Allegations that a Cornell University student was raped by seven fraternity members in 2024 have drawn national attention after the accuser, identified only as “Jane Doe” in court documents, filed a lawsuit last month.
The litigation and subsequent public outcry prompted New York state prosecutors to reopen their investigation and begin the process of pursuing criminal charges against the alleged perpetrators, which they declined to do in the immediate aftermath. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Thursday appointed state Attorney General Letitia James (D) as special prosecutor, saying she had lost faith in the Tompkins County district attorney’s ability to fairly oversee the case.
Here’s what we know about the allegations and investigations.
Who is Jane Doe, and what does she allege happened to her?
According to the Sept. 16 civil complaint, on Oct. 19, 2024, Jane Doe, then a 20-year-old student, visited two bars in Ithaca, New York, with her sorority sisters and consumed the equivalent of 10 drinks in about three hours. At about 11 p.m., she left the second bar and “stumbled alone” to the Chi Phi fraternity house to hang out with a friend, according to the complaint.
The complaint states that the friend handed Doe a beer and danced with her in the main room of the house, then pulled her off to a quieter area and propositioned her with having a threesome with him and one of his fraternity brothers.
The complaint alleges that her friend and another member of Chi Phi then pressured Doe into ingesting ketamine, marijuana and liquor. It contends that the two men assaulted her and that, at 1:42 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, one of them sent a Snapchat message to fraternity members effectively inviting them to join in the assault. Several did, the complaint says.
A screenshot of the Snapchat message included in the complaint shows one person saying there was “Free p—y” and another saying, “Like you can walk in and whip it out.”
The 101-page complaint states that Doe “was plied with alcohol and drugs to the point of intoxication” at the fraternity house, and alleges in graphic detail that she was sexually assaulted and raped by members of the fraternity over the course of about seven hours.
The complaint names seven members of the Xi chapter of Chi Phi, Cornell University, the national Chi Phi fraternity, the Delta Delta Delta sorority, an Ithaca bar and others.
The lawsuit accuses the students of sexual assault and battery, while accusing Cornell of failing to do enough to protect Doe. It seeks a jury trial to determine damages.
What happened after that night in 2024?
According to the New York Times, which obtained documents from Cornell’s internal investigation, in the three weeks between the fraternity party and when Doe went to police, her thinking about that night evolved from apparent shame to the belief that she had been a victim of sexual assault.
On Oct. 21, 2024, Doe received a text message from one of the men she later accused of sexual assault, who said he “just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night,” according to the Times. Doe also visited a doctor at the university’s health center Oct. 22 and reported that she had contracted a urinary tract infection “in a traumatic way.”
On Nov. 3, 2024, Doe sent a text to another fraternity member she later would accuse of sexual assault and told him that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual” and that she “was given more [ketamine] than i can remember,” according to the Times.
The complaint states that Doe reported what happened to campus police Nov. 8, 2024. Campus police interviewed her Nov. 14 and Nov. 15, according to CBS News. An officer drafted a six-page statement based on those interviews and, after making about 20 handwritten corrections, Doe signed a final version Nov. 15, according to the Times.
How did Cornell respond?
The university said in a statement this week that it conducted a thorough Title IX investigation over several months and issued a range of sanctions, including suspensions and expulsions. Title IX regulations dictate how schools have to respond to allegations of sex-based discrimination and sexual assault and misconduct. Schools are required to conduct such investigations if they receive federal financial assistance.
“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Cornell spokesman Kyle Kimball wrote Monday. “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.”
The Xi chapter of Chi Phi and seven students were placed on temporary suspension on Nov. 8, 2024, the day Doe went to campus police, according to Doe’s civil complaint. The fraternity chapter was closed and remains barred from campus.
The Cornell University Police Department has said it shared Doe’s sworn statement and the Snapchat screenshot with the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office.
Why didn’t prosecutors press charges in 2024?
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has defended his decision not to pursue criminal charges in 2024 because he said there was “insufficient evidence” to do so when his office reviewed the case then. Specifically, he has said that his office at the time did not receive a screenshot of the Snapchat message — contradicting the university’s claims.
In a lengthy statement that in part sought to explain his initial decision not to file charges, Van Houten said Doe did not allege in her 2024 sworn statement to Cornell police 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 wrote. “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.”
Van Houten said he also recognized “the reality that it can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them.”
What did Jane Doe say in her sworn statement?
The sworn statement that Doe gave police in 2024 has not been publicly shared. But in his statement this week, Van Houten provided a summary of facts from that statement.
His summary does not include certain details reported by NBC News, which said Thursday that it had obtained a copy of the sworn statement.
According to NBC, Doe said in her statement that she initially had consented to a threesome but that she grew increasingly uncomfortable and isolated throughout the night, which she also described as “the most intoxicated” she had been in her life.
