Doxxing Jane Doe: X and Substack Host Campaign to Unmask Cornell Rape Accuser

Her attorney, Thomas Guiffra, told CNN on Sunday, according to The Verge, “She’s not doing well. She’s under siege on social media, where people are trying to identify her.”

The campaign is not hidden. The Verge reported that X and Substack are not doing anything to stop users from harassing women they believe are connected to the rape case, as well as women who are not. Targeted harassment and intimidation campaigns were a hallmark of the backlash to #MeToo, and were once organized on sites like Kiwi Farms and 4chan. The effort to unmask Jane Doe is unfolding on mainstream social media platforms, according to the report.

Jane Doe’s identity is not a total secret. The Verge reported it is known to her attorneys, the judge presiding over the case, the seven men she accuses of rape, and their attorneys. In civil cases, a plaintiff’s anonymity is ultimately up to the judge, who weighs several factors, including whether identifying the plaintiff by name will put them at risk of physical or mental injury.

“In New York, there’s no automatic right to proceed anonymously,” Annie Seifullah, a founding partner at the victims’ rights firm Incendii Law, told The Verge. Still, she said, “the law recognizes that survivors’ lives are routinely put on trial, and that forcing them to sue under their real names would keep many victims of sexual violence from coming forward at all.” The Verge added that journalistic ethics guides typically suggest showing sensitivity to victims of alleged sex crimes, and reporters often allow people alleging abuse to do so anonymously if their identity can be independently corroborated.

The attempt to expose Jane Doe began on X, according to The Verge. Substack author and podcast host Michael Tracey, who is perhaps best known for his skepticism toward allegations made about Jeffrey Epstein, solicited information about her. Tracey said he considered her identity fair game “since her lawsuit didn’t hesitate to name & shame 7 of her peers as gang-rapists.” Aidan Thompson, founder of the AF Post, a publication dedicated to articulating “the ideas, beliefs, and values of the America First Movement,” also asked for help identifying Jane Doe. “Beev, please help me discover the Cornell girl,” he posted on September 29th, referring to the “burnerverse,” a network of anonymous X accounts whose members discuss college sports and wage harassment campaigns against women with equal zeal, The Verge reported.

Katie McKay, a senior associate at C.A. Goldberg, a victims’ rights firm that specializes in tech-facilitated abuse, told The Verge: “The fact that people are trying so hard to dox her and are harassing her and others — women they just think might be her — underscores how serious her privacy interest really is.” She added, “Obviously the anonymity is necessary. It’s protecting her, to some extent, from even more harassment, even more targeting and retaliation.”

X’s terms of service expressly prohibit users from sharing a person’s private information without their consent and from threatening to do so, The Verge reported. The site has also banned people who post the alleged names of pseudonymous users. But non-users’ names and photos are not considered “private information,” even if they can be used to dig up actual private details like a phone number or home address. X’s rules also say users “may not target others with abuse or harassment, or encourage other people to do so,” but the platform is flooded with posts disparaging women believed to be Jane Doe. X did not respond to a request for comment.

On X, Thompson posted photos and biographical details of a woman he claimed was Jane Doe, according to The Verge. Tracey later identified the same woman as Jane Doe on his Substack, claiming to have seen her name on court records. In fact, Tracey got the name from a court records aggregator, a website that, according to disinformation researcher Jared Holt, was registered in mid-September and seems to selectively post information about polarizing cases, like Clavicular’s and Lindsay Clancy’s.

Despite Tracey’s repeated assertions that Jane Doe’s identity was a matter of public interest, many comments on his Substack post focused on the purported Jane Doe’s sex appeal and how this related to the veracity of her allegations, The Verge reported.