Cornell accuser told campus police 'I was raped' in 2024 interview

Van Houten reopens criminal probe weeks after ‘Cornell Seven’ lawsuit

As CBS News New York published excerpts of a Cornell student’s November 2024 campus police interviews in which she said of a later part of the evening, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten on Monday reopened the criminal investigation into the alleged October 2024 rape at the university’s Chi Phi fraternity house. The reopening came weeks after the woman, identified as Jane Doe, filed a 101-page civil lawsuit against Cornell and seven men dubbed the “Cornell Seven.”

Van Houten said in his Monday statement that once appropriate charges are determined, the case would be prosecuted through a grand jury “in the most objective and impartial means possible.” In the US legal system, prosecutors convene grand juries to weigh evidence and testimony and vote on whether a case merits criminal charges.

Van Houten also included in his Monday statement a summary of what Doe told the Cornell University Police Department in 2024 after the alleged attack, noting that the account differed from the allegations laid out 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.”

The prosecutor said that at the time of the alleged assault two years ago, his office concluded that evidence from the woman’s statement to authorities did not meet the legal bar to bring charges. He said he contacted Doe and her lawyers for more information as he prepared to bring the case to a grand jury.

CBS News New York reported that it had obtained a transcript of Doe’s interviews with campus police that began on 14 November, more than three weeks after the incident. According to the outlet, Doe told police of the initial sexual encounter, “I was pretty OK with all of this,” but said of what happened later, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”

CBS News New York also published excerpts of additional text messages reportedly exchanged between one of the defendants and a woman who appears to be the person who made the allegations, sent two days after the alleged assault. In one message, the man appeared to apologise for “how things went down,” said his memory was “kinda fuzzy,” and said he and another man felt bad for being too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

The woman in the text chain replied that her memory was “super clouded too” and that they were all intoxicated. She also wrote that “non(e) of the sexual stuff was illegal,” that she liked being with him and another man. Doe suggested they smoke together again, but leave out “the extra 5 billion men and ketamine.”

The 101-page civil lawsuit alleges that on the night of 19 October 2024, seven men from Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity chapter assaulted her for hours in an incident involving alcohol and the drug ketamine. Doe was a 20-year-old Cornell undergraduate at the time. She said in the lawsuit that she was intoxicated and incapable of providing consent, and that she left her sorority sisters after drinking that night and “stumbled alone” to the Chi Phi house in the city of Ithaca to see a male friend.

The lawsuit alleges sexual assault and battery, negligence, breach of contract and violations of New York’s Human Rights Law, and was filed against the university, the fraternity and the men involved in the alleged attack. Her lawyer has said Doe was “traumatised, numb and unable to function or accept the horror of what had happened” in the days afterward, and that she reported the incident to Cornell University Police on 8 November 2024.

The outrage in recent weeks grew when Doe alleged in her lawsuit that the men were “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.” Public attention intensified after the university newspaper’s editorial board published the names of the defendants in the lawsuit on 21 September in a piece titled “Cornell Won’t, We Will,” fuelling a social media outcry. Doe’s lawyer has said two of those involved were expelled.

Cornell has disputed the lawsuit’s allegation that it failed to adequately investigate or punish those involved. The university said 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 did not deny that punishment for some of those involved included writing an essay, but said: “None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Cornell said “temporary suspensions and other restrictive measures” were issued when the conduct was reported, and that the events that took place on its campus in 2024 “were appalling then and remain so now.” “We are doing all we can to foster a culture where sexual misconduct is never tolerated,” the university said. The Xi Chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.

Cornell has previously said it supported presenting the case to a grand jury. Following reports of the alleged assault in 2024, the university issued a public statement about “serious and deeply disturbing allegations of drug abuse and sexual violence at the Chi Phi fraternity house,” said campus police were investigating, and said it had suspended the local chapter as well as “a number of students.” Cornell said it also opened an internal investigation and a civil rights inquiry under Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funding.

The Cornell University Police Department provided prosecutors in November 2024 with an image of a Snapchat group titled Chi Phi Actives, the university said. Members are named in the chat and discuss a “free” sexual encounter with Doe using coarse language just before 02:00 local time on 20 October 2024.

No charges have been announced in the reopened criminal case.