Why would 3 women + 1 guy conspire to frame Nungesser?


This is a question that has been posed in response to my Daily Beast piece: is it really more improbable that a rape victim would have friendly, chatty Facebook conversations with her rapist than that three women (and now one man) would conspire to frame an innocent man for rape with no apparent motive?

A reminder: first of all, I have never said that Nungesser is definitively innocent, only that I think the evidence leans in that direction. But here's one scenario that I think very easily explains the complainants' motives *if* he is innocent:

Sulkowicz comes to feel that she was coerced into anal sex by Nungesser. When she talks to his ex, "Natalie," and concludes that Natalie's experiences with Paul were abusive, this conversation reinforces them both in the belief that their sexual experiences with Nungesser were non-consensual. (Perhaps not coincidentally, this was all happening in spring 2013, just around the time of the Steubenville trial, when there was a huge upsurge of "rape culture" rhetoric, especially on college campuses.) However, Sulkowicz decides to embellish her account with violent details (choking and hitting) because she has heard that rape survivors often have a hard time securing a conviction unless they report a violent attack.

Incidentally, we have literally NO idea what the substance of Natalie's complaint was or whether was she was alleging would qualify as sexual assault even under university policy, let alone in court. (FWIW, Nungesser told me that her complaint stated that she felt she could only see him if they had sex. But obviously, he's hardly an objective source, and all the records are sealed.) Is it possible that she was being abused and didn't recognize it as abuse at the time? Of course it is. Is it possible that she revised her memories of their interaction after the fact and reinterpreted it as abusive even though it wasn't? Of course it is.

Meanwhile, the Alpha Delta Phi officer sends out the group email revealing that Nungesser has been charged with raping a female member of the society. She wants him out of the house, and I'm sure many other residents do as well. Is it really that much of a stretch that "Josie" would file a complaint against Nungesser -- either made up, or possibly magnified from a more innocuous incident? From her point of view, she's not conspiring against an innocent man; she's doing this in the good cause of getting a rapist out of the house.

As for the new complaint from the male student (who claims that he reported his assault to the ADP before Sulkowicz came forward, yet there's no mention of him in the ADP officer's email seeking Nungesser's expulsion...), surely it's ENTIRELY possible that he would make it up to help Sulkowicz, a national heroine of the movement against campus rape, achieve (what he sees as) justice against her rapist.

So it's actually quite possible that Nungesser is completely innocent and that none of the parties see themselves as framing an innocent man.

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