Paul Nungesser, the Columbia student whom campus-sexual-assault activist Emma Sulkowicz has accused of rape, spoke out in an extensive Daily Beast interview this week in an effort to clear his name. Nungesser was accused by three different women, including Sulkowicz, of sexual assault, but categorically denies those claims. Now, according to Jezebel, Nungesser has a fourth accuser: a male Columbia student who “identifies as queer and black.”
The current Columbia senior, known as “Adam,” was close friends with Nungesser when Nungesser allegedly sexually assaulted him in his dorm room during an emotional discussion in 2011, Jezebel reports. Though Adam says he reported the incident to a student organization they both were members of, he declined to file a Title IX case until fall 2014, when he heard Sulkowicz’s story. He told Jezebel he waited so long because of “issues that face many male survivors of sexual assault — denial, fear that nobody would believe him, fear that even defining himself as a survivor would somehow damage others.” His case is pending.
Jezebel also published Sulkowicz’s annotations of Facebook chat transcripts and emails that Nungesser provided to the Daily Beast to show that Sulkowicz and another victim, known as “Josie,” were warm and friendly with him both before and after the alleged rapes. Sulkowicz contextualized the conversation, noting that Nungesser was one of her “closest friends” freshman year. After the alleged incident on August 27, Sulkowicz’s annotations show she was trying to be polite to get Nungesser to meet with her and talk about what happened. Once it was clear he wasn’t interested in doing so, the two eventually stopped speaking.
