Free Republic

About 20 states have laws that can make it difficult to prosecute sexual assault cases if accusers voluntarily drank or took drugs. As detailed allegations of a 2024 gang rape at Cornell University emerged last month, Summer Willis felt both horror and a sense of recognition. There were fraternity brothers exchanging vulgar messages about the accuser on Snapchat, echoing what Willis says happened after she herself was assaulted in 2014. And there was a district attorney saying on television that state law had made filing charges difficult or impossible, just as Willis had been told years ago. “I almost threw...

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... Yet, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten,...

The New York Times probably didn’t start their day planning to blow up Jane Doe’s case against the so-called “Cornell 7,” but its own reporting has done just that. Buried inside the Times’ reconstruction of the accusations against seven Cornell frat members is a sequence of events that dramatically changes the picture and essentially tells the world these young guys are innocent and there was no rape. According to documents obtained by the Times, Jane Doe didn’t initially describe herself as a “rape victim” after the night in question. Quite the contrary. She reportedly told roommates what happened, exchanged friendly...