Multiple names in the story have been changed for safety reasons. 

The City University of New York prides itself on being for the people, but when two students were sexually assaulted and stalked by a peer, the institution did not properly use Title IX to protect them from their abuser.

Baruch College student Christian Reyes allegedly sexually assaulted and raped multiple CUNY students. Sofia, who was given anonymity due to safety concerns, was one of them. 

On May 6, she went public about the assault on social media, after Baruch President S. David Wu failed to respond to an email about the acting dean of students’ mishandling of the investigation.

Sofia only shared that her alleged perpetrator ran the online Baruch Times Instagram account. The Ticker was able to confirm the identity through social media comments, public court records and LinkedIn. 

“It’s more Baruch I’m scared of, not legal. Cause it’s public information, he’s charged,” Sofia told The Ticker in an interview. 

Trust had already been established between Reyes and Sofia, as the two built a friendship from their time together in high school, but lost touch soon after. Sofia and Reyes reconnected in 2021 and started dating.

But the relationship soon became controlling and abusive. 

“When I came home for Thanksgiving break, that’s when he assaulted me,” she said. 

Reyes weaponized Sofia’s fear of sex due to past trauma by suggesting it as a kink, consensual no-consent, which roleplays rape and abduction. Since Sofia trusted Reyes, she said yes. 

Sofia revoked her consent, but Reyes refused, even as she cried and struggled. She said, “he actually laughed at me.”

One in five women in the U.S. have experienced attempted or completed rape, and every 68 seconds in the U.S., someone is sexually assaulted. A study found that across college campuses, approximately eight out of 10,000 students are sexually assaulted.   

Battling with the aftermath, Sofia filed a report against Reyes in January 2022. The tedious commute between her college in upstate New York and the city, to try and prosecute him, took a toll on her mental health, pushing her to close the case. 

Because Reyes was a minor, the two-year filing window has passed, and Sofia can no longer file a sexual assault case against him. 

For the next three years, Sofia tried to focus on school. Although Sofia stopped contacting him, Reyes continuously tried to reach out, going as far as showing up at Sofia’s upstate apartment, which was caught on her Ring doorbell camera. 

After she received acceptance letters from three different graduate programs in the city, people suggested she choose Baruch for its well-regarded business program, which would be beneficial for her career path. Despite being aware of Reyes’ enrollment at the school, she hoped they wouldn’t cross paths because of their different programs. 

“I’m poor,” she said. “I’m first-gen poor, what was I going to do?” 

In August 2025, Reyes saw Sofia leave the Newman Library. The interaction was brief, and when she asked him to stay away, he seemed respectful of her boundaries. 

However, he started showing up at her job, which brought back Sofia’s fear. 

“When he first appeared, I could tell that all the like energy left her,” Michael, Sofia’s now-husband, said. “Like her face was pale, she was monotone, she looked shaken up.” 

Michael and Sofia met while working at Capital One Cafe. Sofia was a banker, while Michael was a barista, but he was unaware of their prior history until Sofia called him in fear after Reyes had followed her on the train. 

Soon, Michael began taking Sofia to and from work. The two comforted each other over their shared trauma, as Michael is also a sexual assault survivor. 

Still, Reyes continued stalking and taunting Sofia.

In November 2025, Michael and Sofia ordered food to her apartment, and Reyes called her with no caller ID, telling her to enjoy the food, which is when Michael became aware of the severity of the situation.

A study found that two-thirds of college rapists are repeat offenders; Reyes is one of them. 

When Michael decided to bring up his concerns with Baruch, that’s when he found Camila, another Reyes survivor.

Camila, a John Jay student at the time, was sexually assaulted by Reyes in 2022. The two had dated on and off for a year from 2022 to 2023, but anytime Camila tried to leave, he used his own past trauma as a manipulation tactic to pull her back into the relationship.

Reyes tried to rape her for the second time in August 2022, the summer before she started college. He dragged her down a trundle bed and began to take off his pants, and then hers.

Camila fought back.

“I still had my phone in my hand, so I used my phone, and I just started hitting him in the head with it,” Camila said. 

After defending herself, Camila said Reyes flipped the narrative back onto her by asking what was wrong with her and started crying.

The abuse didn’t stop there. In June 2023, he continued to stalk Camila and had once forcibly tried to push his way into her friend’s apartment. This time, her friends kept her safe.

“I was fortunate enough to have friends who were willing to put their lives on the line,” she said.

Fearing Reyes, Camila spent the night with her friends, while he was staking outside her apartment. But when she came home, she learned he told her family that “I was a whore, that I was an alcoholic, that I was flunking school,” she said. 

The next morning, Reyes waited for Camila at her apartment and forced her to change out of a sweatshirt that he knew belonged to another man. 

“He started strangling me,” she said. 

That’s when Camila filed a Title IX complaint with John Jay and Baruch, which protects students against student-to-student sexual harassment. 

Camila filed the claim so that Reyes could no longer access the Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay. Allegedly, campus security began circulating Reyes’ photos to prevent him from entering the space. 

When Camila learned about Reyes’ position as representative senator at Baruch’s Undergraduate Student Government, for the 2023-2024 academic year, according to his LinkedIn, she sent them an email. 

She emailed then-president Jessica Yauri and then-vice president Abdullah Mahdi, as Reyes was confirmed to be part of USG at the time.

“But they told me they couldn’t do anything,” Camila said. 

She received a response from Mahdi that the matter would be thoroughly investigated, but because Reyes was elected by students, they could not force him to resign without due process. 

“Reyes is no longer affiliated with the club,” current USG President Christian Perez said.

