Hochul taps Letitia James to take over Cornell investigation
A woman who alleges she was raped by seven men at a Cornell University fraternity house in 2024 is at the center of an online campaign seeking to identify her, her attorney said Friday. No criminal charges were initially filed; the case was reopened after the woman filed a civil lawsuit that thrust the allegations into the national spotlight and renewed the possibility of criminal prosecution.
The woman’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, told CNN on Friday that his client is “not doing well” and is “under siege on social media where people are trying to identify her.” Giuffra said “false court postings” have attempted to identify the woman, known in legal documents as Jane Doe, and that other women have been “incorrectly” identified as his client.
In an interview with CBS, the BBC’s U.S. partner, Giuffra argued that the woman, who was 20 years old at the time of the alleged assault, was unable to provide consent because she was intoxicated when she arrived at the fraternity house in Ithaca, New York. Giuffra said she had been pressured into taking the drug ketamine before she was allegedly raped.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday appointed the state’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Letitia James, to take over the investigation. At a news conference, Hochul said she had “lost faith” in the county prosecutor’s ability to oversee the case.
“This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable, and then at every turn she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her,” Hochul said. She also vowed to close what she described as a “loophole” in New York state law that complicates rape prosecutions when an alleged victim voluntarily consumes alcohol or drugs before an assault.
The online pressure on the accuser has drawn a wave of solidarity on social media. Women have posted videos of themselves under the title “I am Jane Doe,” both to complicate internet searches for her name and to share their own experiences of sexual assault.
The “I am Jane Doe” effort gathered pace after a political commentator vowed to unmask the accuser, arguing that it was unfair for her to remain anonymous while the men she accuses — sometimes referred to as the “Cornell Seven” — are publicly named despite not being charged with a crime.
Online investigators have also sought the home addresses of the accused men. According to the Free Press, an active-duty U.S. Marine Corps sergeant who shared a name with one of the men was mistakenly served the woman’s lawsuit, leading to what the Free Press described as a “torrent of abuse and threats.”
Giuffra’s CNN and CBS interviews aired Friday, the same day as Hochul’s news conference and a public hearing held by the Cornell Student Assembly on the case.