By JT Santana | jtwb768
The allegations coming out of Cornell University have forced me back into a place I have spent a great deal of time trying to live beyond. I have followed the reporting as a writer, an advocate, and someone who has spent decades examining stigma, institutional failure, sexual health, criminal justice, and the ways we decide whose pain deserves to be taken seriously.
I have followed this story as something else, too. I am a rape survivor, and the Cornell story sent me straight back into the terror of waking up in a hotel room and realizing that another human being had violated my body.
For three days after the Cornell coverage hit me particularly hard, I stayed mostly inside my room. Going through the door frightened me, and I came out mainly to use the bathroom.
That reaction was not theatrical, exaggerated, or created for this article. Sexual trauma can make the past feel physically present again, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes that survivors may live with persistent fear, post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, anxiety, disrupted relationships, and difficulty regaining a sense of safety long after an assault ends (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2026). (CDC)
The Cornell story brought back the hotel room. It brought back the used condom lying beside the bed, the realization that I had been drugged and left unconscious, the missing computer, the missing iPad, the missing bookbag, the missing vehicle, and the sickening recognition that the man I had trusted had taken far more from me than property.
His name is Justin William Carlisle, and I am naming him deliberately. Carlisle is the man I identified during the original investigation as the person who sexually assaulted me.
My allegation did not materialize years later as part of a blog post, nor did I invent it to make an argument about Cornell. The sexual assault was part of the investigation from the beginning and was addressed during discovery.
As I understood the investigative record and the issues being considered, the dispute concerned the circumstances surrounding the penetration, including whether I had been drugged into incapacity or had fallen asleep before I was penetrated. The dispute I encountered was not some abstract question about whether I had reported sexual penetration.
The final criminal disposition did not result in Carlisle being convicted of sexually assaulting me. The plea agreement instead held him criminally accountable for property taken from me, including my computer, iPad, bookbag, and vehicle.
That distinction deserves precision. I will not call a theft conviction a rape conviction, and I will not pretend a judge entered a sexual-assault judgment when no such judgment resulted.
I refuse to make the opposite distortion, too. A negotiated criminal disposition does not rewrite my history, erase what I reported, or require me to pretend the sexual assault vanished when prosecutors accepted pleas involving property.
I say plainly that Justin William Carlisle raped me. I am not writing a criminal judgment; I am describing what happened to me, what I reported, and what I have maintained since the investigation began.
I am the person who woke up in that hotel room. I am the person who saw the condom, discovered what had been stolen, reported the sexual assault, answered the questions, lived through the investigation, reviewed the materials, experienced discovery, watched the case move through the system, and continues to live with what happened.
A federal court docket filed in February 2026 identifies Justin William Carlisle as an incarcerated plaintiff in a prisoner civil-rights case in the Southern District of Iowa. That public record does not prove my sexual-assault allegation, nor do I cite it for that purpose; it confirms that the person I am naming is a real person appearing openly in public judicial records. (Justia Dockets & Filings)
I will not erase his name from my story to protect him from discomfort. Survivors have carried everyone else’s discomfort for long enough.
The Cornell Allegations Have Become a Test of More Than One Institution
The Cornell case concerns a former student identified publicly as Jane Doe, who alleges in a civil lawsuit that seven former or current members of the Chi Phi fraternity sexually assaulted her at the fraternity house in October 2024 after alcohol, marijuana, and ketamine were involved. The seven men have not been convicted of the conduct alleged in the lawsuit, and attorneys representing some defendants have disputed her account (The Associated Press, 2026). (AP News)
That legal distinction stays in this article for a reason. Survivor advocacy loses credibility when facts are stretched beyond what evidence establishes, and anger does not excuse inaccurate reporting.
The criminal investigation has now moved well beyond its original posture. New York Governor Kathy Hochul removed the matter from Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor after expressing deep concern over the original handling of the allegations (The Associated Press, 2026; Reuters, 2026). (AP News)
Hochul publicly said Jane Doe had been failed by people charged with protecting her and criticized the fact that prosecutors closed the original case without interviewing her or other people directly involved in the alleged assault. James has said her office will conduct a new review, and Cornell has said it will cooperate with outside scrutiny of its response. (Reuters)
Cornell conducted its own disciplinary proceedings before the national attention of recent weeks. University statements and records referenced by the Student Assembly say sanctions included expulsions and suspensions, and Cornell disputes claims that any person charged in the university proceeding received an essay as the sole consequence (Cornell University Student Assembly, 2026). (Cornell Assembly)
Those facts do not end the institutional questions. They sharpen them.
