Ohio University student attacked by Internet trolls after she’s misidentified as alleged rape victim in online video

An Ohio University sophomore has deactivated her social media accounts and is afraid to leave her house after she was falsely identified as the woman who reported she’d been raped in an incident captured on cell phone video by a passerby.
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The Daily Mail reported that Cassidy was identified as the woman from the blurry video by the Twitter account @Anon_Central, which has more than 170,000 followers.

The account linked to a posting on the men’s rights message board Crimes Against Fathers that includes a clear image of the alleged victim’s face alongside photos of Cassidy, in addition to her address and links to her social media profiles and organizations in which she’s active.

“A woman named Rachel Cassidy was getting oral sex performed on her by a man on a public street, and a bunch of guys walked up and started filming it,” the posting says. “Well, the videos obviously went viral and Ohio University was threatening to kick her out, and so she changed her story and claimed it was ‘rape,’ in order to avoid getting expelled. Now the guy is facing criminal charges because this evil woman decided to make a false rape accusation against him.”

The person who posted that information, a prolific poster who calls himself JohnRambo, asked for “hard evidence” to confirm whether or not the woman in the video was Cassidy.

He also complains that Cassidy’s sorority took down a photo of her from its website, asking “WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE?”

A subsequent posting by JohnRambo lists the contact information, photographs and disparaging remarks about the physical appearance of the university’s dean of students and urges others to demand the name of the alleged victim in exchange for removing Cassidy’s contact information.

Other Twitter users posted Cassidy’s name and accused her of lying about the sexual assault, and her parents said the experience has been a nightmare.

“Maybe it’s a reflection on where we are in society today, but people have been falsely identified and gone off to prison,” said her father, Steve Cassidy. “Not the case with Rachel; she’s been falsely identified and it’s led to a horrific attack on her reputation, and this will set the record straight and she’ll be able to move on. It’s a parent’s nightmare; it’s her nightmare.”