People walk on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., in 2024.
Seth Wenig/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Seth Wenig/AP
New York prosecutors say they are reopening an investigation into an alleged rape case from 2024 that involved Cornell University students.
This comes after the alleged victim, referred to as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York this month. In it, she claims multiple men drugged and brutally raped her for more than four hours at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024.
In a nine-page statement, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced efforts are underway to reexamine the case. Once his office determines appropriate charges, the case will be presented to a grand jury, he said. Van Houten said he has assigned a senior prosecutor, with experience in sex crimes, to start preparations.
Cornell University issued a statement following news that prosecutors are taking another look at the case.
The Ithaca, N.Y., school said on Monday that it supports the decision but defended how university officials handled the case two years ago. Kyle Kimball, vice president for university relations at Cornell, said the school “conducted a thorough Title IX investigation” that lasted several months.
No criminal charges were ever filed.
But Cornell said it held a hearing where “a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days,” which included testimony from all sides.
At the end of that hearing, expulsions and suspensions were issued. It did not specify which individuals faced those consequences.
Kimball continued in the statement: “Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false.”
The Xi chapter of Chi Phi fraternity, of which the alleged rapists were members, was banned from the campus two years ago, when details first emerged.
Doe is suing the seven alleged rapists, the fraternity, Cornell University, her sorority and the nightclub that served her alcohol as a minor the night of the alleged attack. She was 20 at the time.
Her attorneys didn’t respond to a request for comment before publication.
The case became subject to fierce social media scrutiny following Doe’s lawsuit. In his statement, Van Houten said people have called his office to demand answers as to why the case was never investigated. Others called to insult and threaten, he said.
Van Houten acknowledged the outrage. In defending his office, he said the civil lawsuit’s claims differ from the unnamed victim’s sworn statement from two years ago.
“Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” he wrote. “My office obviously did not and could not have based our November 2024 decision on the allegations in a civil lawsuit that would not be filed until nearly two years later.”
Van Houten added that his office had never been contacted by Doe’s attorneys.
“Not to inform me the original statement was inaccurate and not to ask me to reconsider our decision,” he said. Van Houten said he reached out to Doe’s attorneys to understand “the discrepancy.”
What Jane Doe alleges
The lawsuit includes distressing details of the alleged attack in October 2024, including a Snapchat conversation between members of Chi Phi that appeared to invite other students to assault the alleged victim that night.
NPR attempted to reach the men named in the suit without success.
Doe’s lawsuit says she enrolled at Cornell as an undergraduate student in 2022. She joined the Delta Delta Delta sorority chapter at the school, her lawsuit says.
“…The University actively promoted Greek membership as a ‘vital’ part of the campus community and endorsed these organizations as well- managed, worthy pathways to new friendships and improving one’s educational and professional opportunities,” according to the lawsuit.
Seven members of Chi Phi allegedly attacked Doe on Oct. 19, 2024, at the fraternity house on campus. Earlier in the evening, even though Doe was under 21, she attended a social event hosted by her sorority at a bar called Moonies and was able to drink there, the lawsuit says.
Moonies is listed as one of the defendants in this case; Doe alleges the establishment was negligent in allowing her to drink as a minor. Around 11 p.m., Doe walked to the Chi Phi house where she was “visibly intoxicated” and met with one of the defendants, described as a friend, who offered her a beer, according to the lawsuit.
NPR attempted to contact Moonies, but did not hear back before publication.
The two danced for a bit before he propositioned her with a threesome with other members of his fraternity. The lawsuit says Doe “had consumed about 10 standard drinks within the past 3 hours” and was not able to consent.
This individual brought her to a room where another member of the fraternity joined them. They passed around a bag containing alleged ketamine, which can cause dissociation and loss of body control. The lawsuit claims Doe was pressured to snort the drug with them. The lawsuit alleges the fraternity brothers forced marijuana and more alcohol on her.
Doe names Cornell in the lawsuit alleging, among other things, that the school knew, or should have known, that the Xi chapter of Chi Phi had a drug culture, specifically with ketamine. Just a week before the assault, police responded to a drug-related incident at the fraternity house, the lawsuit states.
After doing drugs, the two men then began assaulting Doe orally and vaginally “all without her consent,” the lawsuit says. Another member of the fraternity entered the room, grabbed Doe and started kissing her, while the second student groped her. The two men then started assaulting Doe — again without her consent, the lawsuit alleges.
Shortly after, one of the men sent a Snapchat message to the Xi chapter members that appears to invite others to come into the room to assault Doe, the lawsuit states.
Multiple members of the fraternity then entered the room while Doe attempted to hide her naked body under the bed sheets, according to court documents. The lawsuit says: “At that point, Plaintiff’s phone was on the other side of the room and she felt as if there was no way for her to escape this room full of predatory, fraternity men.”
Then, all seven named defendants allegedly poured lines of ketamine all over Doe’s body and snorted them. She was assaulted again before passing out at 5:45 a.m., the lawsuit says.
Jeremy Saland, an attorney for Scott Kretzschmar, one of the defendants, publicly responded to the lawsuit. In a statement to The Cornell Sun, the campus newspaper, Saland said that no investigative body found Kretzschmar liable for sexual assault.
NPR is not naming the other defendants unless they are charged or respond in a public statement.
“Even the District Attorney’s Office, led by a chief prosecutor with the duty to pursue justice and uphold the rule of law without bias or favor, filed no charges against Scott because what alleged did not happen,” Saland wrote. “This isn’t a conspiracy. It is just a fact and evidence-based reality, even if an inconvenient one for the plaintiff.”
Differences between 2024 statement and lawsuit
Van Houten says there are similarities between Doe’s original 2024 statement to police and details in the lawsuit. However, he writes: “There is no evidence in Jane Doe’s statement indicating that she clearly expressed that she did not consent to the act. According to the statement, each time Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual conduct, the sexual conduct stopped.”
And thus “criminal charges simply could not be sustained,” Van Houten explained. “To instruct otherwise would have been to violate my prosecutorial obligations under New York State Law.”
There are several instances in her statement shared by Van Houten, however, that indicate moments where Doe could not remember certain details, did not consent to certain activities and was increasingly intoxicated as the night continued.
Prominent voices speak out
Following the school’s investigation, Cornell took steps to further address sexual assault issues at the school. The university formed the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault and in March, the group published a report with several recommendations for the university to take to improve communication and education for students.
While Cornell maintains it worked to hold those involved in the incident accountable, a former student told NPR broader cultural change on campus never happened.
Kat Martin, who graduated from Cornell in 2025, told NPR that heavy alcohol and drug use remained a central part of Cornell’s social culture.
Martin says she volunteered for a campus sexual safety organization after being sexually assaulted her freshman year. “It was normalized to experience violence. It was normalized to worry about being drugged,” she told NPR.
NPR reached out to Cornell for a response to Martin’s comments but they referred back to the statement issued earlier Monday.
That culture continued after 2024.
This culture of sexual violence endemic in elite institutions like Cornell “has got to stop,” said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at an event in Ithaca, N.Y., on Sunday. She is one of several prominent voices speaking out on the case.
“Those men posted in a group chat. That means it was normal to them. That means it was acceptable to them,” she said.
NPR’s Brian Mann contributed to this reporting.
Discussion about this post