A recording of a closed-door meeting revealed some faculty sought to delay the vote, but others urged immediacy

Faculty members at Cornell University are pressing ahead with a no-confidence vote in campus leadership over its handling of a gang-rape scandal involving students at a fraternity at the Ivy League institution.

Cornell professors on Wednesday discussed, at an emotional faculty meeting, how the school’s leadership tackled a woman’s report that she was raped by at least seven male students at a fraternity house in 2024.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Psychopatriarchy is jet fuel to racism, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism

For those of us who have spent our lives trying to dismantle this endlessly destructive paradigm of patriarchy, it has become increasingly clear in recent months that something more terrifying is afoot.

The wheels are off the cart. We are in the midst of a chaotic, demented acceleration of the most violent and cruel aspects of this system which has evolved into what I am calling Psychopatriarchy.

V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls

That ’70s Show actor was sentenced to 30 years in prison for two counts of rape against two women, who were also Scientologists

Danny Masterson has lost the appeal of his rape conviction, meaning his 30-year prison sentence has been upheld.

The actor, best known for his role on That ’70s Show, was convicted in 2023 of two counts of rape against two women in 2003, while a third charge relating to a third plaintiff, who alleged she was raped by Masterson in 2001, was quashed.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander sentenced to prison in New York after being convicted in sex trafficking case

Three Florida brothers who exploited the wealth and influence of their family’s luxury real estate business to drug and rape dozens of women were each sentenced to 30 years in prison in New York on Tuesday for sex trafficking.

Twins Oren and Alon Alexander, 39, and Tal Alexander, 40, were convicted in March on multiple charges after a five-week trial heard details of years of sexual assaults committed in Miami, New York and other high-end locations including the Hamptons; Aspen, Colorado; and on a Caribbean cruise.

Agreement with more than 1,300 victims of clergy members and lay leaders would resolve long legal fight

The Catholic archdiocese of New York is finalizing a settlement for at least $800m with more than 1,300 people who said they were sexually abused by clergy members and lay leaders, according to one of the plaintiff’s attorneys.

The agreement would resolve a long legal fight, as well as reportedly reduce the risk of the diocese going bankrupt.

Woman alleging frat-house rape has privacy and safety issues outweighing need to publicly identify her, judge says

The woman at the center ⁠of rape allegations against students at Cornell University can continue using a pseudonym in ⁠her lawsuit, a ⁠judge ​has ruled.

The New York state judge Phaedra Perry-Bond ruled on Friday that the woman’s ⁠privacy interests – particularly concerns for her safety – outweighed any need to publicly disclose her identity ⁠in court proceedings.

New Mexico lawsuit claims ‘in exchange for furthering Epstein’s criminal project, his associates received generous salaries’

The attorney general of New Mexico on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime attorney, Darren Indyke, and Epstein’s longtime accountant, Richard Kahn, accusing them of having “facilitated and concealed” Epstein’s crimes, and is seeking to stop them from being paid by Epstein’s estate while the litigation plays out.

The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the district of New Mexico, names Kahn and Indyke as defendants both in their individual capacity, and in their capacity as co-executors of Epstein’s estate. The complaint also names Epstein’s estate, and the 1953 Trust, which holds the estate’s assets.

Scott Peyton joined the Anglicans after the crime against his son. Then the Catholic church officially expelled him

The Roman Catholic church has upheld the excommunication of a Louisiana deacon who resigned from the clergy after a priest molested his son.

Scott Peyton learned of the decision by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) – the Vatican entity in charge of Catholic clerical discipline – on Friday in a meeting with the bishop of the diocese of Lafayette, J Douglas Deshotel. The DDF cited technical grounds in rejecting Peyton’s appeal, saying he had joined an Anglican congregation, “published [that] fact … on social media” and therefore refused to submit to the Catholic pope, who since May 2025 has been Leo XIV.

Students say the school is more interested in scapegoating fraternities than in committing to institutional change

In the wake of a lawsuit over an alleged gang-rape that took place at Cornell University in 2024, the school announced this week that it would be suspending parties and social gatherings at fraternity houses for the remainder of the academic year.

Last month, a former student, referred to in court documents by the pseudonym “Jane Doe”, filed a civil lawsuit against multiple parties, including the university, accusing seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of sexually assaulting her at a party at their fraternity house on campus in October 2024. All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied wrongdoing, and none have been criminally charged.

‘Unfair’ immigration and asylum bill could fail to support sexual violence survivors, anti-slavery commissioner says

Survivors of sexual violence could wrongly be denied recognition as victims of human trafficking under credibility tests in a new UK law, the independent anti-slavery commissioner has warned.

Eleanor Lyons said the measures in the immigration and asylum bill were fundamentally unfair and could lead to many more victims of slavery and trafficking, including those allegedly abused by Mohamed Al Fayed, being denied support.

Donaldson was found guilty in June of 18 counts of sexual abuse including one rape between 1985 and 2008

Jeffrey Donaldson has been sentenced to 15 years for sexual offences against two women who were children when he abused them, completing what was described as a “catastrophic descent into disgrace”.

The sentence at Newry crown court on Thursday sealed the downfall of a former Democratic Unionist party (DUP) leader who once dominated unionism in Northern Ireland.

