By Maria Tsvetkova
NEW YORK, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Protesters calling for tougher action against sexual violence rallied on Thursday outside the New York City courthouse where a Cornell University student stirred a national uproar by suing several campus fraternity members she accused of gang rape.
The demonstration, drawing a crowd of hundreds to the New York State Supreme Court building in Manhattan, was one of dozens of protests organized on campuses and in communities across the country under the social media banner “#StopSexualViolence: From the Frat House to the White House.”
Several hundred people, mostly women, displayed banners reading “I am Jane Doe. Be afraid of me,” “Death to rape culture” and “This is personal” outside the New York Supreme Court in downtown Manhattan, where the Cornell student identified in court documents as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against her alleged rapists.
“It’s entirely frustrating that we are here in 2026 and still dealing with this,” said one of the protesters, Brianna Williams, 40, who works for a nonprofit. “It’s just an infuriating moment.”
In a lawsuit filed last month, a Cornell student identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe said she had been plied with drugs and alcohol, then sexually assaulted by members of the campus chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity while she was incapacitated in October 2024.
Doe, who was 20 at the time, named seven Chi Phi members as defendants in the suit, along with the fraternity, a local bar, her own sorority, and the Ivy League university, which she accused of failing to adequately investigate and punish students who were involved.
The lawsuit specifically criticized the university for having offered some of the alleged perpetrators a chance to mitigate their penalties by writing essays.
Doe had reported the alleged assault to police several weeks after the fact, leading to an internal university investigation and a law enforcement probe, but the local prosecutor declined to bring criminal charges in the case.
Since the woman’s civil suit was filed, prosecutors reopened a criminal investigation, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed the state’s attorney general as special prosecutor in the case. Cornell University hired Sally Yates, a top former US Justice Department lawyer, to lead an independent review of how the school handled the allegations.
NATIONAL OUTCRY
Cornell, which has defended its response to the original report, shut down the Chi Phi chapter and imposed a range of discipline on the fraternity members found to be involved, including expulsions of some.
The men named in the suit have all denied any wrongdoing, some saying the sexual activity was consensual and others disputing their participation.
The suit ignited a renewed national outcry against sexual violence and harassment, especially on college campuses, with women taking to the streets in “I Am Jane Doe” protests of solidarity. “I Am Jane Doe” was also a rallying cry for Thursday’s scheduled demonstrations in cities including Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Some activists have pointed to comments from President Donald Trump about his behavior toward women and a jury verdict finding him liable for sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll as contributing to a “culture of rape” in the US.
Thousands of students, faculty and community activists marched on Monday through the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York, demanding that the school administration take firmer action against sexual violence on campus.
The identity of Jane Doe has become part of the conversation. Women on social media have been posting #IamJaneDoe in solidarity with the accuser and to counter some who have sought to publicly name her.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in New York; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Donna Bryson and Sanjeev Miglani)
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