Esat Braveboy

Introduction

Esat Braveboy is a Cornell University student named as a defendant in a previously unreported 2023 lawsuit that accuses him of repeatedly sexually assaulting two female classmates and alleges the university ignored repeated warnings about him. The suit, brought under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, was unearthed by the nonprofit newsroom New York Focus and reported by the New York Post on November 9, 2026, while Cornell was already engulfed by a separate gang-rape lawsuit against seven fraternity members. Court records show that Braveboy’s motion to dismiss the case was denied alongside the university’s, and the case is scheduled to move to trial. Braveboy has denied all allegations of abuse in court filings; no criminal charges have been filed against him.

Background Information

Public records disclose little about Braveboy beyond his Cornell enrollment: New York Focus, which withheld his name to protect the litigants’ privacy, identified him only as a male student, while the public docket for Ozturk et al. v. Cornell University et al. lists “Braveboy, Esat” as a defendant alongside Cornell University and its board of trustees. The lawsuit was filed on November 10, 2023 in Tompkins County Supreme Court, where it is presided over by Justice Mark G. Masler, by two former Cornell students — whose names this page also withholds — represented by the Law Offices of Michael S. Lamonsoff. The Adult Survivors Act was a landmark state law that temporarily allowed adult survivors of sexual abuse to bring civil claims outside New York’s usual statute of limitations.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Accused in an unadjudicated civil lawsuit of drug-facilitated sexual assault and rape; no criminal charges have been filed, and he denies the allegations. A trial court has denied his motion to dismiss, and the case is bound for trial.

According to sworn affidavits summarized by New York Focus, one plaintiff alleged that Braveboy repeatedly assaulted her between June and “September/October” 2018 on Cornell’s Ithaca campus, and the second alleged she was “sexually, physically, and verbally assaulted” by the same student in May 2021; the complaint itself offers few details of the alleged encounters. Their lawyer alleged in the filing that Braveboy was permitted to commit “drug-facilitated sexual assault, rape and to sodomize students” because Cornell ignored reports of his “egregious sexual misconduct against college students,” and claimed “at least five-ten others are known to have been sexually abused” by him, “and it is believed that many more were abused but have yet to come forward.” The Post’s report carried the same allegations. Both women said they filed complaints with Cornell’s Title IX office: the first said she believed other students had complained about him before her own filing in fall 2018, and the second wrote that a third, unnamed student filed a complaint against him around August 2021.

The suit alleges that despite the Title IX complaints Cornell “continued to allow Braveboy to commit sexual abuse against Plaintiffs and others” — that it “did nothing to investigate,” in the Post’s summary. The second plaintiff’s complaint was dismissed after Braveboy left the university, an outcome that Title IX attorney Elizabeth Abdnour, a former Title IX investigator who now represents survivors in Michigan, tied to federal rules adopted during the first Trump administration in 2020 that formally released schools from any obligation to keep investigating students who graduate or withdraw. It is unclear whether either woman’s allegations were ever reported to law enforcement: Ithaca police told New York Focus they held no records listing Braveboy as a suspect. Braveboy, for his part, denied all allegations of abuse in court filings, per New York Focus, and his lawyer did not respond to the outlet’s repeated requests for comment.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The report landed amid a year of extraordinary scrutiny of Cornell’s handling of sexual assault. Abdnour asked: “If there were this many complaints that they were investigating, why hadn’t they gotten him off their campus?” — and answered, “Cornell is doing exactly what this system is intended to do, and right now, this system is intended to silence survivors.” Cornell, which did not respond to New York Focus’s repeated requests for comment on the 2023 suit, has been under national scrutiny since September, when a former student’s lawsuit over an alleged 2024 assault by multiple men at a Chi Phi fraternity event became public; the men sued in that case have also denied the claims, and none has been criminally charged. University president Michael Kotlikoff said in an October video message that the institution “must do better,” the university appointed former deputy attorney general Sally Yates to review how it addresses sexual-assault complaints, and Attorney General Letitia James last week announced a reinvestigation of the fraternity case by a former federal prosecutor.

Current Status

The 2023 case has been in the discovery phase for about a year. A trial court denied both Cornell’s motion and Braveboy’s motion to dismiss the suit; the university then appealed the dismissal of that motion and has filed repeated letters with the court citing alleged difficulty obtaining evidence from the plaintiffs, according to New York Focus. The case is scheduled to move to trial next year. No criminal charges have been filed against Braveboy, and Ithaca police hold no records naming him as a suspect; the second Title IX complaint against him was closed after he left the university. His current whereabouts have not been disclosed in available reporting, and the Tompkins County docket lists the case as open before Justice Masler.

Impact on Their Career/Life

For Braveboy, the suit means a named-defendant civil trial over some of the most serious allegations made against a Cornell student in recent years, with his motion to dismiss already behind him. For Cornell, the case undercuts any suggestion that its mishandling problem was a single fraternity incident: the same Title IX office, the same campus, a different accused student, and — if the plaintiffs prove their claims — a years-long pattern reaching back to 2018 that predates the scandal now driving state and federal scrutiny of the university.

Sources

• New York Post, “Cornell rocked by another sex assault scandal involving up to 10 students,” November 9, 2026. source
• New York Focus, “Cornell Is Embroiled in Another Sexual Assault Lawsuit,” November 9, 2026. source
• UniCourt, “Ozturk, Gizem et al vs. Cornell University et al,” case page, accessed November 9, 2026. source