The former district attorney acknowledged that the materials initially provided to his office did not include the complete interview record later discussed publicly. Reporting has shown that Jane Doe told Cornell investigators she believed she had been raped, yet the original prosecutorial review proceeded without prosecutors directly interviewing her. (AP News)
That discrepancy deserves examination from beginning to end. When someone reports sexual assault, the integrity of the response depends on what investigators document, what gets transmitted, what is omitted, who reviews it, and whether decision-makers ever speak directly with the person making the accusation.
Stop Asking What She Did Wrong
The public interrogation of sexual-assault survivors follows an old and predictable script. Questions that may begin as attempts to reconstruct events can quickly mutate into a moral examination of the survivor.
Why was she drinking? Why did she smoke marijuana, go upstairs, stay late, trust those men, attend the party, flirt, text someone afterward, wait before reporting, fail to fight harder, or remember parts of the night differently later?
Investigators need factual answers about chronology, witnesses, substances, communications, physical evidence, and consent. That legitimate investigative work is fundamentally different from searching for the survivor’s character flaw that supposedly explains why somebody harmed her.
Jane Doe drank alcohol. She used marijuana, and her lawsuit says ketamine was involved.
She went to a fraternity house and knew some of the people there. None of those circumstances, separately or collectively, constitutes sexual consent.
New York’s campus affirmative-consent law defines consent as a knowing, voluntary, mutual decision among participants. The law states that consent can be withdrawn, prior sexual activity does not automatically establish consent to later activity, silence or lack of resistance does not itself establish consent, and intoxication can reach a point at which a person is incapable of consenting (N.Y. Educ. Law § 6441). (NYSenate.gov)
A woman can drink too much and still retain ownership of her body. She can smoke marijuana, make terrible decisions, flirt, have consensual sex earlier in the evening, walk into a bedroom, remove her clothing, and later decide that she does not want sexual contact.
She can consent to one person and refuse another. She can consent to one sexual act and refuse the next, or begin consensual sex and withdraw consent before it ends.
She can fall asleep. She can become incapacitated.
None of those conditions makes her body available for public use.
Women have been taught an exhausting curriculum in rape avoidance for generations. Watch your drink, stay with friends, share your location, park under a light, check the back seat, avoid walking alone, do not wear headphones, do not trust strangers, do not become too intoxicated, and do not go upstairs with someone you barely know.
Then a woman follows ninety-nine precautions and someone hurts her anyway. Society finds the hundredth rule she failed to follow and asks why she did not protect herself better.
That is not prevention. It is a mechanism for relocating responsibility.
Poor judgment is not consent, risk is not permission, and vulnerability does not transfer responsibility from the person committing an act to the person harmed by it. Human beings do not surrender bodily autonomy when they make mistakes.
“Why Were You With Somebody Like That?”
I know exactly what it feels like when questioning shifts from what somebody did to you into an inquiry about why you were stupid enough to be near that person. I experienced that almost immediately after reporting my own rape.
One of the first questions put to me was some version of, “Why were you with somebody like that?” I remember the disbelief and humiliation attached to that question almost as clearly as I remember the hotel room.
My answer was simple: I thought Justin Carlisle was my friend. The more important question is why I was required to justify that friendship at all.
The length, quality, or wisdom of my relationship with Carlisle did not determine whether I possessed the right to control sexual access to my body. Suppose I had known him since high school or had met him that morning; neither circumstance changes the requirement for consent.
Suppose I had found him through an app, invited him inside, intended to have consensual sex, or had consensual sex with him previously. None of those circumstances creates permanent sexual access.
Suppose he had been a stranger who walked into the hotel and started talking with me. The question would still belong in exactly the same place: did I consent to the sexual act that occurred?
I trusted someone who, in my account and in the report I made, drugged me and sexually assaulted me. Trusting the wrong person was not my crime.
I did not violate myself through an error in judgment. I did not drug myself for somebody else’s sexual use, remove my own property from the hotel room, take my own vehicle, leave myself unconscious, and wake beside evidence that sexual activity had occurred.
The responsibility for my choices belongs to me. Responsibility for another person’s violation of my body belongs to the person who violated it.