“I felt like I was unable to make any decisions because of how intoxicated I was,” she said in the statement, according to NBC.
Other details not included in Van Houten’s summary of Doe’s statement, but reported by NBC, include her saying that she felt coerced, in that two men “were asking me to have sex so many times that I finally gave in.”
What other details have emerged?
CBS News reported this week that it had obtained a copy of a transcript of the interview between Doe and campus police in which she says that she had gaps in her memory, that she remembers being “physically hit very, very hard” during the assault, and that she said, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”
Van Houten told CBS News that he had never seen a transcript of that conversation before CBS reported it.
Newly unsealed court documents showed that Cornell conducted an internal disciplinary investigation involving more than 50 interviews with 32 witnesses in the months after the incident.
“I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me,” Doe said at a May 2025 disciplinary hearing, according to the documents. “It just was a totally debilitating place to be in.”
At least one fraternity member is fighting in court to overturn the disciplinary action against him and clear his academic record, the documents show.
How did Chi Phi respond to the allegations?
In a statement Wednesday, Chi Phi said its Xi chapter at Cornell voted unanimously to remove the accused members from its rolls three days after Doe filed her police report. The chapter also recommended that the national fraternity expel those members permanently, and Chi Phi’s grand council did so at its next meeting.
“These actions went beyond anything the law or Cornell University required of us. As a private membership fraternity, Chi Phi acted within its own authority at both the chapter and national levels to remove men suspected of betraying the values of our brotherhood,” said Trey Robb, the national fraternity’s interim executive director.
“They failed to meet the standards we set for every brother, and accountability is how we will always respond to behavior that falls short of those standards,” Robb added.
Did Cornell follow its policies?
Cornell has a 49-page document detailing its procedures for handling cases in which students are accused of sexual assault. Those policies have evolved since Doe reported what happened to her in 2024. A university task force was established in February 2025, and the school’s leadership endorsed its final recommendations in March 2026.
Under the version of the policy in place in 2024, the school was required to take a number of steps, including passing along the report to specific people, and giving the victim the right to report the incident to police and the option to participate in the university’s disciplinary process. The policy also lays out rules for any disciplinary hearings, including offering the accused the right to appeal, and providing support to victims, such as assistance accessing counseling or changing student housing. Cornell’s 2024 policy does not specify what information, if any, the university should turn over to law enforcement from its disciplinary proceedings.
It’s unclear from the public record whether Cornell violated its own procedures. The university temporarily suspended the fraternity and students while it investigated the incident and held hearings that led to further discipline. It’s not clear what specific support Cornell offered the victim and whether it should have provided additional aid, based on the 2024 policy.
Hochul has called for Cornell to hire outside counsel to investigate whether it “met every obligation to protect its students and pursue justice” in this case. On Thursday, Hochul said that she had spoken with Cornell’s president and that he had agreed to an independent review.
What happens next?
Hochul said Thursday evening that she had appointed James as special prosecutor because she had lost faith in the county district attorney’s ability to fairly oversee the case.
James said Friday her office would gather evidence, interview witnesses and pursue prosecutions if warranted in the coming months.
“I know that you want answers. I do, too,” James said at a news conference. “A comprehensive investigation of this nature takes time, but my office is committed to seeing it through.”
Van Houten said that he supports James’s appointment and that his office will cooperate fully with her.
“I trust that she will examine the facts and apply the law,” Van Houten said Friday in a statement. “It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the University. The focus has been and should continue to be on the victims.”
Some of the additional evidence that could be taken into consideration include the screenshot of the Snapchat message and a fuller transcript from Doe’s interview with Cornell police, according to Moira Penza, a trial lawyer with experience in prosecuting sexual assault cases. Penza does not represent anyone in the Jane Doe case.
“As a former prosecutor, you don’t want to rely on a single statement alone, especially in a situation as serious and as complex as this one, and where there was so much additional evidence available,” Penza said. “It’s very rare that in a sex crime case that you would have so many eyewitnesses, that you would have so much electronic communication.”
Meanwhile, Doe’s civil lawsuit will proceed separately from the criminal investigation. Megan Bonanni, a lawyer who has represented hundreds of sexual abuse survivors, said one of the biggest differences between the civil lawsuit and the criminal investigation is “control of the process” for an accuser.
“Jane Doe can report what happened to law enforcement, but she cannot control whether prosecutors bring charges. Oftentimes, they don’t,” Bonanni said. “Through a civil lawsuit, she has the freedom and the ability to pursue legal claims and seek accountability.”
Hochul also called on state legislators to tighten a law that limits the ability to prosecute a sexual assault case if the victim voluntarily became intoxicated.
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