Last year, former classmates of rising Republican star Madison Cawthorn shared that during his brief time at Patrick Henry College in the fall of 2016, Cawthorn
was widely viewed as a serial sexual predator. In an open letter, they wrote that Cawthorn “established a reputation for predatory behavior,” notably inviting women on what the group of former students described as “joy rides” during which he would subject women to “unwanted sexual advances.”
As one former student, Philip Bunn, told Jezebel at the time, a whisper network had quickly sprung up on campus to warn women about Cawthorn. “Girls were warning other girls not to go on rides with him,” Bunn recalled. Another former classmate, Kara Brown, told Jezebel that Cawthorn would harass students whom he pursued. “He would just follow them around and continually ask them out over and over again, and just wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Brown said.
On Friday, BuzzFeed News
published an in-depth report on Cawthorn’s time at Patrick Henry College and the allegations that Cawthorn engaged in predatory behavior and sexual harassment during his brief time as a student in 2016. What they found aligns with the allegations former students made in the open letter.
In addition to speaking with one woman whom Cawthorn took on what she described as a “scary” late-night car ride during which Cawthorn drove her to the “middle of nowhere,” BuzzFeed News spoke with several former students who recalled moments when Cawthorn made misogynistic comments, which they described as part of a pattern of behavior from the now-member of Congress.
Those comments included, according to former student Diego Lastra, remarks Cawthorn made ranking women’s sexual prowess based on race