Victim-blaming depends on confusing those categories. The survivor ends up defending the decision to trust someone instead of the accused person’s conduct receiving primary scrutiny.
“How Does a Man Get Raped?”
Another question from that day cut differently. Someone participating in the questioning looked at me after I reported the assault and asked, “How does a man get raped? Can you explain that to us?”
I was stunned that a law-enforcement professional could stand in front of a man reporting rape and ask him to explain whether male rape was anatomically possible. I was trying to comprehend what had happened, and now I was being placed in the position of defending whether my victimization could exist.
The answer should never have required a lecture. A man can be raped when another person sexually penetrates him without consent, including circumstances involving unconsciousness, incapacitation, coercion, or physical inability to provide meaningful consent.
Male sexual victimization is not an obscure phenomenon. CDC data report that more than one in six men experience some form of contact sexual violence during their lifetimes, and one in 31 men report completed or attempted rape under the agency’s current national estimates (CDC, 2026). (CDC)
Other CDC data focused on male victimization show how deeply gender stereotypes distort the subject. The agency reports that male survivors of completed or attempted rape most often reported male perpetrators, and many male survivors first experienced such victimization before age 25 (CDC, 2024). (CDC)
Men are expected to be physically strong enough to stop sexual violence, sexually eager enough that unwanted sex supposedly makes no sense, and emotionally contained enough to absorb trauma without discussing it. Those myths harm male survivors and can contaminate the first moments of an investigation.
National Institute of Justice guidance calls for victim-centered, trauma-informed sexual-assault interviewing. The purpose is to improve victim engagement and investigative accuracy rather than beginning from assumptions about how a “real” victim should behave (National Institute of Justice [NIJ], 2022). (National Institute of Justice)
Asking a male survivor to explain how men can be raped is not a neutral question in that context. It reveals that a stereotype entered the room before all of the evidence did.
The Condom on the Floor
Some images become permanent pieces of memory. Mine includes a used condom lying on the floor beside the bed where I woke up.
I remember becoming aware of my surroundings and trying to understand what had happened. I remember realizing that my belongings were gone and discovering that my vehicle was gone.
I remember learning that I had been left unconscious. I remember the terror that came with putting pieces together and recognizing that my body had been violated.
Public discussion of rape often cleans the language until the act begins to sound abstract. We reach for terms such as “sexual misconduct,” “nonconsensual activity,” “an incident,” or “an encounter,” and those terms sometimes serve legitimate legal or procedural purposes.
There are moments when cleaned-up language creates distance from what sexual violence actually is. Rape is physical, invasive, frightening, degrading, and capable of altering how someone experiences their own body.
I have described my experience by saying that somebody used my body as a sponge for his cock. The sentence is vulgar, and I am leaving it here intentionally.
What happened to me was more vulgar than the sentence. Survivors should not have to make sexual violence tasteful enough for everyone else to discuss comfortably.
I know what it feels like to wake up and understand that another human being treated your body as an object. I know what it feels like to realize somebody made a decision about sexual access to you without your participation in that decision.
No euphemism changes that. No plea agreement centered on stolen property removes it from memory.
My Property Received a Cleaner Legal Resolution Than My Body
This is where my experience with the criminal justice system becomes especially hard to describe without anger. The criminal case arising from the episode produced accountability for property crimes.
The plea recognized that my computer was taken. It recognized the iPad, bookbag, vehicle, and other property involved in the criminal case.
The plea did not require Carlisle to accept criminal responsibility for sexually assaulting me. My property received a form of legal recognition that my body did not receive through the final disposition.
I know what prosecutors weigh when deciding whether to accept plea agreements. Evidence, admissibility, witness testimony, sentencing exposure, litigation risk, and the likelihood of conviction all shape criminal cases.
Those considerations may explain a prosecutor’s decision. They do not change what the outcome feels like to the victim whose laptop can be accounted for more cleanly than the sexual violation he reported.
Property often gives a prosecutor tangible evidence. A computer has identifying information, a vehicle has a title and license plate, stolen possessions can be photographed or recovered, and ownership can often be established through records.
Sexual violence can present harder evidentiary questions involving consent, intoxication, memory, medical findings, timing, digital communication, physical evidence, and competing accounts. Those evidentiary challenges are real, yet the survivor can emerge from the process feeling as if the system understood the missing property more clearly than the loss of bodily safety.
