#IAmJaneDoe: online support campaign in US university rape case

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Thousands of American women have taken to social media to support the alleged victim of a gang rape at an elite US university, in a case that sparked a national outcry, after a political commentator threatened to reveal her identity.

Messages of support with the hashtag #IAmJaneDoe — a pseudonym commonly used in the US legal system to protect a person’s identity — have proliferated on TikTok, X and Instagram since a man named Michael Tracey asked people to help him find the former Cornell University student in order to “evaluate her veracity.”

In a symbolic gesture, women wrote posts and made videos claiming to be the alleged victim, in a bid to make it harder to identify her and defend the right of sexual assault victims to remain anonymous.