The View co-host Sunny Hostin, a former prosecutor, says the press is covering the Cornell University gang rape allegations “inaccurately” and “unfairly,” and that the accused men are entitled to due process before their photos are spread across the internet.
The case stems from a civil lawsuit filed by a Cornell student who claims she was drugged, assaulted, and gang-raped by seven fraternity brothers in 2024. The men, who have come to be known online as the “Cornell 7,” have not been charged with any crime.
The fraternity has released text messages that Hostin says undercut the narrative driving the coverage. Those messages appear to show the accuser willingly taking part in the sexual activity in question.
“The pictures of these young men who have not been charged, not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet,” Hostin said. “I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they’re reporting it unfairly. And while this is something that we have to take very seriously, there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought forth a case.”
Hostin, drawing on her background as a prosecutor, also laid out how New York law treats intoxication and consent.
“Under New York law, voluntary intoxication or drug use that merely impairs judgment, does not legally constitute an inability to consent to sexual activity,” she said. “Right, so that means if you voluntarily ingest drugs, you voluntarily take alcohol, you can agree to have threesomes, which, in her statement, she agreed to have two separate threesomes.”
Prosecutors in New York have since reopened the case, according to ABC News.
The reopening hasn’t stopped a wave of public condemnation aimed at the seven students, much of it from Hollywood figures who have named and pictured the men before any charges have been filed. Actor Josh Gad said the men “brutally violated an innocent girl.” Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay said the goal should be to “ruin the futures” of the accused. Canadian actor Hudson Williams wrote, “Arrest them. Fuck them and fuck Cornell, too!” and posted photos of the seven men on Instagram.
Former South Park writer Toby Morton has gone further, building a website targeting the Cornell 7 and vowing “there will be accountability.”
Hostin’s comments stand out precisely because they cut against that momentum. No one has been charged. No one has been tried. And under the state’s own law, voluntary intoxication does not erase consent. Those are the facts as they currently stand, regardless of how many photos circulate online before a courtroom ever weighs in.
