New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Friday sharply criticized a county district attorney’s office and Cornell University police for allegedly failing to protect a former student who said in 2024 that she was drugged and gang-raped at a fraternity house in Ithaca.
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.
“This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable. And then, at every turn, she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her,” Hochul said at a news conference alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
Hochul on Thursday appointed James as special prosecutor to lead a reopened criminal investigation after saying she had lost faith in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten’s ability to fairly oversee the case.
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.”
James said 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 Friday. “A comprehensive investigation of this nature takes time, but my office is committed to seeing it through.”
Hochul said she was troubled to learn this week that the district attorney’s office had reviewed an incomplete account of the student’s allegations and never interviewed her directly, before declining to pursue criminal charges at the time.
Van Houten has defended that decision because he said there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue charges when his office reviewed the case in 2024.
The student, identified as “Jane Doe” in a civil complaint filed last month, alleges that she “was plied with alcohol and drugs to the point of intoxication” at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house, and alleges in detail that she was sexually assaulted and raped by members of the fraternity over the course of about seven hours starting the night of Oct. 19, 2024.
Doe reportedly told police that she could say “with 100 percent confidence” that she had been raped, according to a transcript obtained by CBS News this week, but a sworn summary of her interview sent to the district attorney’s office omitted that and other details. Van Houten told CBS News that he had never seen a transcript of that conversation before news outlets reported it.
“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 Friday. “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her, or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?”
Van Houten also has said that his office in 2024 did not receive a screenshot of a Snapchat message included in Doe’s lawsuit. The screenshot, allegedly of a conversation between Chi Phi fraternity members, shows one person saying there was “Free p—y” and another saying, “Like you can walk in and whip it out.”
Cornell has said it did send the screenshot to Van Houten’s office in 2024.
On Friday, Hochul said she was “deeply disturbed” at how Cornell police appear to have handled the case.
“They were the first ones to be able to interview [Doe] … and let this young woman tell her story. Them sending a partial record over is, in my judgment, a failure,” Hochul said. “We’ll have the attorney general and others find out if this was actually the case of what happened. But somebody knew more than they were letting people know.”
Earlier this week, Hochul called for Cornell to hire outside counsel to determine whether the university had “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.
In a statement, a Cornell University spokesperson said, “We fully support the appointment of a special prosecutor and efforts to change New York State’s rape law and are committed to an independent external review of all aspects of how Cornell has handled this case.”
Hochul said the case has exposed a gap in state law, which classifies as rape situations in which the victim clearly refused sex or was forced or threatened to submit to it. The statute also covers cases in which victims are physically helpless — unconscious or unable to communicate — and instances in which they are involuntarily intoxicated.
The gap occurs when a victim voluntarily drank or took drugs, advocates say, and prosecutors are relying on the victim’s mental state to prove the person was unable to 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.”
Jeffrey Dinowitz (D), a member of the New York State Assembly, has been trying to change the law since 2019.
“If the issue is somebody’s drinking, and they’re not in a position to express consent, why does it matter if they were involuntarily or voluntarily intoxicated?” Dinowitz said in an interview this week. “What should matter is if somebody is raped, they’re raped, and we’ve got to fight for those people.”
A bill to change the sexual assault statute has repeatedly passed the state Senate but has not been brought to the Assembly floor for a vote, Dinowitz said. Approximately 18 other states have a similar gap in their sexual assault laws, he said.
Opponents of changing the law say doing so would erode due-process protections and increase the risk of wrongful convictions.
The proposed legislation is “simply too vague to be fairly enforced,” the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said in a statement. The association added that the bill “fails to provide any objective guidance about when a partner is too intoxicated to legally agree to engage in sexual conduct.”
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