It is believed that the email Camila sent was spread internally throughout USG. Reyes’ name was taken off of the website during that academic year, though allegedly he continued to work with them from 2024 to 2025 without public accreditation. It wasn’t until Perez became president that Reyes was no longer seen in the suite.

Despite the John Jay Title IX complaint, Camila feared Reyes would still find her. Her grades slipped and she was placed on academic probation. She dropped a summer class costing $2,000 out of pocket. 

Camila then dropped out of John Jay in fall 2023. 

Two years later, she found out there was another survivor. 

“When it just happened to me, at least it’s just me, not anyone else,” she said. When she found out about Sofia, “it was all stages of grief.” 

Michael, who is studying criminal justice law at John Jay, began looking into Reyes and found out about Camila earlier this year. 

That’s when Sofia filed a Title IX with Baruch. A No Contact Order was enacted by acting Dean of Students Annie Virkus-Estrada, who informed neither Sofia nor Reyes that neither of them could directly or indirectly communicate with one another. 

With Reyes’ daytime schedule and Sofias’ evening schedule, the NCO also said that they can’t be on campus at the same time, requiring Reyes to leave as soon as his classes finish for the day. 

Although Sofia had the option to be escorted by campus public safety to and from her classes,  the school did not monitor whether Reyes had actually left the premises. 

Reyes was granted special permission multiple times to attend club events outside of his allotted campus hours to make content for his Instagram account, the Baruch Times. The account, which has over 5,000 followers, is not an official club, according to the Office of Student Life.

Sofia did not feel safe with the lack of assurance, so she missed weeks of classes, fearing he was repeatedly overstaying his time on campus.

Instead of denying Reyes’ attendance requests, Virkus-Estrada would inform Sofia about his whereabouts on campus so that she could avoid those areas. 

Reyes would attend some club events of his own will, as not all club leaders reached out to Baruch Times for coverage because he was unaffiliated with the school. 

Sofia told Virkus-Estrada that Reyes attended an event without permission. Reyes retaliated when Sofia reported him, accusing Sofia of breaking the NCO, stating she called him, which Sofia claimed was false. 

“I will need to meet to discuss this concern, as violating the No Contact Order can result in disciplinary action,” Virkus-Estrada wrote to Sofia. 

Following the email, Virkus-Estrada spoke with Sofia’s advocates — including her husband and Safe Horizon, the largest nonprofit survivor advocacy organization in the country. For many of its clients, their situations were “made worse by an institution that was supposed to protect them.” 

Sofia said that once her advocates were on the call, Virkus-Estrada then assured her it would not be punitive.

The email sent by Virkus-Estrada led Sofia to go public with the story. 

“I think the reason why they [Baruch] were able to talk to me the way they were was because I wasn’t telling anyone,” Sophia said, believing the school was protecting its reputation by not furthering the case. “Nobody really knew except my husband.”

Sofia added that the school seems to prioritize his requests over her safety and comfortability, as she is graduating in September. 

“Baruch College has opened an investigation into this matter and pending the outcome cannot comment further,” Baruch said in a statement. “Baruch is committed to maintaining a safe and supportive environment for all students.” 

According to Michael, Baruch’s NCO did little to deter Reyes from tormenting Sofia. 

When going home from school on Feb. 6, Michael and Sofia transferred at Grand Central Terminal, Michael saw Reyes following from behind. When Reyes saw Michael, he ran away. 

Sofia went to the police, and a warrant was issued for Reyes’ arrest. 

Reyes was arrested on Feb. 11 but released a few days later on recognizance, which is when a judge releases someone with no criminal record without bail on the promise that they would appear in court. 

A second NCO was later filed through the police, and Reyes never followed her again. 

In a long and thorough email to Wu, Michael referenced the mistreatment of Sofia by Baruch and Virkus-Estrada, writing that the dean’s actions were  “not supported. This is abandonment.” 

Michael demanded a response within the next 72 hours on actions the school will take to protect Sofia. 

In the emails, Michael claimed the school hid behind student protections laws outlined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. While the act typically upholds student privacy, FERPA becomes nullified when it’s a survivor dealing with their tormenter. 

“If it’s a survivor or a victim, you have to tell them the information even if it’s their third party,” Michael explained in an interview with The Ticker. “Whether it’s, let’s say, their husband or their outreach group, you have to let them know because you’re dealing with their life at stake.” 

He referred to the FERPA misuse as “A: essentially being lazy, but also B: hiding behind something that’s not as tight as you think it is.”

When the video went public, Sofia was nervous about what the online reaction would be. However,  she received waves of support from CUNY students who had gone through similar situations, as well as another survivor of Reyes, who was allegedly sexually assaulted by him as a minor. 

“I was really scared posting them, like really scared. I was getting cold feet the entire time, and then when I got that text from the girl talking about ‘I was 15,’” Sofia said. “I was so fucking pissed. I don’t care anymore.”

Three days after the video was posted, a petition began circulating to remove Reyes from Baruch.

Camila tried returning to John Jay to get her life back. 

In her readmission essay, Camila wrote about how she was ready to return to John Jay, despite the trauma Reyes caused her. 

“The only thing I really cared about was school, and I gave that up because I was too scared to go,” she said. 

Instead of helping Camila find a way to rejoin school, John Jay said that she would still have to pay the fee for the summer class she dropped, and her academic probation would still be in effect. 

“They want me to pay like 2K back, and also be on academic probation. I don’t know what the next steps are,” she said. “I’m first gen, I don’t have any guidance for that.”

Camila never went back, but she is considering transferring to another college in the future. 

Reyes refused a request to comment. His next court date is on June 11. 

If you or anyone you know has been impacted by sexual assault and/or rape, you can call the New York State Rape Crisis Program at 1-800-942-6906 or text 844-997-2121 for crisis intervention, legal information and referrals.