4 July 24 - 30, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents I n the video that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times by hundreds of thousands of peo- ple, Molly Matysiak sits in her Dallas apartment, her blond hair neatly parted and curled. She wears a gray tank top that shows off tattoos of flowers and ocean creatures; her rose-colored lip- stick is applied perfectly. She said it took her weeks to make the nine-minute TikTok video. The first take was 17 minutes long, exceeding the app’s 10-minute limit. So she started to whittle the story down, only to watch the clips back and become obsessed with eliminating the short “ums,” she whispered in the moments she became nervous. Shorter, more concise, she urged herself. She nitpicked at her own propensity for talking with her hands, a habit she picked up when she learned American Sign Language in high school. With each version of the video, she was acutely aware of potential criticism from anyone who decided not to believe her story. “I wanted to make it absolutely perfect,” Matysiak said. She’d made a handful of TikTok videos before, mostly clips of her dogs or photo slideshows of memories with her friends. None had ever gone viral, and as she watched the final version of the video in which she tells the story of being raped in a Dallas IHOP parking lot, she was simultane- ously convinced the video would be seen by the world, and by no one at all. Finally satisfied, she saved the video to her drafts and drove to Missouri, where her family lives, to celebrate her 27th birthday. Two days later, just hours before heading out on a camping trip where her cell phone service would be limited, she reopened her TikTok app and pressed post. “This is the man that raped me,” she says in the video. Her voice is even, turning briefly guttural in a few moments where emotion causes her throat to constrict. “This is his name. This is his photo. This is how he did it,” she continues. “I was raped,” she says. “And afterwards, I did everything a victim is supposed to. But nothing happened.” Now with 423,000 views and 2,200 com- ments, Matysiak’s video represents the growing trend of women turning to social media to talk about the good, the bad and the really ugly that comes with online dat- ing. And as more and more women have turned to the online sphere to tell their sto- ries of dating violence and sexual assault, more and more have begun including the names and images of the individuals they are accusing. This can invite the risk of retal- iation, in any form: legal threats, vandalism, physical attacks or doxxing. Support Moves Online Historically, survivors [of dating violence] have always gone to friends and family for support over more formal support systems,” Crystal Garcia, a content and training coor- dinator with the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, said. “Where are we finding our friends and family now? Online. So it’s a very logical outcome that we’re here, be- cause we feel connected to our followers.” Following the guidance of traditional journalism ethics, the Observer has not named the man Matysiak accused of raping her because he wasn’t charged. Attempts to locate him for comment weren’t successful. Matysiak met the man she says raped her online. It started with a message from a stranger that appeared in her Instagram in- box in August 2024. She recognized the sender as a man she’d seen on the Facebook dating app a few days prior. She’d declined to match with him — he was a bit younger than she tended to go for — and she didn’t think much of the fire and heart emojis he sent for weeks in response to Instagram sto- ries she posted of her day-to-day life. By October, the stranger hadn’t stopped flirting via emoji, so Matysiak decided to give the guy a chance. It wasn’t long before they moved from Instagram to text messag- ing and then to hours-long FaceTime calls. They talked about their jobs — she’s a teacher who moved to North Texas two years ago from Missouri — and about the up- coming holidays. They talked about that feeling of “wanting that other person with you” that the holidays tend to amplify. They shared a love of breakfast food, so after a few weeks of talking, he invited Matysiak to a first date at IHOP. “Breakfast for dinner,” she said, rolling her eyes with embarrassment at having ac- cepted IHOP as a first date location. Before agreeing, she went through the rituals of a female dating app dater. She checked Dallas County criminal records for the guy’s name, then she checked the sur- rounding counties. She’d already combed through his social media accounts, which seemed to check out, and she felt reassured by their regular FaceTime dates. She told him clearly about her boundaries: no sex on the first date, and she remembers him agreeing. She insisted they meet in public. The date was on Nov. 13, and she said it was “immediately awkward,” she said. Within the first five seconds, she knew that this wasn’t the man for her. “He was wearing Crocs, and I hate Crocs with a passion,” Matysiak said. “[At the restau- rant door] he said, ‘Can I have a hug?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ And as I pulled away from the hug, he leaned down and kissed me [on the lips.]” She felt a pit in her stomach when he re- ferred to himself, for the first time, by a name other than the one listed on his social media accounts. She realized she’d searched through the various record systems using a nickname. Matysiak spent the dinner inter- nally groaning over what she chalked up to another bad first date. But she didn’t con- sider leaving. “I will sit through a whole date. Like what’s the worst thing that can happen to me at dinner, you know?” she said. “I don’t want to walk out and him not pay, and then I’m leaving the service [person] short. I just, I can’t do it. I’m too nice a person. And so I stayed.” When the date ended, Matysiak tried to excuse herself, saying she had to be up early to teach. Instead, the man joined her in the front seat of her car. They spoke for a few minutes, then he placed one hand on her throat and the other on the back of her head and began kissing her while holding her head in place. Matysiak jumped, and her knee nudged the button that pops open her >> p6 NAMING NAMES After being sexually assaulted, women are turning to social media to out their attackers when the legal system fails them. BY EMMA RUBY | UNFAIR PARK | Molly Matysiak called her attacker out by name on TikTok. Mike Brooks
