When UC Law San Francisco professor Emily Murphy hired one of her students as a research assistant in the summer of 2025 and invited him to coauthor a paper, she thought she was helping him launch a promising legal career.
But in February, just weeks into the current semester, she and her children were forced to flee their San Francisco home after receiving threats. In the days that followed, Murphy received hundreds of violent messages mixed with unwanted overtures: “I will unleash hell on you,” “I will break you bitch,” and “I love you.”
According to court documents, the messages were written by Murphy’s teaching assistant David DeJesus…