Excerpts of text messages reportedly exchanged by a defendant in the Cornell University gang-rape case and the woman who claims she was assaulted were published by CBS News on Tuesday, a day after New York prosecutors said they were reopening a criminal investigation. The texts were reportedly sent within days of the alleged October 2024 assault at a campus fraternity house in which a female student said she was drugged and repeatedly raped over the course of seven hours by multiple men who were alerted to her presence on the social media platform Snapchat. Taken together, the texts seem to highlight the complications that have often presented themselves in investigations centering on rape on college campuses in the US.
In one of the messages, screenshots of which were obtained by CBS New York, the unnamed male defendant appears to apologize to the woman for “how things went down” – and said his memory of events two nights previously was “kinda fuzzy”. He said he and another male who was present regretted that they were too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand”. In reply, the woman, who was 20 at the time of the alleged assault, and has since left Cornell, said her memory was “super clouded too” and that they were all intoxicated.
According to CBS, she also wrote: “non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal”, and stated that she liked being with him and another man. Later, she suggested they smoke together again, “but like leave out the extra 5 billion men and ketamine”. A civil lawsuit filed by the woman earlier in September alleges that seven men, named as Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, assaulted her at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house after she went there in an intoxicated state looking for a friend.
Two of the alleged perpetrators were subsequently expelled after an internal investigation by Cornell – while the other five were allowed to resume their studies at the Ivy League institution after writing an essay, attending a workshop, or serving a short suspension. None was ever arrested or charged, and outrage over the treatment of the alleged offenders grew when the woman’s lawsuit was made public. On Monday, the Tompkins county, New York, district attorney Matthew Van Houten – whose office’s jurisdiction includes Cornell – said he had reopened the dormant investigation into the case.
He said his office did that in light of allegations that he said were “dramatically different” from those originally made by the alleged victim. He also issued a statement defending his initial decision not to seek charges. 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.” CBS, meanwhile, also claimed to have a video of Snapchat messages exchanged on the night of the alleged assault by numerous members of a group called Chi Phi Actives.
One of the messages, sent while the woman was in the since-closed fraternity house, allegedly stated there was “free pussy upstairs”. According to CBS, a later message sent by a group member asked: “Shop still open?” The response was, “Yea”. Attorney Thomas Giuffra, who represents the woman, confirmed to CBS that his client – named Jane Doe in court documents – exchanged text messages with one defendant after the alleged assault.
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