Giuffra says DA ‘recognises failures’; Saland denies client’s role
Cornell University said Monday that “none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement,” directly disputing the lawsuit’s claim that those involved in the alleged assault were “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.” The university said the matter was instead referred to a “panel of trained faculty and staff” that issued “a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell,” adding that “any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false.”
Jane Doe, the plaintiff identified in court documents, alleged in her lawsuit that on the night of October 19, 2024, seven men from Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity chapter assaulted her in an incident involving alcohol and the drug ketamine at the fraternity house. Jane Doe said in the lawsuit that she was intoxicated during the alleged incident and was incapable of providing consent. She reported the incident to Cornell University Police on November 8, 2024. The suit states that Jane Doe suffered “severe emotional and psychological distress and personal physical injury” due to the incident and the university’s handling, and that news of the incident quickly circulated through the school.
The lawsuit also contains an image purported to be from a Snapchat fraternity group chat, in which a participant alerted other members, in vulgar terms, to the potential for a sexual encounter with Jane Doe.
On Monday, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced his office will reopen a criminal inquiry into the alleged assault and bring the case before a grand jury. “Once we determine the appropriate charges, the case will be prosecuted in the most objective and impartial means possible,” Van Houten said. He said that at the time of the alleged assault two years ago, his office concluded that evidence from her statement to authorities did not meet the legal threshold to bring charges, and that he had reached out to Jane Doe and her lawyers for more information as he prepared to bring the case to a grand jury.
In his statement, Van Houten included a summary of what Jane Doe told the Cornell University Police Department in 2024 after the alleged attack, noting the statement differed from the allegations in the lawsuit. “Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped,” Van Houten said. “On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” Van Houten added that Jane Doe’s lawyers had never been in touch with him to say her original statement was inaccurate or to ask him to reconsider his decision not to bring charges. He later acknowledged “the reality that it can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them.”
Jane Doe’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, said in a statement on Monday obtained by CBS, the BBC’s U.S. partner, that in the days following the alleged assault, Jane Doe “was traumatised, numb and unable to function or accept the horror of what had happened. She was in self-preservation mode.” Giuffra said Jane Doe never spoke to anyone other than the officer who took her initial complaint, adding that he would have expected she “would have been interviewed several times and evidence collected by law enforcement and a case developed. This is the normal sequence for serious crime investigations.” He added: “The defensive posture I have gleaned from the DA’s statements leads me to believe that they recognise that there were failures and they are trying to excuse them.”
Cornell University said in a statement that while it supported the case being brought before a grand jury, the matter was referred to a “panel of trained faculty and staff” that issued “a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell.” Cornell reiterated that “none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.”
Jeremy Saland, an attorney for one of the men named in the lawsuit, denied the allegations. Saland acknowledged his client “responded to and made an immature comment on Snapchat,” but “did nothing else.” Saland denied that his client “was involved in no sexual activity nor touched the plaintiff in any way and ingested no ketamine.”
In November 2024, Cornell University issued a public statement regarding the “serious and deeply disturbing allegations of drug abuse and sexual violence at the Chi Phi fraternity house,” saying its campus police department was investigating and that it had suspended the local chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity, as well as “a number of students.” Cornell also said it had opened an internal investigation and a civil rights inquiry under Title IX, which bars sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
The case has drawn national attention following Doe’s lawsuit and the announcement that the case would be reopened, with several celebrities, including actress Florence Pugh, speaking out about it.