Prosecutors in New York are reopening their review of an alleged 2024 gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity house after a former student filed a civil lawsuit that drew national attention and scrutiny of the school’s response.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told ABC News on Monday that he plans to present the case to a grand jury. His office declined to file charges in November 2024 after reviewing the woman’s statement to Cornell University Police. Van Houten said the allegations in her lawsuit are “dramatically different” from what she told police.
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“We want to reexamine whether there’s additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024,” Van Houten said.
The case has raised a range of questions, including what the woman originally told police, why prosecutors relied solely on campus police rather than investigating it themselves and what discipline the seven accused students faced after a university investigation.
The following section details the lawsuit’s graphic allegations. Reader discretion is advised.
What does the lawsuit allege?
The woman’s attorneys filed the 101-page civil lawsuit on Sept. 16, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and a jury trial. The defendants include the university, the fraternity’s national organization and Cornell’s chapter, the woman’s sorority’s national and local chapter, a bar in Ithaca, New York, seven students and unnamed faculty and alumni advisers.
According to the lawsuit, on Oct. 19, 2024, the woman, then 20 and a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority, drank vodka at the sorority house before going to a sorority event at Moonies Bar & Nightclub. The complaint says she was marked as underage, but the bar still served her at least one drink.
Around 11 p.m., she “stumbled alone” to the Chi Phi fraternity house to see a friend, the complaint says, after having “about 10 standard drinks within the past 3 hours.” Two fraternity members then “pressured” her into snorting what they said was ketamine, “a drug she had never done before,” according to the lawsuit.
The complaint alleges the two men “began engaging in sexual acts with [the woman], all without her consent.” At about 1:42 a.m., one member allegedly posted in the fraternity’s “Chi Phi Actives” Snapchat group that there was “free p—y” upstairs, and more members entered the room. The lawsuit alleges that all seven men snorted ketamine off her body and that she was “completely incapacitated” by the time of the last alleged assault, which ended at about 5:45 a.m. when she “lost consciousness.”
None of the seven men have been criminally charged.
Why prosecutors are reopening the case
The woman went to police less than a month after the alleged assault, giving a sworn statement to Cornell University Police on Nov. 8, 2024. Cornell suspended the fraternity chapter and the seven students that day, according to the lawsuit, and later opened a Title IX investigation.
But the district attorney’s office concluded at the time that her statement didn’t allege a crime under state law, Van Houten said Monday in an interview with NewsNation. Under New York law, a person cannot legally consent to sex if they are forced, physically helpless or mentally incapacitated by a substance given without their consent.
“She did not allege that she was physically forced to engage in sexual conduct. She did not allege that she was physically helpless. In other words, that she was unconscious,” he said. “She did not allege that she was given drugs without her knowledge.”
Van Houten acknowledged that “people process trauma differently,” but said his office could not bring charges based on what she told police. He has said his office relied on Cornell police’s investigation rather than conducting its own. He also told NewsNation that Cornell sent his office the Snapchat screenshots cited in the lawsuit, though he did not personally review them, and that the message “would not have changed our analysis of the case.”
The woman’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, told CNN the police report was “not materially different” from the lawsuit. Van Houten said his office offered to meet with her in 2024, but she did not accept.
Were the students punished with essays?
The lawsuit also claims that when Cornell temporarily suspended the seven students in November 2024, they “were afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.” The claim spread widely online over the weekend.
Giuffra said Cornell ultimately expelled two of the students, while the others received lesser penalties, including suspensions, workshops or written assignments.
But on Monday, Cornell pushed back. The university said a hearing panel issued sanctions that included expulsions and suspensions and that none of the students were allowed to write essays “as a sole consequence of their involvement.”
The two accounts largely overlap, with both saying some students were expelled or suspended. Cornell’s statement does not rule out essays as part of some students’ punishments. The university says federal privacy law bars it from saying which student received which sanction.
What’s next?
Van Houten said his next step is to meet with the woman to learn what additional evidence exists, including records from Cornell’s Title IX investigation, before presenting the cases to a grand jury. He told NewsNation her attorney “has indicated that she is willing to cooperate and to meet with us.” He hasn’t said when the case will go before the grand jury.
The Chi Phi chapter remains barred from Cornell’s campus, and the civil case is still in its early stages.
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