Dear Cornell 7, I’m Jane Doe

I’m Jane Doe because any of us could be the 20-year-old Cornell student allegedly gang raped for seven hours while dozens of men saw the ‘free sex upstairs’ messages and did nothing

Seven hours is nearly long enough to fly from London to New York. Seven hours is almost the length of a full work shift.

Seven hours is the time it would take to watch a Lord of the Rings extended marathon. Seven hours is the baseline of a good night’s sleep.

Seven hours is also the length of time Jane Doe was allegedly gang raped for on the night of Saturday, 19 October into Sunday, 20 October 2024. At the time, she was a 20-year-old undergraduate student at Cornell University.

She could’ve been your sister, your best friend, your barista, your date, a one night stand or someone who caught your eye at the airport.

She could’ve been me.

According to the Rape Crisis England & Wales, every week, approximately 2,000 women are raped and 10,000 women are sexually assaulted across England and Wales.

This translates to roughly one woman raped every 5 minutes across the region. Globally, nearly 1 in 3 women, approximately 840 million individuals, have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, as per the UN.

If you’re a woman, you have most likely been sexually assaulted once in your lifetime, or you are very likely to suffer an attack at some point in your life. These are facts that as a woman, I have heard, repeated, and discussed with my circle countless times.

#MeToo was supposed to make things better. But the rise of red pill content, trad wife trends, and conservatism globally, has proven a very different outcome.

Just last week, one of my close friends was opening up to me about a sexual assault she had just experienced – a man had masturbated on her in a packed bus, in the middle of the day. I wish these terrifying tales were rare, but they’re not.

Us women, we share these experiences all the time. My question is, do men ever talk about these things too?

During the night in question, one of Jane Doe’s alleged abusers sent a photo of her unconscious body to a fraternity Snapchat group. As one brother announced in a text, there was “free [sex] upstairs” while another message read, “You can walk in and whip it out.”

The case has been dubbed the Cornell 7, because seven men took their turns allegedly raping Jane Doe for seven hours. But in that group chat, a total of 57 frat boys read those gruesome messages – and they did nothing.

Not a single man questioned the offering of a woman’s body in their accommodation. We’ve been there before, when the Gisele Pelicot case broke, we already knew: rapists aren’t monsters.

They are everyday men; they are your local postman, a beloved father, your favourite uncle, a doctor, a religious figure, a trusted colleague, an atheist, a bartender, your music idol, a Hollywood star, a 20-year-old Ivy league student. Very few victims get justice for having their body and soul violated.

In England and Wales, ONS and CPS data show only about 14.7% of rape victims report to police, just 2.6% of reported rapes historically lead to a charge or summons, and while 63.4% of CPS-referred cases end in conviction, the share of all victims who ultimately get justice remains very small despite a recent rise in prosecutions.

But Jane Doe took her chances.

Her horrific 101-page lawsuit became public. That’s when a second assault was pending, with attempts of doxxing her identity reaching a boiling point this month.

But we, the women, the protectors, we have learnt that there is power in numbers, in solidarity. If we are all Jane Does, then nobody has to be a Jane Doe.

When sexual violence is treated as a collective reality rather than an isolated secret, the burden of shame and isolation is lifted from the individual survivor. And that’s why, I am Jane Doe.

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