An incident at Cornell University involving alleged gang rape is stoking controversy after a woman filed a lawsuit alleging sexual assault nearly two years after she said the incident occurred.
A young woman whose identity was shielded with a “Jane Doe” name filed the lawsuit on Sept. 16 in New York court, alleging seven members of a fraternity at the New York university gang-raped and forcibly drugged her in October 2024. The Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, said this week he will reexamine the case after finding at the time of the incident that there was not enough evidence to press charges against the Chi Phi fraternity members.
A timeline of the case, documented below, reveals that the case has proven murky for two reasons.
First, the signed six-page statement from Doe that Cornell police provided to Van Houten in 2024 when he was doing his initial assessment did not include all the information from a lengthy interview she did with police and investigators at the time, which was recorded in a 120-page transcript. Van Houten did not see that transcript at the time and is now working to obtain it, he has said. The transcript contains explicit allegations of gang rape that were not included in Doe’s signed summary statement of the transcript provided to Van Houten. That summary indicated that the incident was voluntary and did not contain allegations that she was forced to do drugs or that she did not consent to sex, Van Houten has said, noting that allegations being made in the new lawsuit are “dramatically different” from Doe’s statement two years ago.
Second, the allegation made in Doe’s lawsuit differs from what she said in the transcript two years ago, according to the 2024 transcript reviewed by the New York Times. In 2024, Doe told investigators and police that her initial sexual interactions with the first two men were consensual, saying rape occurred by the end of the night when multiple other fraternity members entered the room. She said in 2024 that her initial level of inebriation was about a “5 or 6” out of 10 when that first encounter began. In her new lawsuit, Doe said that she was “incapable of consenting” to the initial sexual encounter because of severe inebriation and alleged that her initial two partners raped her.
Here’s a timeline of the Cornell saga.
Oct. 19, 2024: The incident
The incident allegedly occurred on the evening of Oct. 19, 2024. Doe appeared to have initially gone to see a friend at his Chi Phi fraternity house, and seemed to end up having a threesome with Jonathan Newell and Matthew Ingalls. Several other fraternity members entered the room and had sexual activity with Doe, according to allegations. All of those involved, including Doe, are alleged to have been drunk and on drugs.
On Oct. 20, Doe told her two roommates that she had consumed ketamine and had sex with multiple men, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times. One roommate told investigators that Doe did not use the word “rape” or “assault.” The roommate said it seemed like Doe was “in shock,” and “not really understanding the gravity of what she was saying.”
Oct. 21, 2024: Doe says ‘none of the sexual stuff was illegal’
On Oct. 21, Newell messaged Doe with an apology, saying he and Ingalls felt terrible for being too under the influence of drugs and alcohol to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”
Doe replied reassuringly. She texted him back, “At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly i really liked being w u and matt [Ingalls].”
Also on Oct. 21, Doe told a sorority sister about rumors circulating that she was a “slut.” The sorority sister told investigators that Doe said with a laugh that “unfortunately they are true.” The sorority sister said she believed Doe “had not yet processed what had happened.”
Oct. 22, 2024: Doe references ‘traumatic’ incident
On Oct. 22, Doe tested for sexually transmitted diseases after contracting a urinary tract infection. At the time, she told the physician she acquired the UTI in a “traumatic way,” according to a transcript of her conversation with investigators.
Oct. 23, 2024: Doe says incident ‘didn’t happen’
On Oct. 23, Doe texted Ingalls, “bro, everyone knows” and it is “RUINING” her life. She said all she can do is “sleep and cry all day.” Ingalls texted back, condemning “how fast nonsense spreads at this school,” and said Doe did not have “anything to be ashamed of.”
“You’re right,” Doe replied. “It’ll get better.”
Several days after Oct. 23, Doe sent an image of a forum post accusing Chi Phi of gang rape to Ingalls with several question marks. “Ridiculous,” Ingalls replied. “I’m gonna report that.”
One of Doe’s roommates told investigators that at the time, Doe instructed her to tell anyone who asked about the episode that “it didn’t happen.” The roommate said Doe framed the incident “as this sort of crazy thing that she had done.” As time went on, the roommate said Doe “kind of came to realize that it was something bad, and that she didn’t really enjoy her time there.”
One of Doe’s roommates told investigators that Doe had been sexually assaulted before. The roommate suggested she believed that made it hard for Doe to quickly admit rape again and for her to talk openly about what had happened.
“I think she wanted it to be consensual,” the roommate told investigators. “I’d have conversations, and she would describe a part of what happened, and I would tell her that that is what could be classified as rape.”
Around Oct. 31, Doe expressed enthusiasm about attending Chi Phi’s Halloween party, texting Ingalls, “i’ll bring my cigs tomorrow.” She expressed anger when she was disinvited from the party, and texted Ingalls saying that the fraternity’s members are “covering your asses.”
