I was threatened with rape today, NSFW

[Jim Lane]

186. In addition to going to law enforcement, you have the option of civil action.

I don't know how seriously the police or the FBI take incidents like this. You don't have to rely on them if you bring a civil action, but it may be more trouble than it's worth.

I'm not licensed outside New York but I'd guess most other states are pretty similar.

You start with the information that the admins have about the poster. Several posts on this thread are full of venom toward the admins for not providing this, though I see no evidence that they've denied such a request. Let's assume for the moment that they provide you with the poster's email address. That tells you the ISP.

In New York, you could then bring a proceeding against the ISP for pre-action discovery. This isn't an attempt to hold the ISP liable. Instead, you're asking a judge to order the ISP to disclose to you the poster's name and all information that would help you find him. A couple years ago, a judge ordered Google to provide this information when someone wanted to bring an action for defamation or trade libel or some such against a pseudonymous poster.

Once you have that information, you can publicize it. If, for example, the guy really is a grad student at some respectable university, getting the word out there would cause him a world of hurt.

You also have the option of suing him for damages. The advantage is that you don't need to rely on law enforcement to do anything and you don't need to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (just a preponderance of the evidence). The disadvantage is that you have to hire a lawyer. You'd like to get a lawyer to take it on a contingency fee (you pay something like one-third of the money collected, pay nothing if you get nothing), but that might well be difficult. Even a win in the case probably isn't going to produce a huge judgment. (I'm just making a SWAG here about what a jury would award -- it would of course depend on the jurisdiction.) That would be an obstacle to finding a contingent-fee lawyer. Maybe someone would take it pro bono.

In (what I see as) the unlikely event that the DU admins refuse to cooperate, I guess you could bring two proceedings. You ask that DU be compelled to provide the email address, and then another proceeding to ask that the ISP be compelled to provide the contact information. I've never heard of this being done but it seems logical and there might be precedent.

I don't practice criminal law so I can't opine about whether this post violated the federal statute that others have cited, or whether, even if it did, the case would be pursued. There is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion, and not every crime results in an indictment. I wouldn't be surprised if some prosecutor said that it was probably a violation but there are too many more serious things to handle and we're going to let this one slide. That's why the option of civil action occurred to me.

Good luck!