Cornell rape case: New York governor removes DA from investigation, says Jane Doe was ‘failed’ by police and prosecutor

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday that a woman who alleges she was drugged and raped by multiple fraternity members at Cornell University in 2024 was “failed” by those obligated to protect her.

Hochul’s comments came a day after announcing she had lost faith in the district attorney overseeing the Cornell University rape case and appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as the special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.

“In what world would the police learn from a victim that she’d been literally gang raped while intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney?” Hochul said at a press conference. “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved or even request the full transcript?”

“At every turn, she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her,” Hochul said.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has come under intense scrutiny in recent days over his decision not to prosecute anyone when the initial allegations were made in 2024.

In a civil lawsuit filed last month against the school and seven current and former fraternity members, a former student identified as “Jane Doe” alleged that she was the victim of a “gang rape” at the Chi Phi fraternity on Cornell’s Ithaca, N.Y., campus on Oct. 19, 2024. She said she was already intoxicated when she arrived and was given ketamine before and during the alleged assault. She reported the incident to campus police three weeks later.

Van Houten, who earlier this week reopened a criminal investigation into the case based on new information in the lawsuit, said in a statement the woman’s first account to police didn’t include allegations that she was “drugged against her will or gang raped.”

“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” Van Houten said. “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.”

On Tuesday, CBS New York published excerpts from a Nov. 14, 2024, interview with police, in which Jane Doe asserted, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” 

Van Houten said he was not provided with a transcript of her interview before his office decided not to pursue charges.

“I’m going to follow up on this because this is news to me,” Van Houten told CBS. “If she had said those words, we certainly would want to have explored that more. Like I said, that wasn’t provided to me.”

According to ABC News, Jane Doe told the school’s investigators that she “felt like bait” on the night of the alleged assault. 

“I felt like lions around me,” she said during a 2025 hearing. “It just was a totally debilitating place to be in.”

The comments were included in a 99-page report prepared by the university as part of its Title IX investigation, per ABC.

The report also included comments from a fraternity member who Cornell’s investigation concluded did not engage in the assault but was found responsible for “attempted sexual exploitation.” 

“I was sorry that maybe if it wasn’t consensual and she was victimized, I was sorry for not stopping it,” the fraternity members said, according to ABC.

Two of the men have released statements through their lawyers denying they participated in a sexual assault, according to the Associated Press.

Cornell University issued a statement pushing back against claims that the school did not thoroughly punish those involved in the alleged assault.

“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” the university said. “A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault.”

Hochul announced on Wednesday that Cornell had agreed to initiate an independent review of its initial response to the allegations.

The governor also said she would work to close a loophole in New York law, which states that someone who was voluntarily intoxicated cannot claim they were mentally incapacitated during an assault, unless they can show they were “physically helpless” and unable to communicate consent.

“If someone is too intoxicated to consent, it should not matter whether they chose to use drugs or alcohol,” Hochul said. “Voluntary intoxication is not a license for sexual assault or gang rape. Period.”

What does the lawsuit allege?

On Sept. 14, Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against Cornell University and seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, alleging that she was the victim of a “gang rape” at the fraternity house when she was incapable of consent — and that the school failed to protect her from “sexual predators” on its campus.

The defendants named in the lawsuit include Cornell, the seven fraternity members, the Chi Phi fraternity, the woman’s own sorority, Delta Delta Delta, and an off-campus bar that allegedly served her alcohol.

She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages resulting from “sustained psychological injuries, severe emotional distress, along with pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.”

According to her lawsuit, Jane Doe was a 20-year-old student at the school in October 2024 when she went to visit a friend at the fraternity house on Cornell’s Ithaca, N.Y., campus while intoxicated. Shortly after arriving, Jane Doe alleged that she was pressured by two fraternity brothers into snorting what they said was ketamine before sexually assaulting her. One of the men then allegedly sent a message to the fraternity’s Snapchat group suggesting that she was available for sex. A screengrab of part of the chat was included in the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, multiple other members of the fraternity showed up, and she was raped for hours.

“The Snapchat was disgusting and vulgar and immoral,” Van Houten told ABC News. “But the question that we analyzed was, did Jane Doe consent to what happened? And the law in New York state is clear: That if you are voluntarily intoxicated, or under the influence of drugs such that your judgment is impaired, that does not legally under the penal law constitute your inability to consent.”

During the alleged assault, the fraternity members “began pouring lines of Ketamine all over her body and snorting them,” according to the complaint.

“At around 5:45 AM, this assault concluded and Plaintiff lost consciousness,” the lawsuit stated.

