Author responds to backlash after using Cornell case to ‘promote’ her steamy dark fantasy book

An author of adult fantasy books has been forced to defend herself after what many people viewed as her “promoting” her upcoming novel using the Cornell case. 

*This article contains details that may be upsetting*

The alleged rape at Cornell is said to have happened in 2024, but people are now talking about it after Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the University and the men widely referred to as the “Cornell Seven.” She claims to have been raped for hours in an incident involving alcohol and ketamine.

Vile group chat messages quickly surfaced online, and they showed Jane Doe being referred to as a “shop” other students could use. New York state prosecutors have now reopened the case. 

Amid that, people argued that author Jessica Williams used the story to “promote” her upcoming series. Here’s the full picture: 

Jessica Williams has since deleted this Cornell post 

In October, Jessica Williams is set to launch a new five-book series called Threads of Fate, with the first instalment called The Spark of Rebellion. 

On Instagram, she posted a lengthy statement that started with: “Seven men accused. One university sued. An entire culture under scrutiny. Let’s talk about the Cornell allegations… And the exact reason I wrote my first dark fantasy romance series through the lens of feminine rage.”

Set to Everything’s On Fire But I’m Fine by As December Falls, the post continued to outline the Cornell story: The allegations, the group chat messages, statistics on campus sexual assaults, her own unrelated experiences with the Greek system, and the complicity of other men. 

Credit: Instagram

But here’s where people got angry, because the author jarringly connected it to her book. 

“This is the exact question inside my new dark fantasy romance series, Threads of Fate. What happens when men actively commit violence? What happens when others become complicit through obedience, loyalty or silence?” she went on. “What happens when supposedly honourable men serve a brutal system because defying it would cost them everything? And what happens when women stop asking the system to acknowledge their humanity and simply take it?”

She echoed similar sentiments in the final few slides, and it got so much backlash that she deleted the post. 

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She then issued a lengthy apology 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Jessica Williams (@j_a_williams_author)

After the backlash, which included people calling her “horrible” for “exploiting” Jane Doe’s story, she posted another message to her Instagram. 

It read: “I want to respond clearly to the concern that I used a survivor’s trauma to market my book, because that was absolutely not the intention and I apologise to those who believe that it was. My series was written long before the Cornell allegations became public. It’s themes were not inspired by this case, nor was the
post intended to suggest that they were.

“The series grew from anger I have carried for years about institutional power, violence against women and the people who enable that violence through loyalty, silence and inaction. That anger is what made me sit down and write in the first place. My intention in mentioning Threads of Fate was to explain why these questions already exist within my work and why this story affected me so deeply.

She pointed out there was no pre-order link, but that she “understands” the anger the post caused. 

She added: “I absolutely pray that this woman gets the justice she deserves and that the spotlight brought to these issues in the media means asking the uncomfortable questions about those who not only perpetrate these acts but also standby and allow them to happen.

“The news simply exposed, once again, the very culture of complicity 1 bad already written about due to my own fury and experiences with these topics. I should have made that distinction much clearer in the original post and for that I apologise.”

Despite the apology, the post did little to defuse the anger her first statement generated. Some have argued that the issue was never the insinuation that the Cornell story inspired her book. 

The issue, as one person put it, was the “centring” of herself in an unrelated story. 

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