 03:20:49 | Updated at 2026-10-01 04:36:10
1 hour ago
The “Cornell 7” gang rape case is descending into the same lynch-mob hysteria as the notorious Duke lacrosse or “mattress girl” hoaxes of old — only with social media making everything worse.
It seems we have learned nothing from past injustices.
A young woman who goes by “Jane Doe” has filed a civil lawsuit two years after she alleged she was gang-raped by seven men in a sordid, drug-fueled sexual encounter at the Chi Phi fraternity house at the elite Cornell University, where she was a student at the time.
Predictably, the fraternity brothers have been judged guilty in the court of man-hating public opinion.
Yet, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, citing Doe’s sworn statement to campus investigators in November 2024, she “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.” When she told the young men to stop, they did.
While describing the allegations as “heinous and despicable” and “morally disturbing,” he said they were not criminal.
He has been bombarded with threats and abuse since news of the lawsuit broke two weeks ago, and has now reopened the investigation, saying that her current lawsuit and her initial sworn statement, signed under threat of perjury three weeks after the 2024 encounter, tell very different stories.
The alleged “rapists” have been named and shamed by the Cornell campus newspaper, the Daily Sun, and doxed online.
One of the men has already lost his job, and as The Post reports, future students are abandoning Cornell over its handling of the case.
Lefty pols jump in
Democrat politicos have effectively condemned the men, with Gov. Hochul this week praising Doe’s “extraordinary courage” and demanding that Cornell “pursue justice.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to Ithaca Sunday and condemned “the culture of rape [that] is protected in elite institutions [like] Cornell University.”
She said the men had been “protected” by Cornell and called the woman a “survivor.” Then she described herself as a “survivor,” saying she was “touched inappropriately” at her first college party.
Ithaca Democrat Mayor Robert Cantelmo damned the accused men as “perpetrators” and suspended “Greek life” at Cornell that he said “failed to hold the perpetrators to account.”
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But what else do people expect Cornell to have done?
The school conducted a months-long investigation, including a hearing where the men and Doe all testified.
When Doe was interviewed by campus police, she was provided three support staff, according to CBS News, including a Title IX investigator, a victim’s advocate and a personal adviser.
Cornell says that two men were expelled, two were suspended, one had already graduated, and two were found not to have participated in the sex. As well, the fraternity was shut down.
In her police interview, Doe said: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” according to CBS News.
But in the sworn statement summarizing the interview that she reviewed and signed and amended with more than 20 handwritten corrections, she says she did not withdraw her consent, ABC News reports. Further, when she expressed concerns, the fraternity brothers “stopped and did not pursue what they were doing.”
Changing her tune
In her current lawsuit, she claims she was incapable of consent, was pressured into taking ketamine and became “completely incapacitated.”
Three of the young men have denied the allegations through lawyers. Text messages between Doe and Male 1 were released in which she told him after the event that she enjoyed being with him, and suggested they smoke together again, “but like leave out the extra 5 billion men and ketamine.”
She also said “none of the sexual stuff was illegal.”
In her sworn statement, she admitted to willingly engaging in two threesomes during an hours-long encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, in which she consumed alcohol and ketamine of her own free will, describing her intoxication level when she arrived at the fraternity as a “5 out of 10.”
The first threesome ended prematurely when Male 1 passed out and Male 2 “began to dry-heave as if he was going to vomit.”
Male 3 arrived, and he and Male 2 engaged in a threesome with her while Male 1 slept.
Male 1 then woke up and asked for a foursome, to which she said “hell no,” and the men backed off.
She told police she had agreed to the foursome “due to how attracted [she] was to [Male Number 1] on top of [her] drunken curiousness.”
Four more men arrived in the room after Male 2 despicably announced on the fraternity Snapchat that there was “free p–sy” available.
Male 4 asked if they “all could do drugs off of [her] perfect body.” Jane Doe responded, “Sure.”
She recounted another threesome “until at some point, around 5:45 a.m., [Jane Doe] said [she] was tired and needed to turn in. At that point, both guys stopped the threesome.”
None of us knows the whole truth, but the young woman deserves sympathy.
She was just 20 years old and intoxicated. When she woke up the next day and realized she was the butt of campus gossip, she felt ashamed.
But our culture tells young women that there’s nothing shameful about promiscuity. Now, to prize female modesty is called slut-shaming, and girls and young women are encouraged to behave like unpaid hookers.
When men take them at their word, they often end up feeling used and disrespected.
So Doe’s friends encouraged her to convert her honestly earned shame into victimhood. She blames the young men, the bar that sold her alcohol, her sorority, the fraternity, Cornell, you name it. Everyone but herself for the bad choices she made that night.
The young men made bad choices, too, and I would be ashamed to have sons who behaved that way.
But they were just as young and just as out of it as she was and don’t deserve to have their lives ruined if the evidence shows they committed no crime.
Toxic culture
They’re all victims of a toxic, pornified culture that sends our girls and boys into the world with no sexual boundaries, other than wokeified ideas of consent that make no sense.
The subtle taboos that used to protect young people from the consequences of their immaturity have been erased, and now instead of preventing harm, moral condemnation is applied cruelly after the fact.
Doe felt it in the campus ridicule she found so intolerable that she had to leave Cornell, and the men now feel it in the form of mob shaming that fits neatly into the leftist “Me Too” narrative that all men are rapists and we must “believe all women.”
Life is more complicated than that.
