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A Tinder date rape victim is still searching for justice more than a year after a Manhattan judge let her attacker off with no prison time — telling The Post the shocking sentence was a “slap in the face.”
Pamela Adelgren — an aspiring fashion designer whose career was shattered after she was sexually assaulted in 2020 — is now hauling her convicted rapist, William Knapp Hathaway IV, to federal court to face a civil case.
“I still live in fear,” Adelgren, 29, said in an interview with The Post this week. “Walking outside and day-to-day activities, I’m always looking over my shoulder.”
Adelgren said her life was forever changed when Hathaway, 34, raped her after taking her back to his West Village apartment following a date at the swanky SoHo House members club.
All of that was compounded, she said, by “the fact that he didn’t get any jail time.”
“It’s just hard to trust in the justice system now,” she said. “He got off pretty easy… the system needs to change.”
A Manhattan jury found Hathaway guilty of rape in the third degree in April 2025 following a trial — and prosecutors asked the judge to slap him with the maximum sentence of four years behind bars.
But Supreme Court Justice Josh Hanshaft said he ultimately found the “better alternative” to prison was giving Hathaway 10 years of probation and having him register as a sex offender.
“I’m not sure if this sentence is what’s the right answer or should you be sitting in a jail cell for a while to get a sense of what incarceration is about,” the judge said at the August 2025 sentencing, shocking legal observers and sexual assault advocates alike.
“It was a slap in the face,” said Adelgren of the sentencing.
“I wasn’t taken very seriously, and that this type of case isn’t taken very seriously… I am happy he was convicted, but it just seems like such a light sentence for what he did to me.”
Hathaway, who is from Connecticut but lived in Florida at the time of the sentencing, could not be reached for comment.
The pair met on Tinder in February 2020 and began a consensual sexual encounter at Hathaway’s apartment following their data at SoHo House, according to prosecutors.
But when Adelgren decided she wanted to stop — and said so at least five times — Hathaway pushed her into his bed and proceeded to rape her, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.
Adelgren’s suit is seeking damages for battery, assault, emotional distress, and demands a restraining order.
The attack came shortly after Adelgren had come to New York City in hopes of a long career in fashion, but “he ruined my life there,” she said.
“My life would have been very different if [those] things didn’t happen,” said Adelgren, who now lives in North Carolina.
Since then, she has made a new life as a sewist doing furniture upholstery, and is about to embark on a new job making dancewear.
Adelgren says her civil suit is about trying to hold her attacker accountable, and hopes her story will help other victims speak up and seek justice as well.
“I’m hoping it’ll bring a lot more closure and help me speak up more and fight back,” she said. “And to gain more control in my life after it was taken away.”
Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer
