Two female Yale law students, the victims of repeated vicious personal attacks and libelous comments, filed a lawsuit over abusive statements made by Ryan and other anonymous posters on the forums of AutoAdmit.com. And their attorneys are starting the process of outing the chief instigators of this deliberate destruction of the women's reputations, beginning with Matthew C. Ryan.

According to an AP story in yesterday's Boston Globe:

Through subpoenas to Internet service providers, the women have learned the real identities of several other defendants, but are trying to resolve their claims against those people before deciding whether to name them, according to court papers....

The women say Ryan made sexually charged slurs about them on the Web, including a false claim that one of the women had a sexually transmitted disease. The lawsuit also alleges that Ryan encouraged further attacks on the other woman and used anti-Semitic language. Other posts by other defendants included remarks about one plaintiff's breasts....the women's family backgrounds and supposed sexual exploits while invoking racially and sexually charged slurs.

Some...threatened to rape one of the women, claimed she got a poor score on the law school test to harm her future job prospects and attempted to start rumors that one of the women had died or committed suicide....The anonymous posters also started a Web site devoted to "rating" female law students from around the country. Some participants in the contest sent photos of one of the women without her permission, according to the lawsuit....

The person who allegedly wrote the rape comment fought a subpoena to have his Internet provider disclose his identity....[H]e argued that the rape remark did not specifically harm or threaten either woman since millions of women share their first names.

He calls the online postings "unsavory but legally innocuous" -- and argues that his free-speech rights outweigh the women's right to seek redress.

Related article:
UnmaskingTrolls to End Online Harasment - Lawsuit to name Real Identity of Posters

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