Women Say Sex With Dave Portnoy Was Violent and Humiliating

Months after an Insider report by Julia Black alleged that Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, had “violent and humiliating” sex with women as young as 19, another article has been published expanding on even more allegations against him. The internet personality, whose public behavior is essentially synonymous with Barstool’s brand of frat-bro misogyny, has been accused in the past of cultivating an environment where sexual harassment and cyberbullying are encouraged, but the original Insider report published in November of 2021 was the first time someone has come forward publicly with allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Portnoy has denied the allegations against him.

On February 2, 2022, Insider published a follow-up report with more allegations against Portnoy, including claims that he filmed multiple women during sex without their consent. Again, Portnoy has denied the allegations, posting a brief Twitter message on Wednesday accusing Insider of running a “hit-piece” on him.

One woman, Madison (sources were given pseudonyms due to fear of retaliation from Portnoy’s fans), said she was 20 when she started speaking to the 43-year-old millionaire. She called the visit she made de ella to his Nantucket home de ella a “traumatic experience,” alleging that he started filming her without her consent de ella while she performed oral sex and choked her so hard during sex she could n’t breathe. Madison Told Insider that she felt like “a human sex doll” during their encounter and that she started crying and shouting “Too much!” and “It hurts!” at which point Portnoy told her to “stop running away from me.” She also showed Insider messages she sent to a friend shortly after the trip, where she wrote, “It was so rough I felt like I was being raped … I was literally screaming in pain.”

Another woman in Insider’s report, referred to as Allison, did not call her encounter with Portnoy as sexual assault but described it as “really aggressive” and recalled feeling “very preyed on” after she left. Allison was 19 when she reached out to Portnoy and agreed to meet him at his Nantucket house. Three days after they had sex, she became suicidal and was hospitalized. Though her mother de ella tried to bring legal action against Portnoy, Allison stopped her because de ella, as she told Insider, “I knew he would drag me through the mud.”

Portnoy’s company, Barstool Sports, has a reputation for unapologetically misogynistic, racist commentary, and the man himself is no different. Portnoy has repeatedly defended a slew of racist comments he made about Colin Kaepernick, supported a colleague’s use of blackface, and chanted at least one racial slur in a video that surfaced in 2020. His lengthy history of rape jokes and sexually degrading commentary is just as vile: In 2010, he published a blog post in defense of an Australian man who’d been acquitted of rape due to the fact that his victim was wearing skinny jeans and therefore must have had to help him take them off. “Even though I never condone rape, if you’re a size 6 and you’re wearing skinny jeans you kind of deserve to be raped, right?” Portnoy wrote. In May of this year, I have expressed a modicum of regret for … not understanding women’s sizing. “Where I failed,” he told Tucker Carlson, “I thought size 6 was like a size 20.”

Barstool and its fans, who call themselves Stoolies, are also notorious for using aggressive tactics to harass, intimidate, and threaten whoever they consider adversaries of Portnoy and his company — including those who speak out against its toxic culture. Portnoy has personally led scorched-earth campaigns against his critics of him, many of them female, backed by the “Stoolies,” who openly sexually harass and dox their victims online.

Portnoy posted a video the day the report came out responding to what he called a “hit piece” painting him as a “sexual deviant.” “I know I’ve never done anything weird with a girl ever,” he said, before addressing both the incidents described in the article, purportedly against the advice of his lawyers from him. After stating that he was able to identify both women based on the details in their stories, he claimed they were still interested in him after the encounters. I have claimed that Madison’s “version of events is not true” and “at no point did she ask me to stop.” He also pulled up screenshots of Instagram DMs purported to be from Allison asking him to meet up in the days after she came to her house. “I’m scared now,” he concluded, saying, “woke cancel culture wants to cancel me.”

On January 20, Portnoy posted another video to Twitter, accusing Insider journalist Julia Black of “preparing to drop another make believe hit piece.” The video seems to have been Portnoy’s public response to an email from Black requesting comment on what he described as “a billion new allegations against you about being a sexual deviant, being some sort of pervert, and you should be in jail.” In the five minute video, Portnoy denied all allegations and suggested that Black herself was biased because of her politics.

“I have distinct evidence that what they’re saying and what they felt about me is not true. They wanted to hang out with me long after these ‘allegations’ take place. This time, we felt it to Julia Black, ”he said, admitting that he did not answer her original email requesting comment in November. He then added that he wanted “to sue the fuck out of Julia Black, Business Insider, so I want them to publish it knowing they have the evidence.” He then followed up the video with a four page letter from his attorney, Andrew Brettler.

