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Shantika Briley was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly beating a man with a pipe when he reportedly sexually assaulted her 9-year-old daughter. The 35-year-old Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, mom said she caught the presently unnamed 39-year-old man “licking her daughter’s lips and trying to kiss her.” Briley allegedly responded with a pipe, beating the man in the head and face until he fled out the front door with Briley still in pursuit. [SNIP] Briley has been charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, and harassment but was released after posting a $25,000 bond. As of the time of this writing, she has yet...

As you see in the very title of their paean to junior senator from New York (D-of course), How Kirsten Gillibrand Is Outsmarting Donald Trump, they meant it to be entirely adulatory. However, the article's author, Tessa Stuart, was so blinded in admiration for her subject that she failed to notice that she accidentally revealed Gillibrand's utter duplicity.Perhaps Stuart was so blinded by Gillibrand's "brilliance" that it allowed a very ugly truth to slip out. Let us first jump in when Stuart was in the process of pouring out love for Gillibrand that kept oozing right up to the moment...

Remember when Marvel turned Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand into one of its “Senators of Steel” in honor of her tireless fight against campus sexual assault? Remember when Gillibrand invited as her guest to the State of the Union Address Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who vowed to carry a mattress around campus (and earn college credit while doing it) until a student she accused of rape was expelled? And the time United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power lauded Sulkowicz for helping show that “true change is possible”? We’ve lost track of Mattress Girl, but the man she...

On Friday, Paul Nungesser, the alleged rapist of “Mattress Girl” Emma Sulkowicz, had his discrimination lawsuit against Columbia University dismissed. In 2014, Emma Sulkowicz launched her art-protest piece “Carry That Weight,” in which she carried her mattress with her everywhere (including to commencement), as a condemnation of Columbia's handling of her rape complaint. Though the University cleared him of wrongdoing and allowed him to continue with school, Nungesser's name was eventually made public. Last year, he filed a discrimination suit against the school under Title IX (the statute under which victims of sexual assault often bring their claims). In the...

On what planet is it right to punish the innocent in a quixotic effort to curb campus rape?Unfortunately, it’s a-okay in the bizarro world that is Capitol Hill. Democrat Colorado Rep. Jared Polis earned roaring applause on Thursday when the lawmaker declared it is just to expel all students — regardless of guilt — who are accused of sexual assault.“I mean, if there’s 10 people that have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, seems better to get rid of all 10 people,” Polis said at a House hearing on campus sexual assault....

Artnet has confirmed that Emma Sulkowicz, the former Columbia University student known for “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight),” is behind the website “Ceci N’est Pas Un Viol .” The site hosts an artist’s statement from Sulkowicz, who graduated from Columbia in May of this year, and a video she filmed with director Ted Lawson several months ago over the university’s winter break. The eight-minute video features Sulkowicz and a man, his face blurred, engaging in what appears to be consensual sex that turns violent. The unidentified man open-palm slaps Sulkowicz, chokes her, removes the condom, then continues to have very...

have to admit, I used to be skeptical about Emma Sulkowicz, AKA Mattress Girl. It seemed odd that the Columbia University student was protesting an alleged rape by carrying a mattress around campus. Things became even stranger when it turned out there was no proof whatsoever of any rape, and even weirder still when voluminous evidence surfaced that she remained friends with her alleged rapist. Sure, Sulkowicz became a media darling, and she even attended this year’s State of the Union address at the invitation of Kirsten Gillibrand. But despite this compelling evidence, I was unwilling to accept that an...

Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia graduate famous across the country as “Mattress Girl” after she hauled a mattress around campus for a year to protest the school’s handling of her alleged rape, has apparently released a sex tape recreating her alleged rape. Titled Ceci N’est Pas Un Viol (‘This Is Not A Rape’), the video shows two people, one of whom appears to be Sulkowicz, entering a dorm room and proceeding to have sex from four different camera angles. Timestamps in the upper corner of each camera are used to make the video appear dated to August 27, 2012, the date...

The appropriately named Vulture section of New York magazine has circled over what all proof indicates is a rape hoax and swooped down to gorge itself on speculation about the museum art future of the mattress carried around by the infamous Columbia University "Mattress Girl," Emma Sulkowicz. Amid all the really bizarre fascination by writer Andy Battaglia in the mattress as an art piece, not a bit of thought is even given as to the legitimacy of the rape charges by Sulkowicz despite very strong documentary evidence that it was a hoax. Battaglia's determination to avoid the facts of the case...

To anyone who’s followed the case of Emma Sulkowicz, Columbia University’s “Mattress Girl,” the fact that her symbolic protest doubled as a credit-earning work of performance art seems a fitting commentary on the whole situation. Sulkowicz, who graduated Sunday, spent her senior year hauling a 50-pound mattress around campus to protest the Columbia administration’s failure to expel her alleged rapist. It would be difficult to overstate the adulation showered upon her: She won the National Organization for Women’s Susan B. Anthony Award and the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Ms. Wonder Award; she was the subject of a glowing New York Magazine...

The Columbia University student targeted by a mattress-carrying protester filed a lawsuit Thursday against the school, arguing that it failed to shield him from harassment even though police and campus authorities refused to pursue rape charges against him. In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Jean-Paul Nungesser said the school engaged in gender bias by allowing him to be subjected to a hostile and intimidating learning environment. The hostile environment was created, the lawsuit says, by the ongoing protest of fellow student Emma Sulkowicz, also known as the “mattress girl.”

Paul Nungesser was found “not responsible” for sexually assaulting another student at Columbia University. The student who accused him, Emma Sulkowicz, has since began carrying a mattress around the university as part of an art project to protest a finding she claims was unfair. Sulkowicz’s activism earned her an invitation to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. When Nungesser heard of the invitation, he blasted the senator for rewarding Sulkowicz’s attacks against him. “I am shocked to learn that Sen. Gillibrand is actively supporting Ms. Sulkowicz’s defamation campaign against me by providing...

Emma Sulkowicz is turning her assault into art -- and a protest against Columbia University's sexual assault policy On the first day of her sophomore year of college, Emma Sulkowicz was raped in her dorm room bed. The Columbia University senior says the perpetrator was a fellow student. He still is — and has been since he allegedly assaulted Sulkowicz and two other female students. As Sulkowicz reported in Time earlier this year, all three cases against her offender were dismissed. So, she’s not taking it anymore. After joining a federal complaint in April over Columbia’s mishandling of rape cases...

Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University senior who has become a national icon for women by carrying a mattress wherever she goes to remind the public of her claim that she was sexually assaulted by fellow student Paul Nungesser, reportedly sent romantic Facebook messages to Nungesser after the alleged assault, including, “I love you.” Nungesser, who has been threatened and harassed as a result of Sulkowicz’s allegations, has always protested his innocence, despite a media frenzy that made him a pariah in the college community. Sulkowicz, on the other hand, has been feted by the New York City chapter of the...