LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas Aces player Justine Pissott took to social media before the team’s Game 2 loss to the Indiana Fever to share her experience as a sexual assault survivor amid the ongoing investigation involving seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell University.

The prosecutors’ reopened investigation centers on 2024 allegations that seven fraternity members drugged and sexually assaulted a Cornell student. The woman, who has since left the school, filed a civil lawsuit last month against the school, fraternity and seven men.

“This is a vulnerable message but something I want to share,” Pissott posted on her Instagram story on Tuesday. “As someone who has been drugged and rap**, the Cornell 7 situation has been really hard for me to see. It hits a place in me that I don’t talk about often.

“When something like this happens to you, it doesn’t just end when that night ends. You carry it with you. The confusion, the pieces you can’t remember, questioning yourself, blaming yourself and trying to understand how someone could take advantage of you when you weren’t even able to protect yourself.

“And then you see people questioning survivors. Asking why they didn’t speak sooner, why they stayed quiet, why they acted a certain way afterward. But unless you’ve been through it, you really don’t understand what trauma can do to a person. There is no ‘right’ way to respond to something that never shouldn’t happened to you in the first place.”

Pissott had spent time with the Fever as the team’s second-round draft pick in April before signing an offer sheet to join the Aces’ active roster earlier this season in July.

The 6-foot-4 Toms River, N.J., native spent four seasons with the Vanderbilt Commodores under coach Shea Ralph, who spoke about Pissott’s character and the strength it took for her to come forward with her experience.

“I’m so proud of Justine, and I have always been so proud of her,” Ralph told The Tennessean on Wednesday. “There is a lot of growth that happened here for her both on and off the basketball court. What I love about her and what she is doing in the WNBA right now is that she is being true to herself.

“There are a lot of people that go through struggles. Nobody here, me included, hasn’t been through something that is really hard. To be courageous enough and brave enough to share that with the world in hopes that it can help other people … it just shows her growth as a human and her desire to help other young women.”

Pissott’s Instagram posts to her 34,000 followers expressed support for the former Cornell student who filed the lawsuit and that she hopes sharing her own experience can help other survivors feel less alone.

“I don’t speak about my experience for sympathy,” she wrote. “I speak about it because I know how lonely this kind of pain can feel. And if sharing even a small part of my story makes another survivor feel less alone, then it’s worth it.

“To her and every survivor carrying something similar, I see you. I’m praying for you. And I pray we continue creating a world where survivors feel safe enough to use their voice without being torn apart for how they survived.”

Pissott posted on Threads an acknowledgment that her message had prompted Chicago Sky player Natasha Cloud to express support.

“A lot of strength,” Cloud wrote. “Reminder you ALL know a woman who’s been assaulted. Whether they speak it or not.”

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