New York state prosecutors have reopened a case involving an alleged gang rape at Cornell University after a woman filed a civil lawsuit accusing the school and law enforcement officials of not doing enough. According to court documents filed in the lawsuit on September 16, which include screenshots of a group chat purportedly between members of the university fraternity at the centre of the allegations, the woman, referred to as Jane Doe, alleged she was drugged and raped at the fraternity house in 2024. The case has sparked anger on social media directed at Cornell and the District Attorney’s Office in Tompkins County, New York, over their handling of the allegations.
On Monday, District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in a statement that while at the time of the assault his office had found that evidence from the complainant’s initial statement did not meet the legal threshold to bring charges, he would now let a grand jury decide. According to the 101-page lawsuit, the complainant visited a friend at the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on October 19, 2024, while she was already intoxicated after drinking at a local, off-campus bar. She stated that two members of the house propositioned her to sleep with both of them and later pressured her into taking ketamine and smoking marijuana.
Doe, 20 at the time, alleged she was then raped by seven men at the Chi Phi fraternity house over the course of seven hours before blacking out about 5:45am. She said in the lawsuit that because she was under the influence, there was no way she was able to provide consent. Doe added that although she reported the incident to the university’s police department on November 8, 2024, prosecutors filed no criminal charges.
In a statement to US broadcaster CBS News on Monday, Doe’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, said she went to the police because she believed she was the “victim of a crime”. He added that Cornell expelled two fraternity members after an internal review of the allegations, but five others received lesser repercussions, including suspensions, workshops and essay assignments. That I can tell you for a fact,” Giuffra told CBS New York, adding that Doe dropped out of school after her ordeal.
The lawsuit names Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar as the men in question. It also names Cornell; the Chi Phi fraternity; Doe’s sorority, Delta Delta Delta; the off-campus bar; and the seven men as defendants and accuses them of breach of contract, negligence and violations of state law. Doe is seeking monetary damages, including compensatory and punitive damages.
The lawsuit did not specify how much Doe was asking for. The lawsuit includes images of a group chat on Snapchat among members of the fraternity in which one person alerted others crudely that they could sleep with the victim for “free”. An image of the group chat shows a message from one person who wrote: “I f****** love Chi Phi.” Kretzschmar, a then-fraternity member, allegedly sent two responses in the Snapchat group but has denied involvement.
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