About three weeks later, on Nov. 8, 2024, Jane Doe reported the incident to the university’s police department.

According to ABC News, Jane Doe told police in a sworn statement on Nov. 15, 2024, that the incident “felt like coercion,” and that at one point she said “no to the foursome” one of the fraternity brothers had proposed. She also stated: “I felt like I was unable to make any decision because of how intoxicated I was.”

According to the New York Times, she told Cornell’s Title IX investigators that she did not consider herself a victim until she saw the incident being discussed in an online forum.

“Are Chi Phi brothers Crips or Bloods because I hear they have been doing hell Gang Banging?” one user wrote.

“They do drugs and gang r*ped a sophomore,” wrote another.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” Jane Doe told investigators, per the Times.

One of the accused men’s lawyers told NBC that his client “made an immature comment on Snapchat,” but “did nothing else.”

What was Cornell’s response?

Cornell’s months-long Title IX investigation included at least 12 hearings, according to the lawsuit, which said that the accused fraternity members were “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell.”

Two of the seven accused fraternity members were ultimately expelled, while the others received lesser sanctions, according to the complaint. Jane Doe dropped out of school.

According to CBS, two were suspended for at least two semesters. Cornell denies that students only had to write essays as a disciplinary measure.

Last week, Cornell issued a statement saying that it had concluded its Title IX investigation but would not disclose individual sanctions, citing federal privacy laws.

“The Cornell Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards investigated and adjudicated the allegations consistent with university policies. The Xi chapter of Chi Phi fraternity remains barred from our campus,” the statement said: “Federal privacy law prohibits Cornell from disclosing specific information regarding individual students and we therefore are unable to make a public statement on any other disciplinary response. Violations of university policies could lead to sanctions up to and including suspension or expulsion. We will respond in detail through the legal process.”

The university also pointed out that it launched a task force on campus sexual assault in the wake of the incident and issued a report in March with recommendations for “an environment that fosters sexual health and safety.”

“Several of the recommendations have already been implemented, while others are in development with oversight by a university implementation committee,” Cornell said.

According to USA Today, more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, domestic and dating violence and stalking were reported to Cornell University’s Title IX from 2018 through 2024. Of those, 14 cases resulted in suspensions, while seven ended in expulsion or dismissal, per the paper.

“Cornell takes each report seriously and, to the greatest extent possible, honors a complainant’s decision not to pursue resolution,” Rebecca Valli, a Cornell spokesperson, said in a statement to USA Today. “The university provides support and resources regardless of whether the respondent is subject to our conduct processes, and regardless of whether a complainant consents to an investigation.”

Reactions to the allegations

The harrowing allegations revealed in Jane Doe’s lawsuit prompted reactions from several celebrities, including Florence Pugh, who posted a lengthy response on Instagram calling for men to speak out against sexual violence.

“This is really the moment where we need our men to be as horrified and as sickened as us,” Pugh wrote. “You need to be leading conversations about how we change the allowance and complicity of this behaviour as much as we are. How can you expect us to trust that it’s ‘not all men’ when in moments like this, many of you stay quiet?”

In an expletive-laden Instagram post, actor Josh Gad tore into Cornell, seizing on allegations in the civil lawsuit that the fraternity members were required to write essays as part of the adjudication process.

“When we start setting a precedent that our girls and women can be brutally raped, and the resulting disciplinary action is to hand out (checks notes) ESSAYS (like it’s Bart Simpson being a lil’ rascal), about why it was wrong to brutally violate an innocent girl, we have lost our f***ing minds,” Gad wrote.

Toby Morton, a former South Park writer, launched a website, TheCornell7.org, dedicated to holding the school and the accused fraternity members accountable.

“Accountability is coming,” Morton wrote on Instagram.

Mariska Hargitay posted a joint statement on Instagram with the Joyful Heart Foundation, which supports survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, with a quote from a scathing editorial by the Cornell Daily Sun.

“Arrest them,” Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams wrote in an Instagram story while sharing a photo of the seven accused men, according to Variety.

“F*** them and f*** Cornell, too!” he added.

At a town hall in Ithaca, N.Y., earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said that “the culture of rape, sexual assault and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States, including Cornell.”

“Jane Doe, that survivor, lost her education because you can’t stay in school when something like that happens to you,” Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd. “She had to lose her education, and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward. Never again.”

She also had a message to Jane Doe and other survivors of sexual assault.

“I want you to know that you are not defined by the things that have happened to you,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “You are bigger than that. You are stronger than them. And they will never define you for your entire life. And that you can achieve anything that you want to achieve, from one survivor to another.”

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