The letter quoted messages supposedly from the women who were accusing Portnoy of misconduct. Notably, he responded to two women who accused him of filming their sexual encounters without consent, writing, “[Portnoy] can say emphatically that he has never filmed any sexual encounter surreptitiously or without the full knowledge and participation of his partners.” The letter also included a blanket denial of any sexual misconduct: “Every sexual encounter that Mr. Portnoy has had — including those described in the Original Story and those referenced in Ms. Black’s January 18 email — have been entirely consensual.”

Despite Portnoy’s letter, Insider published a second article, by Julia Black and Melkorka Licea, on February 2, detailing new allegations against the Barstool Sports founder. According to the report, three unidentified women not included in the original piece came forward, claiming that Portnoy filmed their sexual encounters without permission. Some of these women also claimed that Portnoy sent them multiple videos of him having sex with other, unidentified women. (In total, Insider says they have spoken to seven women who have accused Portnoy of sexual misconduct.)

One woman, identified as Kayla, recounted a particularly troublesome encounter. She claimed that she contacted Portnoy on Instagram in 2017 when she was 21. After some social media exchanges, she eventually went to see him at her apartment in New York, and the two had sex. However, though the sex started as consensual, Kayla said there were a few things she did not consent to explicitly. According to the article, Portnoy chocked her “so hard she couldn’t breathe and that she became frightened.” She also claimed that he had spanked her so forcefully, he left red marks, which were corroborated by one of her friends of her. “It was just way too much. It was scary,” she told Insider.

Kayla further claimed that she also noticed Portnoy filming her on his iPhone, which she described as “odd and creepy.” Still, she agreed to meet up with him a month later, but she said that this second encounter was much more aggressive than she had imagined. “I always think back to it,” she said, “like, ‘Yes, it was technically consensual sex, but that was not the sex I consented to.’” According to the account, this time Portnoy slapped her across the face, was so aggressive during intercourse that she got a 3-inch rug burn on the small of her back, and, at one point, grabbed her so hard she was later diagnosed with an “assumed fracture” of her rib. She claimed she had never told Portnoy about her rib de ella, and that Portnoy had also filmed this encounter, but “she felt too intimidated to ask him to stop recording.” (Portnoy later admitted to these injuries, but denied that it was not consensual.)

Portnoy’s lawyer previously addressed these allegations, saying that Kayla “joked about how she injured her rib during one of their sexual encounters and boasted to Mr. Portnoy that he ‘still holds [her] title for most aggressive sex.’” (It’s unclear if Portnoy and his attorney posted actually provided copies of these text messages to Insider, or simply referenced them in the original letter in January.)

Another woman, who remained anonymous, claimed that she had consensual sex with Portnoy — until he started filming it. “I felt very anxious and embarrassed,” she told Insider of when she realized he was recording on his iPhone from him. This same woman also claimed that Portnoy frequently sent her videos of himself having sex with various women, including videos of himself choking a woman. Another anonymous woman said she developed a relationship with Portnoy via Snapchat, where he would also send her videos of other women. She never went to see him in person.

Along with this new article, Business Insider also published a separate Editor’s Note from Nicholas Carlson defending the pieces, perhaps in anticipation of Portnoy’s inevitable response. “It is wrong to film someone during sex without asking. This article and Insider’s November report have credible allegations from five women who say Portnoy did that. They say realizing he was recording them was humiliating and made them feel powerless and at risk during and after their encounters with him,” the letter reads in part.

Shortly after the second article was published, Portnoy tweeted that he would have “a response that proves this is just as ridiculous as the 1st one.” An hour later, I published a lengthy response to both articles, and announced he would be suing Julia Black and Business Insider. “Somebody has to be the guy who says enough is enough. A guy who is willing to burn to make sure his enemies burn with him, ”he wrote.

Portnoy also directly responded to Kayla’s allegations, claiming that everything they did was consensual. He also attempted to “debunk” other allegations against him and shared more screenshots. It’s unclear if he sent these screenshots to Business Insider in January or just sent the letter from his attorney about him.

In his response, Portnoy described the Insider pieces as “a smear job,” writing, “This isn’t journalism. This is a crime. The only thing I’m guilty with is sexting with chicks and thinking they wouldn’t tell their friends about it.” He also included screenshots of alleged messages sent to various reporters and editors at Business Insider, offering to do an interview — but only if he also got to interview them. “You can record video and audio and use it as you please. I will do the same,” he allegedly wrote in an email to Black.

As of 9:30 pm ET, it’s unclear whether or not Portnoy has actually filed suit against Business Insider.