People online have pushed back against the unmasking of “Jane Doe”, the plaintiff in the rape case involving seven members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity chapter.
The movement came following a lawsuit filed against seven Chi Phi fraternity members who allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted a woman, identified as Jane Doe, at the fraternity house on Cornell’s Ithaca campus.
What happened?
In October 2024, a 20-year-old woman, identified as Jane Doe, alleged that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven members of Chi Phi fraternity at its Cornell frat house.
Doe, then a sophomore, alleged that she was forced to ingest a massive amount of ketamine by two of the accused while she was already intoxicated.
Despite initially agreeing to a sexual threesome with the two, Doe said that she subsequently lost consciousness due to the combination of alcohol and ketamine in her system.
This rendered her unable to consent to the sexual encounter with the rest of the group, one of whom advertised “free” sex and sent a photo of the unconscious Doe in the fraternity’s Snapchat group.
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Cornell Sun named seven accused
The university’s official newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, named the seven accused in an editorial published on September 21.
The editorial called for transparency about the sanctions against the seven involved, some of whom are still attending classes at Cornell.
“We call on Cornell to publish the standard by which a suspension in a sexual assault case is lifted. We call on them to state whether an allegation of sexual assault is eligible for emergency suspension at all under the revised Article VIII,” the editorial said.
It also called on the university administration to give Doe access to the result of its internal investigation.
“We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story,” it said.
The investigation
The Cornell University Police Department initially referred the case to the Tompkins County District Attorney’s office in November 2024.
The DA’s office declined to file a case, concluding that no crime has occurred because “Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual,” District Attorney Van Houten said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Cornell’s Title IX office held “at least 12 hearings on Jane Doe’s allegations” from May 2 to May 29, 2025, ABC News reported.
These include 50 interviews with 32 witnesses, including the plaintiff and the accused.
After the university’s internal investigation, two of the seven accused were expelled, two were suspended for at least two semesters, one had graduated before a sanction could be imposed and two were found not responsible for sexual misconduct.
Doe, on the other hand, decided to drop out of the university.
The missing transcript
Van Houten’s office later revealed that Doe’s full interview transcript, wherein she explicitly told the campus police that she was raped, was not included in the university’s summary materials it submitted to the DA’s office in 2024.
Ithaca Police Department, in a statement, also revealed that it did not receive any information pertaining to the case when it was first reported.
Citing a loss of faith, New York Governor Kathy Hochul later took the case off the DA’s hands and announced an independent investigation into Doe’s allegations, as well as the existing campus culture at Cornell.
Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor for the alleged sexual violence that happened on the university grounds.
Sympathisers hit back: ‘Reveal Jane Doe’s identity’
Some of the accused’s online sympathisers called for the “doxxing” of Jane Doe’s real identity.
Doxxing refers to the act of publicly revealing someone’s private or identifying information without their consent.
One such sympathiser, political commentator Michael Tracey, urged his followers to provide details on Doe’s identity.
“If you happen to know who this Cornell ‘Jane Doe’ is, get in touch, and I would be happy to publish her name and identifying information,” Tracey wrote on X, claiming that the revelation is “100% permitted under the First Amendment.”
This led to a widespread backlash from people, mostly women, who deemed Tracey’s request as another example of the policing being directed at the victims of sexual abuse instead of the abuse itself.
‘I Am Jane Doe’
To protect Jane Doe’s identity, women on social media began writing posts with the markers #IAmJaneDoe, #IStandWithJaneDoe and #WeAreJaneDoe.
A reminiscent of #MeToo, the movement aims to anonymise Doe’s real identity in public search engines, while raising awareness of the growing number of sexual violence incidents being experienced by women in both public and private spaces.
“There are people who want to reveal the identity of Jane Doe. Let’s make it clear that we won’t let them,” one woman wrote in an Instagram reel.
“It’s me. I am Jane Doe.”
“How many Jane Does does it take before the system breaks – and Jane Doe no longer has to exist?” a commenter wrote on X.
“We are all Jane Doe,” another wrote.
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