I refuse to translate that outcome into a claim that the rape did not occur. A plea agreement establishes the offenses resolved through the agreement; it does not gain the authority to rewrite every event surrounding the criminal case.
Carlisle was not convicted of sexually assaulting me. I reported that he sexually assaulted me, and I maintain that he raped me.
Those statements can coexist without contradiction. Legal precision does not require personal erasure.
They Told Me About the Deal After the Judge Had Accepted It
The handling of the plea added another layer of anger. I learned about the agreement two days after the judge had accepted it.
I was told that the police investigator would contact me about providing a statement concerning what I expected from the outcome. By that point, the most consequential part of the outcome had already been negotiated and accepted.
Iowa law recognizes victim notification as more than a courtesy. Iowa Code § 915.13 states that a registered victim has the right to be informed of plea agreements related to the crime for which that person is registered (Iowa Code § 915.13, 2026). (Iowa General Assembly)
I am not declaring that the timing in my case, standing alone, proves a statutory violation. Registration status, procedural history, timing, and the complete record would need legal examination before making that claim.
The human problem remains. Informing a survivor after judicial acceptance is structurally different from giving that person meaningful information before the operative decision has become a finished reality.
The justice system speaks often about victims having a voice. A voice invited into the room after the decisive agreement has already been accepted is not equivalent to a voice heard before that decision is made.
The prosecutor represents the state rather than serving as the victim’s personal lawyer. I know that distinction, and I understand why it exists.
Sexual violence still happens inside a human being’s life rather than inside a case number. A system can follow procedural rules and still leave the person harmed feeling invisible.
Naming Justin Carlisle Is Part of Refusing the Shame
I reject the idea that naming Justin Carlisle automatically makes this article irresponsible. His name appears in public judicial records, and a federal docket identifies him by his full name in litigation filed as an incarcerated plaintiff in 2026. (Justia Dockets & Filings)
Public reporting has identified Carlisle in unrelated Davenport criminal matters, too. Those other cases prove nothing about my sexual-assault allegation, and I will not use unrelated accusations as substitute evidence for what happened to me. (https://www.kwqc.com)
My statement is narrower and more direct. Justin William Carlisle is the man I reported as having raped me, the sexual assault was part of the investigation, and I stand behind my account.
I will not describe a theft conviction as a rape conviction. I will not state that a court entered a sexual-assault judgment when it did not.
I will not pretend that a property plea strips me of the right to say what I experienced, whom I reported, and what I believe happened to my body. The criminal judgment does not own my memory.
Stigma survives through silence, shame, selective disbelief, and the expectation that survivors protect everyone else from discomfort. I am finished carrying that burden.
There are legitimate reasons to withhold names in some cases, and this article does not argue that every accused person should be publicly identified before facts are established. My situation concerns my own account, my own report, my own experience with the investigation, and a person whose identity already appears in public judicial records.
I am not accepting the proposition that I must redact him from my life.
What the Cornell Messages Expose
The fraternity communications reported in the Cornell matter disturb me beyond the legal allegations themselves. According to reporting and university investigative records described by the Associated Press, Snapchat messages circulated during the episode and included language suggesting that a woman upstairs was sexually available; a later exchange referred to whether the “shop” was still open (The Associated Press, 2026). (AP News)
That language is dehumanizing regardless of how criminal liability is later resolved. A human being is reduced to availability, merchandise, or a place where sexual access can supposedly be obtained.
Public discussion has repeatedly referred to the fraternity’s roughly 57 members in connection with the chat. The evidence available publicly does not establish that all 57 men saw every relevant message, understood what was happening, approved of illegal conduct, or participated in sexual activity.
That distinction protects the credibility of the discussion. Collective guilt is not accountability.
The meaningful questions concern individual knowledge and action. Investigators need to establish who saw the communications, who understood the woman’s condition, who entered the room, who left, who participated, who objected, who intervened, who preserved evidence, and who contacted someone capable of stopping what was occurring.
Those are factual questions rather than slogans. They make individual accountability possible without treating an entire membership roster as one accused person.
Yet the language matters. Describing a woman as a “shop” converts a person into sexual availability.
That conversion is part of the culture surrounding sexual violence. A person becomes a body, a conquest, a joke, an opportunity, or something one man believes he can offer another.
Consent becomes inconvenient once the person disappears from the conversation.
Men Need to Confront Other Men
I am unimpressed by men who announce that they personally would never rape someone. Not committing rape is the minimum expectation for living around other human beings.
