Social media users have posted “I am Jane Doe” to support a young woman who filed a lawsuit against Cornell University and seven fraternity members she accuses of rape.
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Social media users have posted under the pseudonym “Jane Doe” to support a young woman who filed a lawsuit against Cornell University and seven fraternity members she accuses of raping her, with “I am Jane Doe” posts spreading across multiple platforms in different formats.
The posts come after journalists at the college’s independent student newspaper reported the lawsuit filing, prompting others to share personal accounts of sexual abuse and assault and to join a wider wave of solidarity.
For some participants, claiming the name was intended to offer the plaintiff protection online, amid concerns that her real identity could be identified and shared. One aim described by supporters was that the volume of similar posts could make it harder for online systems to connect any given account to the lawsuit.
Wendy Lea Brewer, a singer who said she has experienced sexual abuse, said she posted Instagram reels with captions including “I am Jane Doe” and “It’s time to speak,” saying she wanted to find community and felt people were not paying attention before the Cornell case drew widespread attention.
Legal experts noted that pseudonyms can be used in lawsuits for privacy in sensitive situations, but said real identities can still surface through searches. Diana Simon, a professor of law at the University of Arizona, said there can be circumstances where anonymity is in a person’s best interest, even though the legal system is generally geared toward transparency.
Kelsey Combe, a photographer in the Midwest, said she made an “I am Jane Doe” post to provide a form of online protection by making it harder to determine whether a specific account is authentic, describing it as an effort to “confuse the AI models” and stand in solidarity.
Combe later said artificial intelligence linked her to the Cornell lawsuit as the actual Jane Doe and that she was able to have the linkage removed, though she said the episode brought criticism from some people who responded after she warned about the issue.
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