In the summer of 1996, Columbia University graduate student Oliver Jovanovic met Barnard College coed Jamie Rzucek (she told him her name was Jamie Allyson) in an online chat room. When they finally went on their first date, what happened that night—he said she agreed to consensual S&M sex, she said she was held against her will and tortured—led to one of the most notorious trials of the late nineties. Championed by Linda Fairstein, who ran the sex-crime unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office before she became a bestselling novelist, the case became known as the Cybersex Trial. Here, Paul Alexander tells the disturbing true story. The Real Story of the Cyber-Sex Trial was originally published in Rolling Stone, October 15, 1998. Cover design by Adil Dara.