Rape-claim fallout
Gal ruining me with ‘false’ tale of NY frat-party sex attack: suit
A Long Island woman’s unsubstantiated rape allegation after a drunken night in an upstate frat house has “destroyed” a New Jersey man’s life, he says in a $6 million lawsuit.
Catherine Reddington, 22, claims on social media that Alex Goldman, also 22, raped her vaginally and anally in a bedroom of Syracuse University’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity after a party in April 2017.
She went to the police and the university with her accusations and has posted her brutal tale of assault on Facebook in a campaign that Goldman says got him fired from his summer job and could get him tossed from his new college.
“I woke up in Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity in Alex Goldman’s bed confused, bloody, bruised, with ripped clothing and splinter [s],” Reddington wrote last month. “Alex Goldman is a rapist.”
But Goldman — and the Onondaga County district attorney — tell a different story.
A months-long investigation, which included a medical exam, rape kit and bloodwork within 26 hours of the incident, found no evidence Reddington was assaulted, drugged or even had a sexual encounter with Goldman, according to court papers and the DA.
The two engineering majors woke up fully clothed in Goldman’s bed, both claiming no memory of the night before.
Investigators found itt “impossible to deter-mine what, if anything, occurred that evening between Ms. Redding-ton and Mr. Goldman. There is no credible proof of any sexual con-duct in this case, con-sensual or nonconsensual,” an assistant DA wrote in a November 2017 letter explaining why Goldman was never charged.
Reddington slammed the letter on Facebook, calling it “disgusting.”
But her accusations got Goldman booted from Syracuse in the fall, he claims. The school said it followed state and federal law in handling the complaint but declined to say why Goldman was expelled.
Now Reddington’s social-media posts targeting Goldman’s new school and employer show she’s out to “publicly tarnish his reputation and wreak havoc on his personal life and that of his family,” he says in his Brooklyn federal court defamation lawsuit.
Reddington posted Goldman’s picture and links to his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles in lengthy messages accusing him of being a serial rapist. She added a #MeToo hashtag and linked to his current school, the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.
“I write this post because this is not the first time Alex Goldman has raped someone and I want to make sure that it is the last,” she claimed in a post last month.
She also posted a screenshot of what appeared to be a message exchange with Goldman’s employer, Bohler Engineering, and crowed that he was fired.
“Thank you to everyone for reposting and spreading the word on the monster that Alex Goldman is,” Reddington wrote. “Thank you to Bohler Engineering for taking a stand against tthis disgusting excuse of a man.” Bohler didn’t return a call for comment.
“What she has alleged about this office and this young man is simply not accurate,” Onondaga District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick said. “I don’t know what her motivation is for that.”
Goldman’s lawyer, Seth Zuckerman, said his client would “do everything possible to recover his good name.”
Reddington called it “a matter in the courts” and declined to comment further.