Cornell rape lawsuit sparks online abuse of namesakes

Asians who share names with men accused in a Cornell University rape lawsuit have received online abuse and threats after internet users tried to identify the accused men.

The lawsuit details an alleged 2024 gang rape of a Cornell University student and names seven accused perpetrators. One of the accused has been identified by US media as a Korean man named Winston Lee. The item says people with the same name, including some outside the United States who do not resemble the accused man, have been wrongly targeted.

One Chinese American finance professional whose LinkedIn profile says he graduated from Cornell in 2020 received messages saying his “future is over” and that he deserved prison. In a TikTok video whose bio says “Not part of Cornell7,” he said he had hired a lawyer after a woman posted his phone number and his parents’ address online.

Another man named Winston Lee posted on TikTok that he is Indonesian and is not the person named in the Cornell case. A Chinese American student at the University of Pennsylvania added a disclaimer to his LinkedIn profile saying he does not go to Cornell.

People with names resembling the other six accused also complained of harassment. Attorney Adam Ford wrote to Cornell University on behalf of former students who belonged to the same Chi Phi fraternity as the accused but graduated before the alleged incident, saying they had been wrongly accused on social media, received death threats and hate mail, and in most cases faced adverse action from employers or higher education institutions.

Mike Rothschild, a researcher who studies conspiracy theories, warned that misidentification can generate false leads and harm innocent people. “The wrongfully accused are often hounded,” he told AFP.