Swatting adds to threats against Jane Doe in Cornell seven case

Attorney says officers pointed weapons at family after fake tip

The woman known as Jane Doe in the Cornell seven case is receiving threats from people who have discovered her identity, according to her attorney, Thomas Giuffra. Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi detailed the threats in a column published Oct. 10, writing that Giuffra described his client as terrified for her safety.

Mahdawi wrote that Doe “was even the victim of a swatting episode this week,” a form of harassment in which someone places a false call to emergency services with the goal of sending armed officers to the victim’s location. Giuffra told CNN that officers pointed weapons at Doe’s family on Tuesday evening after a fake tip about someone “killing people in the house.”

“If you had a trigger-happy cop, or somebody had done the wrong thing, somebody could have ended up dead,” Giuffra said.

Mahdawi wrote that nobody “ended up dead on that particular occasion,” but that Doe’s “character is systematically being assassinated.” The column argues the response to Doe repeats a pattern that follows other women whose sexual assault accusations become national news.

The column traces that pattern to Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Brett Kavanaugh, then a Supreme Court nominee, of assaulting her when they were both teenagers in the 1980s. Ford and her family reportedly had to flee their home because of threats and harassment, and, according to her lawyers, her email was hacked and she was impersonated online. Kavanaugh, the column noted, was praised by Donald Trump and now holds a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.

The column draws a similar parallel to E Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in 1996. Trump said Carroll was not his “type” and was “totally lying.” His lawyer asked Carroll why she did not scream during the alleged attack and why she did not go to the police at the time. Carroll’s life was upended, and the Trump administration opened a criminal investigation into her, Mahdawi wrote.

Mahdawi also cited recent commentary about Doe. Caitlin Flanagan wrote in the Free Press: “What attracts women to those parties – late at night, like Jane Doe – to walk alone to a fraternity house and take her chances?” and “What she’s really looking for is a man. And she has no idea how to find a good one.” Mahdawi wrote that the underlying message was that Doe “should have known better than to go to a frat party” and was “asking for it.”

Rightwing commentator Megyn Kelly, who has been vocal about her experience of sexual harassment at Fox News, went further and attacked Doe’s looks, Mahdawi wrote. “No one will even consider the possibility that this woman made a decision to get it on with four men total, not seven, and enjoyed it because, I’m just going to be honest, she’s not the most attractive gal,” Kelly said on a recent episode of her podcast. “She’s extremely beefy in like her arms and her legs. She has a whole video online talking about her cankles. And she possibly enjoyed being admired. This is how women make these mistakes.”

Mahdawi wrote, “It should go without saying that being raped is not a ‘mistake’.” She wrote that “a woman should be able to go to a party and have a drink and walk home at night and wear whatever she likes without it being an invitation for men to rape her.”

A photograph accompanying the column shows a Stop Sexual Violence protest in Seattle, Washington, held Thursday in the wake of the Cornell University rape allegations.

The column, published under the heading “The Week in Patriarchy,” also rounds up other items from the week.

The column notes that Bernadette Greene Placentia told the Phoenix New Times that she was attacked in August while walking across a parking lot in the middle of the night to fix a damaged campaign sign. “Speaking publicly about what happened has been incredibly difficult for Bernadette,” a campaign spokesperson said. “She chose to share her story because she knows many survivors struggle in silence, and she hopes that by speaking about her experience, others will know they are not alone.”

The column also cites an August Washington Post report that the Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles to amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints. One of these influencers, according to the column, is retired Army Colonel Kurt Schlichter, whom Mahdawi described as “a raging misogynist.” This week, Wired highlighted Schlichter’s writings, including an article for Townhall in which he argues “liberal women” could end western civilization. “These self-righteous crones are a pestilence, a plague upon Western society … whose antics, if unchecked, will inevitably lead to the fall of civilization,” he wrote.

The column also relays a report by Gaza’s health ministry, summarized by Drop Site news, according to which nearly 22,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza over three years, with more than 71,000 orphaned. The figure includes 5,444 children under five and 1,125 infants under one year old.

The column notes that Zehut party chair Moshe Feiglin, who is running in the October elections with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, told the Jerusalem Post that the whole of Gaza should have been emptied of Palestinians and annexed by Israel. In another interview, on i24News’s Israel Out Loud, Feiglin said everyone in Gaza should leave, “down to babies born prematurely.”

The column also notes that at a Thursday press conference, when asked to define socialism, a speaker said: “Classically, you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers … [But now] what it actually means in the American context is, that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”

The column also turns to Guilfoyle — the US ambassador to Greece, former fiancee of Donald Trump Jr., former prosecuting attorney and Fox News host, and first lady of San Francisco during her ex-husband Gavin Newsom’s tenure as mayor of the city. According to the Wall Street Journal, the column notes, days before her confirmation hearing last year Guilfoyle asked a Trump donor to pay her $100,000 American Express bill in exchange for access to the administration. Guilfoyle’s attorney has disputed the authenticity of text messages cited in the reporting.

The column notes that a pioneering computer scientist, hired as the first programmer for the Apollo project at MIT, helped launch software engineering as an industry and, in that role, led the team of software engineers who powered the first moon landing.

The column cites Bloomberg reporting that, according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, more than 100,000 American high school girls played flag football at school during the 2025-26 academic year — a 48% jump from the previous year and an increase of more than 550% from five years ago. The column says the growth is largely because the NFL has poured $192m into the sport, which it describes as safer and simpler than traditional US football, and notes the idea is that childhood participation will translate into fandom — and profits for the NFL — as an adult.

The column also describes a sculpture called the Orange Plague, showing an unrobed and gold Trump sitting on the shoulders of another man while wielding a large golf club. The work was only on display for a day at the parliament’s Winston Churchill building in France, and the sculptor has said he was “astonished” that the exhibition took place at all.

The column closes by noting that Los Angeles County recently documented its first rabid raccoon in more than 50 years.