Character becomes visible when another man is approaching or crossing a boundary. Do you interrupt him, challenge him, call for help, remove the vulnerable person, or protect group loyalty?
Fraternity culture is not uniquely responsible for sexual violence, and fraternity membership does not make someone a rapist. Group environments can still create conditions in which loyalty, status, intoxication, sexual boasting, secrecy, and fear of exclusion make intervention less likely.
That is where men need to become far less polite with one another. If someone is too intoxicated to consent, sexual activity should stop before it begins.
If your friend talks about an incapacitated woman as an opportunity, challenge him. If somebody treats access to another person’s body as something he can advertise, refuse the premise.
If stopping what is happening ruins the party, ruin the party. If protecting someone costs a friendship, lose the friendship.
If intervention makes you unpopular, accept the social cost. The person whose bodily autonomy may be at risk has far more at stake than your standing with the group.
Bystander responsibility does not turn everyone nearby into a criminal accomplice. It recognizes that ethical responsibility begins long before a prosecutor decides whether a statute can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Cornell’s Own Data Demand Attention
The current case did not emerge inside an institution with no warning signs about sexual violence. Cornell’s 2025 Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct reported that 35 percent of undergraduate women who responded said they had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact during their time at Cornell, up from 23 percent in 2023 (Cornell University, 2025). (Cornell Chronicle)
The university has cautioned that the 2025 response rate was low, which limits certainty around the estimates. That limitation belongs beside the statistic rather than hidden from readers.
Cornell’s 2026 Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault reported another striking result: 52 percent of Greek-affiliated undergraduate women who responded reported experiencing sexual assault, compared with 29 percent of undergraduate women who were not Greek-affiliated. The task force identified fraternity chapter houses among the common locations reported for assaults and called for sustained changes in campus culture, education, intervention, and prevention (Cornell University, 2026). (Cornell Provost’s Office)
Those findings do not prove anything about the seven individual defendants in Jane Doe’s lawsuit. They establish a broader institutional problem Cornell itself has acknowledged.
The Student Assembly has responded to the Chi Phi controversy by considering Resolution 15, which calls for greater disclosure of aggregate disciplinary outcomes, clearer information about coordination with law enforcement, stronger protections for complainants during hearings, and public explanations of what privacy law actually prevents Cornell from disclosing (Cornell University Student Assembly, 2026). (Cornell Assembly)
That is the kind of scrutiny universities should expect when students lose confidence in systems handling sexual violence. Privacy rights remain real, yet privacy cannot become a blanket answer to every institutional accountability question.
New York’s Governor Has Now Said the System Failed Jane Doe
The most significant institutional development arrived when Governor Hochul intervened directly. She transferred prosecutorial authority to Attorney General Letitia James after reviewing concerns over the original investigation and said Jane Doe had been failed by people obligated to protect her. (Reuters)
Reuters reported that Hochul criticized both Cornell police and the original prosecutorial handling, pointing to omitted information and the failure to directly interview Jane Doe before the initial decision not to prosecute. The attorney general’s office is now responsible for reexamining the case. (Reuters)
That intervention does not establish the guilt of any defendant. It establishes that New York’s governor found the original process troubling enough to remove the matter from the local prosecutor and assign it to the state attorney general.
Hochul has called for changes to New York law governing intoxication and sexual assault, too. Current criminal-law disputes have drawn attention to the gap between campus affirmative-consent standards and criminal provisions addressing incapacity tied to intoxication. (Reuters)
The policy question is stark. A person who becomes incapable of meaningful consent should not become sexually available based on the route by which intoxication occurred.
Sexual Violence Is Treated Differently From Other Crimes
Our social response to rape remains distorted in ways we would recognize immediately in other contexts. When a person leaves a laptop in an unlocked vehicle and someone steals it, we may call the decision careless, but we still identify the person who took the laptop as responsible for the theft.
If a homeowner forgets to lock a door and someone enters and steals property, the unlocked door does not become permission. If someone walks alone through a dangerous neighborhood and is robbed, taking that route does not transfer ownership of a wallet to the robber.
Sexual violence invites a different cultural calculation. Attention moves from the alleged offender’s conduct to the survivor’s clothing, alcohol consumption, drug use, dating history, sexual history, judgment, personality, memory, and relationship with the accused.
The implication is hard to miss. Bodily autonomy begins to look conditional, reserved for people who made every socially approved decision before they were harmed.
