Her reputation was shredded after her lies about her consensual relationship with a brilliant professor triggered an enormous #MeToo scandal.
But Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) assistant professor Kristin Knouse remains utterly unrepentant about her treatment of Professor David Sabatini, the cancer researcher whose career she derailed with a false sexual misconduct allegation after their casual romance ended.
Approached at the MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in Cambridge on Monday and asked to comment, Knouse, 38, instead chose to attack the man whose life he says she ruined.
‘I am the target of a massive smear campaign and getting death threats,’ she said confidently.
‘I don’t want to talk to anybody.’
When asked exactly who was smearing her, Knouse said: ‘He sent a mob after me, and a lot of your publications are too. I’ve been getting death threats because of the press that’s been circulating. I’m not comfortable speaking to anybody.’
Kristin Knouse is pictured in Boston on Monday. She defamed her former mentor with a #MeToo lie and was ordered to pay him $10 million, but remains unrepentant
When approached by the Daily Mail at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday, Knouse and launched a fresh attack on Professor David Sabatini
Stern words from a woman who owes Sabatini $10 million after she was found liable for defaming him by a Massachusetts court last month. (Interest applied to the amount means it is fast increasing.)
Knouse and Professor Sabatini enjoyed a casual sexual relationship for about 12 months before he chose to date another woman instead. But, in 2021, he was forced to sit and watch as his colleagues turned on him and his reputation was trashed by Knouse’s false sexual misconduct allegation.
Soon after, Sabatini was ousted from MIT and became a pariah in the scientific community, being called an alleged sexual predator in the Boston Globe and other publications, even though he was totally blameless.
His exoneration only came earlier this fall, when Sabatini fought back by using Knouse’s own text messages to expose her lies at trial.
Despite the legal victory, he has previously said that Knouse ‘completely destroyed my life’, and that, at his lowest point, he attempted to hang himself.
In a chat with the Daily Mail on Tuesday afternoon, Sabatini denied Knouse’s latest claims against him, saying: ‘I certainly have not sent any mob against her.’
Sabatini added that he was ‘sad to hear’ Knouse was getting death threats and that there was no justification for such behavior.
He said he had offered to settle with Knouse earlier in the legal process and added: ‘She knows that I tried to fix this and she didn’t want that, so, I don’t think it’s justified that she keeps attacking me.’
Sabatini spoke after the Daily Mail photographed Knouse exiting her apartment building in Downtown Boston on Monday morning as she headed to work.
Knouse, who plans to appeal the defamation ruling, appeared troubled as she walked across the city’s elegant common en route to work.
The happy photo of Kristin Knouse and Professor David Sabitini clashes with the recent trail where a jury found she defamed him by claiming that their consensual romance was coercive and inappropriate
Knouse is seen heading to work on Monday morning. She is an assistant professor of biology at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research – the same college she drove Professor David Sabatini out of
Knouse looked down at her phone after picking up a package while headed to work. A jury’s finding that she defamed Professor Sabatini has made her the target of online anger in recent days
Knouse has become the focus of online anger in recent days, thanks to a slew of courtroom documents obtained by the Daily Mail.
They revealed how Knouse struck up a relationship with Sabatini after he began mentoring her.
According to the court documents that contained her texts with Sabatini, she would tell him that she ‘really liked sex to be hard’ during their casual relationship, which began in April 2018 and ended in January 2020.
Asked about that text by Sabatini’s lawyer Lisa Arrowood in a taped deposition, Knouse said: ‘I imagine I would say that I was open to more, rougher, sex.’
She was also asked about a text to a friend saying she wanted to ‘feel like I’ve been gang raped’ after an intense legs workout.
Knouse was further revealed to have admitted in the deposition that she once ‘aggressively’ pursued Sabatini for sex during a hotel stay, and even jokingly used the phrase #HeToo to describe her behavior.
Knouse is pictured in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology headshot. She began a consensual relationship with her mentor Professor David Sabatini in 2018, then lied that it was coercive and inappropriate after he ended it to be with another woman
Kristin Knouse, pictured in an MIT publicity video, remains at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amid growing calls for her victim Professor David Sabatini to be reinstated to his old role there too
In January 2020, Sabatini told Knouse that he had decided to pursue a relationship with an old flame who lived in Germany.
Knouse ‘went nuclear’ and reported Sabatini to the Whitehead Institute for sexual harassment, falsely claiming she felt powerless to reject the claims of her powerful boss.
Sabatini’s brilliant 25-year career went up in flames, as Knouse texted friends to share her delight at ruining him.
One message even saw her share her desire to get her former lover ‘Weinstein-ed out of science.’
That was a reference to disgraced pervert movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose career ended when women’s complaints about his sexual harassment and abuse started the #MeToo movement
Knouse ultimately got her wish.
Sabatini was forced out of the Whitehead Institute shortly afterwards.
He stepped down from MIT in March 2021, after its bosses recommended his tenure be revoked, which would have allowed them to fire him.
A mob of New York University students and faculty angrily protested against a job he had been offered at the college, prompting bosses there to rescind it.
Sabatini told the Daily Mail that he tried to hang himself while in the depths of his despair.
Despite winning his defamation claim against Knouse, he still remains deeply scarred by the experience.
‘This has completely destroyed me and completely changed my life,’ he said last week.
‘Nothing that remained from before is still operating. Everything is gone.’
Sabatini has since taken up a job as research group leader at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) in Prague.
The IOCB has opened a laboratory in Cambridge, close to MIT, where he also now works.
Last week, a group of scientists from 33 institutions wrote an open letter to MIT calling for Sabatini to be reinstated in light of the civil ruling against Knouse.
They warned that evidence unearthed against her fatally undermined the credibility of her claims.
Ruth Lehmann, the director of the Whitehead Institute, is pictured walking her dog close to her $5.2 million home on Tuesday. She gave a gruff ‘no comment’ when asked about growing calls for Professor David Sabatini to be reinstated by MIT
MIT bosses are refusing to budge.
They have referred the Daily Mail and other publications to a comment issued in 2022 saying Sabatini’s tenure was revoked after he violated MIT’s consensual relationships policy.
Meanwhile, MIT has given no indication that they plan to punish Knouse for the lies that have made the elite college hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
It is unclear how bosses would be able to re-hire Sabatini while keeping Knouse in her current role, given both work in similar scientific fields.
That decision lies in the hands of Ruth Lehmann, who has been boss at the Whitehead Institute since 2020 and who oversaw the investigation into Knouse’s allegations.
Approached by the Daily Mail outside her $5.2 million red brick townhouse in Boston Tuesday, she gave a gruff ‘no comment’ when asked if she would be offering Sabatini his job back.
But as the clamor to right the wrongs committed against Sabatini grows, Lehmann may soon find herself forced to issue a more comprehensive response.
