An aristocrat who sponsors a Cambridge Master’s scholarship has made a series of comments about rape and the death of women alongside other “offensive content” on social media, according to the Daily Mail.

Benedict Westenra, the 8th Baron of Rossmore, allegedly posted on X last month that it was a “huge achievement” to have “raped a bunch of people but managed to persuade them not to bring cases against him”.

In August, Westenra, 41, posted a response to a Reddit post in which a man who killed a burglar in their home complained he had been criticised for the killing by his wife: “Should’ve let the intruder kill her so she would shut the f*** up… Basically the husband ruined her rape fantasy [laughing emoji].”

Replying to a woman in September who joked: “My husband believed me when I said I didn’t want him to bring back food for me [sad emoji],” Westenra wrote, “So no doesn’t mean no?” – an apparent reference to consent.

Westenra, who studied for a Master’s in Music at Cambridge, is the founder of the Tigris scholarship, which “funds students from underprivileged countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, who intend to pursue a career in the hard sciences, to do a one-year masters at Cambridge University.”

In addition to financial support, “students can receive one-on-one mentorship sessions from senior figures at SpaceX, DeepMind, and London Institute of Mathematical Sciences, among others.”

Mentors on the programme include Lars Blackmore, Chief Mars Landing Engineer at SpaceX, Rishub Jain, Senior Engineer on the AlphaFold project at DeepMind, and Thomas Fink, founder of the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

According to its website, the first scholarship was awarded in 2024, with the next one to be awarded will be in 2026.

Alongside these posts, the Baron replied to an X post and said “Sabrina Carpenter” should play George Floyd – a black American who was murdered by a white police officer in 2020 – if a movie about him is made.

He has further stated that “the left are cheering on Islam” and responded to a tweet and said “western progressives […] think they deserve to be murdered.”

Westenra also claims, as a hereditary member of the House of Lords between his father William Westenra’s death in 2021 and when he was unelected in November 2023, he suggested amendments to the Online Safety Bill “that were reflected in the final version passed into law in October 2023.”

The Mail stated Westenra, the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Trust did not respond to requests for comment.

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