Nov. 3, 2024: Doe says incident is ‘not consensual’
On Nov. 3, Doe texted Newell saying that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual.” She says that she was given too much ketamine and that Newell knew she did not feel comfortable and did not know anyone in the room.
On Nov. 7, Doe went to an emergency room and requested a rape kit.
Nov. 8, 2024: Doe reports incident to Cornell police
On Nov. 8, Doe reported the incident to the Cornell Police Department.
“Once she was emotionally ready, she went to the University police and bravely shared what had occurred to her. She went to the police because she believed that she was the victim of a crime,” her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, told CBS News.
Nov. 14, 2024: Doe’s transcripts and statement from police investigation
On Nov. 14, Doe spoke for hours with a Cornell police investigator and an investigator for the university’s Title IX office. A 120-page transcript of the conversation was condensed into a six-page statement that Doe signed.
Cornell police submitted that to the district attorney’s office, asking Van Houten to review Doe’s claims to determine whether there was enough evidence to support the filing of criminal charges. Van Houten ended up declining to file charges, saying he did not believe there was sufficient evidence.
Much of the murkiness of the case revolves around material that was in the 120 pages of transcripts that did not end up in the six-page summary statement Doe signed, which Van Houten said was the main piece of evidence he considered when deciding not to bring a criminal case.
In the transcript, Doe said sexual encounters started off “pretty OK” with two men she considered friends, and that things started off consensual. She said that she did not know how or why so many men had shown up in the room that night. By the end of the night, Doe said: “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.” Doe said her realizing that she believed she was gang-raped was a process, as she was drunk and on drugs during the incident.
She said following the incident, something clicked in her brain as she began reading messages that someone had said that Chi Phi members were “gang banging” and “gang raped a sophomore.”
”The pieces started coming together,” she told investigators. “And that’s kind of when I came to the realization that I had been gang raped, gang assaulted, whatever you want to call it; that’s what happened.”
Those words were not in the summary statement. In the statement, Doe seemed to acknowledge she willingly took drugs because she was “extremely uncomfortable,” and that she hoped she would pass out so that the men would be charged with rape. Doe’s statement did not allege she was drugged without her knowledge or that she did not consent to engage in sexual activities, according to Van Houten.
“I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out, so my thought was, if I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out,” Doe said in the summary statement, according to the New York Times. “My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.”
Van Houten told ABC News this week that in the summary statement signed by Doe that Cornell police gave him back in 2024, “she never says that she was drugged without her knowledge … admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge … does not allege that she was forced to engage in any acts [and] … does not say that she was physically helpless or unconscious or incapacitated at any point during the time at the fraternity house.”
Sept. 16, 2026: The new lawsuit
After Van Houten determined there was not sufficient evidence to press criminal charges, the case laid low for a while.
That changed on Sept. 16, 2026, when Doe sued Cornell, the university’s leaders, the Chi Phi fraternity, seven men who she said assaulted her, and her sorority, Delta Delta Delta.
In the 2026 lawsuit, she states that the two men with whom she first had sex that night “pressured” her into snorting ketamine with them. In her lawsuit, she said that she was “incapable of consenting” to her initial sexual encounter with them because of severe inebriation. She asserted that the two men raped her, saying in the lawsuit that “in her drunken state, Plaintiff was incapable of consenting” to a proposition that she engage in a threesome.
In the lawsuit, Doe said the night of Oct. 19 began with a drink of vodka at her place, before she attended a sorority event, where she had at least one more drink. She and some friends went to a bar afterward, before Doe departed alone to see a “friend” from Cornell at the Chi Phi fraternity house. She said she arrived at the fraternity house visibly drunk, having consumed around 10 drinks in three hours. That’s when she said the first friend suggested having a threesome with his fraternity brother. That first sexual encounter was a rape because she was not able to consent, she said, before the other six men arrived and allegedly gang-raped her.
Sept. 28, 2026: Van Houten’s response
On Sept. 28, Van Houten, the district attorney, said his office would reopen the case and prepare to bring it to a grand jury.
He said that the accusations made in her latest lawsuit differed from the signed statement he reviewed in 2024. He said in that statement, Doe told police that she agreed to have a threesome with two Chi Phi fraternity brothers in part “due to how attracted [she] was” to one of them and in part because of her “drunken curiosity.” He said that in contrast to claims made in the lawsuit, Doe’s old statement characterized her actions as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual” despite memory gaps. Doe never contacted his office to ask for reconsideration of her case or to suggest that her sworn statement was inaccurate, according to the district attorney.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY REOPENS INVESTIGATION INTO ALLEGED GANG RAPE AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Van Houten said Wednesday that he was in the process of getting the full interview transcript from Cornell, according to NPR. He said that he doesn’t know when he will get the transcript from the university “or if Cornell will resist turning it over.”
“If it’s factual, we absolutely should have been informed about what Jane Doe said to police that was not in her six-page statement,” Van Houten said.