The popularity of Hand’s book Not the Perfect Victim is the latest twist in a story that puts the spotlight on how society responds to sexual assault allegations

Nikita Hand had a compelling reason to not pursue a civil rape case against Conor McGregor. She was, in her own view, an imperfect victim.

The day of the assault, she had been partying with alcohol and cocaine before contacting McGregor, who took her to a Dublin hotel.

University bans parties at frat houses for rest of academic year to conduct ‘thorough review’ of campus Greek life

Cornell University has announced that it is suspending parties and other social gatherings at fraternity houses for the rest of the academic year amid intensifying backlash over its handling of allegations that a female student was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house in 2024.

The university has also said that Cornell will involve New York state police in investigating sex crimes on campus.

As an alleged 2024 gang-rape at Cornell comes to light, universities are grappling with a choice: student safety or alumni donations

Daniel R Schwarz, an 85-year-old English literature emeritus professor, still works at Cornell University after 59 years because he loves teaching and “watching young people grow”, he said.

Most of his students, he also said, have not been part of fraternities at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, where seven men allegedly gang-raped a woman in 2024.

After Susan Brison was raped and left for dead, her husband, Thomas, did his best to support her. They are still together, while many relationships collapse after a sexual assault. What did he get right – and wrong? And why did she want him to write about her ordeal?

On a hot, still, silent noon, at a junction of dirt roads in rural France, Thomas Trezise stood scanning the horizon, looking and listening for his wife. He tried to soothe a deep foreboding. Susan Brison had headed out for a morning walk two hours ago. How could she be gone so long?

This was 4 July 1990, the start of what was meant to be a busy summer. Trezise and Brison were both assistant professors in the US – he in French at Princeton and Brison in philosophy at Dartmouth – and had just arrived at the remote farmhouse of Trezise’s French colleague. Life seemed packed with promise. “I’d found someone with whom I really wanted to spend my life and I just felt very, very lucky,” says Trezise. “Susan and I had fallen quickly and deeply in love – it was magical – and at that point, we were also trying to conceive a child. We loved being in France. I kind of felt I’d found my way. It was a good place … until it happened.”

Gibney, 77, will face justice for abusing athletes in the 1970s and 80s after decades of effort to track and extradite him

More than half a century after he started sexually abusing children, and enjoyed prestige as Ireland’s Olympic swimming coach before fleeing to the United States, George Gibney is to face justice.

The 77-year-old will be sentenced at the central criminal court in Dublin on Monday for abusing four young female athletes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Every time a story about a woman being raped becomes headline news, the same pattern repeats without fail

If she really was raped, why didn’t she speak up earlier? Why did she get drunk? Why was she wearing such a short skirt? Why did she walk home by herself?

God, it’s exhausting, isn’t it? Every time a story about a woman being raped becomes headline news, the same pattern repeats without fail. People accuse the woman of asking for it. They question her motives; they scrutinize her looks; they attack her character. And without fail, she is punished for speaking up.

While most of the crowd at a Stop Sexual Violence rally in New York City was women, men of all ages were in attendance too

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered at city halls and college campuses across the country on Thursday to demand an end to sexual violence. The nationwide rallies followed weeks of public outcry over the mishandling of campus sexual assault cases at Cornell University and Louisiana State University.

The protest organizers – including Women’s March, Feminist Generation and Me Too International – demanded justice for Jane Doe, who said she was drugged and gang-raped by seven students at a Cornell frat party; Kendall Francis, who said she was raped by an LSU football player; and all survivors harmed “from the frat house to the White House”. They also called for reform of Title IX, a set of protections for sexual misconduct victims and LGBTQ+ students that the Trump administration has slowly stripped away.

Two women, now in their 50s, say MoD refuses to take responsibility for abuse they suffered as children

Anne and Jane* were 10 years old when a member of staff connected with their British military school in Bünde, Germany is alleged to have singled them out and sexually abused them.

Now in their 50s, the women say he coerced them into keeping silent, and for decades they had only discussed their experiences with one another. “He said if we ever told anybody, then our fathers would lose their jobs and they would be kicked out of the army,” Jane said. “Being two young 10-year-old girls who basically followed their fathers around the world, their jobs were our lives.”

A performance piece from 2014 has gone viral in response to an allegation of rape at Cornell University. But with such defiant pieces stretching back hundreds of years, will things ever change?

In September 2014, Emma Sulkowicz began to carry a blue mattress weighing 23kg around her university campus. The mattress was similar to the ones New York’s Columbia University used in its dorm rooms, where Sulkowicz said she had been raped by a fellow student two years earlier. Her performance/endurance artwork constituted her visual art senior thesis, drawing attention to the lack of criminal charges brought against her alleged attacker and his continued presence at the university. As she hauled it across campus, others could choose to assist her with her burden. Many did. She recorded responses to the piece in a diary.

“I could have taken my pillow,” she told the writer Jessica Valenti at the time. “But I want people to see how it weighs down a person to be ignored by the school administration and harassed by police.” Sulkowicz would carry the mattress, she said, for as long as her alleged attacker remained at Columbia. And so she ended up carrying it all the way to graduation where, helped by other women, she took it on stage. The university president refused to shake her hand, turning away from her instead.