That standard is grotesque. Autonomy does not depend on a spotless behavioral record.
Women bear the heaviest burden of this culture. CDC data show that nearly half of women have experienced some form of contact sexual violence during their lifetimes and more than one in five have experienced completed or attempted rape under the agency’s current national estimates (CDC, 2026). (CDC)
Men experience sexual violence, too. Recognizing male survivors does not diminish the gendered reality of sexual violence against women; it exposes the broader harm caused by myths about consent, masculinity, vulnerability, and who society considers a believable victim.
A culture capable of asking a woman why she went upstairs is the same culture capable of looking at a male survivor and asking him to explain how a man can be raped. Both questions begin by demanding that the survivor prove eligibility for victimhood.
Trauma Does Not Behave Like a Court Transcript
The Cornell coverage put me in my room for three days. I did not rationally decide that staying behind a door would change anything from my past; my body reacted to danger that was no longer physically present.
The story reopened fear, and my sense of safety contracted until my room felt like the place I could manage. That is one reason trauma-informed interviewing exists.
NIJ guidance recognizes that a victim-centered, trauma-informed approach can improve survivor engagement and help investigators gather more useful information. Trauma can affect recall, sequencing, emotional presentation, and the timing with which pieces of memory become accessible (NIJ, 2022). (National Institute of Justice)
That does not mean every inconsistency proves trauma. Investigators still need to compare accounts, examine physical and digital evidence, challenge contradictions, interview witnesses, and consider information that cuts against an allegation.
It means survivor behavior should not be measured against a fictional template. A “real victim” does not necessarily remember everything chronologically, report immediately, display an expected amount of emotion, cut off all communication with the accused, or describe the event in identical language every time.
I remember some parts of my own assault with extraordinary clarity. Other parts live behind intoxication, unconsciousness, trauma, and the confused state in which I woke.
I remember the condom, the missing property, the questions, the fear, and the realization that someone I trusted had violated me. I remember staying inside my room when another survivor’s story brought the terror back.
Trauma does not obey an editorial calendar or a court schedule. It does not care how many years have passed.
Stop Protecting the Wrong People From Shame
Sexual-assault discourse has a persistent habit of protecting everyone except the survivor from embarrassment. Universities protect reputations, fraternities protect brotherhood, families protect sons, lawyers protect clients, institutions protect procedures, and communities protect the comforting belief that sexual violence happens somewhere else.
The survivor receives questions. The survivor has to explain drinking, drugs, friendship, sex, memory, timing, motives, and every imperfect decision made before and after the assault.
I am finished participating in that arrangement. I will not carry shame that belongs somewhere else.
I am not ashamed that I knew Justin Carlisle or thought he was my friend. I had no reason to predict that a person I trusted would become the man I reported for drugging and raping me.
I am not ashamed that I was vulnerable. Vulnerability is part of being human.
I am not ashamed that sexual assault traumatized me or that the Cornell story reopened terror. A trauma response does not transform a survivor into a weak or unreliable person.
I am not ashamed to name the man I reported. His comfort does not outrank my right to describe my own life.
The same principle applies to Jane Doe in a different legal posture. Her allegations must be investigated fairly, the accused men are entitled to defend themselves, and the state must prove any criminal charge under the required legal standard.
None of that requires society to put her character on trial. Due process for an accused person and dignity for an accuser are not mutually exclusive.
What Accountability Requires
Accountability in the Cornell case requires more than outrage on social media. Investigators need to examine relevant communications, interview witnesses, reconstruct the chronology, evaluate evidence of intoxication and capacity, determine what each individual did, and consider evidence pointing in every direction.
Jane Doe deserves that investigation. The accused men deserve a serious investigation, too, since reliable fact-finding protects people from both institutional indifference and unsupported conclusions.
Cornell owes its community a candid accounting of its systems. Students have a legitimate interest in how information moved between university investigators and prosecutors, how disciplinary proceedings function, what aggregate sanctions look like, and what reforms have followed.
Law enforcement agencies need to retire questions rooted in mythology. No man reporting rape should be asked to explain how male rape is physically possible, and no survivor should be treated as suspect for trusting the person later accused of violating them.
