“I am Jane Doe”: on TikTok, thousands of women mobilize to protect the anonymity of a woman victim of rape

For several days, the same phrase has been repeated on TikTok and Instagram: I am Jane Doe. Thousands of women film themselves on camera claiming to be this anonymous young American woman. Some videos have several million views.

Behind this movement, a very specific strategy: protecting the identity of a former student from Cornell University, in the state of New York, who accuses 7 members of a fraternity of having drugged and raped her in 2024.

Deliberately blurring the lines

In the United States, Jane Doe is a generic name used in the legal context to designate a person whose identity must be preserved. The young woman at the heart of this affair filed a civil complaint in September. She also implicates Cornell University, accusing it of having protected the targeted students.

Since then, the case has grown considerably in the United States and some Internet users have tried to find the identity of the complainant. Faced with this online hunt, thousands of women have decided to turn the mechanisms of social networks against those who seek to identify them. They publish videos claiming to be Jane Doe themselves, and some deliberately multiply false leads, false names or false information.

The goal is to flood search engines, algorithms and even artificial intelligence with contradictory information, so that it becomes increasingly difficult to determine who the young woman really is.

Internet users try to reveal his identity

At the end of September, American commentator Michael Tracey, followed by several hundred thousand people on X, called on his subscribers to publicly reveal the identity of the young woman in order – according to him – to be able to judge her “credibility”. Photos presented as coming from the young woman's Instagram account then circulated on social networks. They were accompanied by comments calling into question her words or suggesting that she had, through her behavior or appearance, some responsibility for what she denounced. However, the identity of the woman appearing in these images has not been confirmed.

With the hashtag #IAmJaneDoe, many women in turn talk about sexual assault or violence that they have suffered, sometimes without ever having spoken about it publicly before. They evoke the fear of testifying, the potential reprisals and the silence surrounding sexual violence on certain American campuses. With an idea that comes up regularly: “We could all be Jane Doe”. The movement thus became a surge of solidarity to break the silence. 9 years after #Metoo, the message clearly still needs to be repeated.