A 22-year-old former Cornell University student was left seeking accountability through a civil lawsuit this month after the institution and law enforcement failed to file criminal charges in an October 2024 case involving her.
The woman alleged that she was violated by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity on campus after being given an illicit substance, but the consequences they faced were limited to short suspensions, essay writing assignments, and participation in educational workshops.
Academy Award-nominated actress Florence Pugh called the alleged conduct sickening in an Instagram post on Sunday, September 27, though her post took a completely different turn when she accused the platform of suppressing her statement about the case.
“Don’t protect r*pists. It’s pathetic behaviour,” she wrote as she criticized the social media giant.
Pugh called on men to speak up in the statement she claimed Instagram had restricted
Florence Pugh criticized men for not supporting the Cornell student’s account as strongly as women, while sharing that the allegations had left her feeling “uneasy and sick and anxious.”
“This is really the moment where we need our men to be as horrified and as sickened as us. You need to be leading conversations about how we change the allowance and complicity of this behaviour as much as we are.
“How can you expect us to trust that it’s ‘not all men’ when in moments like this, many of you stay quiet?” she asked.
In a follow-up message the same day, she accused Instagram of shadowbanning her statement.
“Instagram decided to block my post from getting in front of the right people. Tut tut tut. Oh dear. That doesn’t look great, does it?” she wrote.
Later, she said her post was still being blurred for some users and claimed she had learned a “lovely lesson” from the incident.
“If you speak up about it, we will silence you,” she wrote.
“Am I being censored for talking about ra*e?” she went on to ask.
Instagram cited its sensitive content policy to justify the action
A spokesperson for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, addressed Pugh’s allegations in an interview with TMZ on Monday.
“We have rules about content describing s**ual violence and exploitation in order to protect victims, warn people before seeing content they might find upsetting and prevent teens from seeing content not appropriate for their age,” they said.
“A label was initially applied to the post, warning people that the content may be sensitive before they were able to click through.”
The representative said the warning was removed after a further review, during which the company determined the post “qualified for newsworthy allowance.”
“The post is now live and visible without restriction for adults,” they said.
A look at Pugh’s feed appeared to confirm the update, with her post about the allegations having garnered 1.3 million likes as of this writing.
The district attorney’s office has reopened the Cornell case with plans to present the matter to a grand jury
In a statement given to ABC News earlier today, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said he was reviewing the student’s lawsuit after she presented a “dramatically different” account from the one she gave police during the 2024 investigation.
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He said she did not claim that she was “d**gged without her knowledge.”
She also did not “allege that she was forced to engage in any acts” or that she was “physically helpless or unconscious at any point during the time,” according to him.
Regarding the purpose of the reopened investigation, the DA said his office wanted to determine whether additional evidence could alter their assessment of the matter.
“It’s our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe’s cooperation,” Van Houten added.
A university update shed light on the fraternity’s status on campus
Cornell’s vice president for university relations, Kyle Kimball, issued a statement on September 21, calling the student’s allegations “deeply disturbing.”
He said the Ivy League institution’s offices of civil rights, student conduct, and community standards conducted several inquiries at the time.
“The Xi chapter of Chi Phi fraternity remains barred from our campus,” the official added.
He cited federal privacy laws as a reason for not disclosing the identities of the individuals involved, but said the university would respond “in detail” to the allegations through the legal process.
Thomas Giuffra, a New York attorney with a history of representing survivors in civil lawsuits against high-profile figures including Harvey Weinstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Jeffrey Epstein, is representing the ex-Cornell student.
“This story is horrendous,” a netizen said about the Cornell case
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