Prosecutors and victim-services systems need to recognize that notification after a consequential agreement has become reality is not the same experience as meaningful information before the decision. Iowa law recognizes a registered victim’s right to information about plea agreements, and that principle reflects the basic idea that survivors should not be treated as spectators in cases arising from crimes committed against them. (Iowa General Assembly)
Men need to confront men before misconduct becomes a police file. Parents need to teach sons that sexual access is never something they are owed, won, shared, advertised, transferred, or granted by somebody other than the person whose body is involved.
Universities need systems capable of responding to sexual assault without retreating behind reputation management. Legislatures need laws that address incapacitation in ways consistent with the reality that a person can become incapable of meaningful consent after voluntary substance use.
Survivors need something much simpler. They need a system willing to ask what happened to them before demanding an explanation for why they were there.
I Was There. I Know What Happened to Me.
There will always be people who insist that a survivor must speak cautiously enough to protect the sensibilities of the person being accused. I have already spent enough of my life dealing with the consequences of what happened to me.
Justin William Carlisle is the man I identified as the person who raped me. I reported it, the sexual-assault allegation entered the investigation, and I stand behind my account today.
The criminal case did not end with a sexual-assault conviction. I have stated that openly throughout this article so no reader mistakes my account for a claim about the final judgment.
The plea punished property offenses. It did not issue some historical declaration that the rape I reported never occurred.
I reject any demand that I convert that prosecutorial outcome into silence. A negotiated criminal case does not own my memory, my body, or my voice.
The Cornell case reminded me how damaging that silence can become. Every time public discussion moves from “What happened to her?” to “Why was she there?” another survivor learns that reporting sexual violence may result in an interrogation of their character.
Every time someone asks what a woman drank before asking what someone did to her, priorities become visible. Every time someone asks why she trusted him, trust itself begins to look like culpability.
Every time a law-enforcement officer asks a male survivor how a man can be raped, stigma pushes another victim further into isolation. Every time the easiest prosecutable offense becomes the only event reflected in the final judgment, a survivor may be left carrying an experience the legal disposition never names.
I cannot change what happened in that hotel room. I cannot unsee the used condom on the floor, erase the fear of realizing I had been violated, or undo the terror that came roaring back when the Cornell story reached me.
I can refuse silence, and I can refuse shame. I can tell you whom I reported, what I experienced, what the criminal case did resolve, and what it did not.
My relationship with Justin Carlisle did not create consent. Jane Doe’s presence at a fraternity house did not create consent.
Alcohol does not create consent. Marijuana does not create consent, friendship does not create consent, prior sexual activity does not create permanent consent, and unconsciousness does not create consent.
Human beings can be careless, trusting, intoxicated, sexually active, afraid, confused, male, female, gay, straight, young, old, married, single, promiscuous, celibate, fully dressed, or completely naked. None of those characteristics transfers ownership of their bodies to someone else.
Our justice systems need to recognize sexual violence without demanding mythical victims who never drank, never trusted the wrong person, never froze, never forgot details, never delayed reporting, and never made mistakes. Human beings do all of those things and retain complete ownership of their bodies.
I did not need a better reason for being with Justin Carlisle. He needed my consent.
I was raped, and I am finished defending why I was there. The person who violated me is the person who should have to answer for crossing that line, and every institution handling sexual violence should begin with that fundamental fact.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024, May 16). Intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking among men. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CDC source
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026). About sexual violence. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CDC source
Cornell University. (2025, November 4). Survey reveals campus sexual assault and harassment. Cornell Chronicle. Cornell Chronicle source
Cornell University. (2026, March 10). Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault final report. Office of the Provost. Cornell task force report
Cornell University Student Assembly. (2026). Resolution 15: Institutional transparency and accountability in the University’s response to sexual assault. Cornell Student Assembly resolution
Iowa Code § 915.13 (2026). Notification by county attorney. Iowa General Assembly. Iowa Code § 915.13
National Institute of Justice. (2022, April). Trauma-informed investigations for sexual assault cases. U.S. Department of Justice. NIJ source
New York Education Law § 6441. (2026). Affirmative consent to sexual activity. New York State Senate. New York Education Law § 6441
Reuters. (2026, October 2). NY governor attacks law enforcement’s handling of 2024 Cornell rape investigation. Reuters report
The Associated Press. (2026, October 2). FACT FOCUS: What people are alleging in a Cornell University fraternity gang rape case. Associated Press fact check
The Associated Press. (2026, October 2). NY governor says Cornell rape accuser was “failed” by people obligated to protect her. Associated Press report
