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A woman who filed a lawsuit saying she was sexually assaulted by seven men at a Cornell University fraternity house told campus police that she could “say with 100% confidence I was raped.”
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Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said Monday that his office will present evidence to a grand jury as he faces questions from the public about why there were no criminal prosecutions in the case. A woman who filed a lawsuit saying she was sexually assaulted by seven men at a Cornell University fraternity house told police weeks after the incident that she could “say with 100% confidence I was raped,” The transcript, which has not been publicly released, raises new questions surrounding the local district attorney’s decision not to prosecute anyone at the time.
In recent days, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has maintained the woman’s first account to police didn’t include allegations that she was drugged, incapacitated beyond the ability to consent, or forced into sex. Yet, he also said he had reopened the investigation based on new information in the woman’s lawsuit, which was filed this month. Cornell has agreed to bring in outside lawyers to independently investigate how the university handled the woman’s allegations, New York Gov.
Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday. The woman initially went to Cornell’s campus police about three weeks after the alleged attack that began on Oct. 19, 2024, then went back on Nov. 14 and 15, 2024, to be interviewed.
“Yes. It was coercion, yes,” she told a campus police officer, according to the transcript obtained by CBS. According to CBS News, she said she was “completely and totally incapacitated” before some of the sexual abuse. The woman acknowledged she had been drinking alcohol and used drugs the night she visited the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024, and that she had gaps in her memory.
She also told police she was comfortable with an initial sexual encounter with two of the men, but not with what happened later, when other men began to enter the room.
“And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard,” she told police, according to the transcript.
“I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” it said she told investigators. The woman, identified only by the pseudonym Jane Doe in the lawsuit, filed a complaint Sept. 16 saying she was sexually assaulted at the Chi Phi fraternity house after being pressured into snorting ketamine, smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. She became completely incapacitated while fraternity members were sexually assaulting her, she said.
Van Houten didn’t immediately respond to emails and phone messages from The Associated Press on Wednesday, but he told CBS News he never saw the transcript of the woman’s interview when his office declined to bring charges, and relied instead on a statement written by a campus police officer but signed by the accuser. Van Houten has released a summary of that statement, with some of her direct quotes included.
He has defended his office’s decision not to do additional investigation after the woman first came forward.
“There were no question marks. There was no additional need to find information because we had all of the information that the police collected from Jane Doe through her very detailed, very comprehensive statement that she provided,” Van Houten told CNN earlier this week. Cornell University first publicly disclosed that it was investigating the woman’s allegations on Nov. 8, 2024, the same day she first went to police.
The school sent students an email warning them that a person had reported they had been sexually assaulted at a fraternity house and coerced into consuming drugs. Cornell suspended the Chi Phi fraternity the same day. In another public statement to students in late November 2024, Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff said campus police were investigating “deeply disturbing allegations of drug abuse and sexual violence” at the fraternity house.
Later, Cornell appointed a task force designed to address sexual assault on campus. But with the district attorney’s decision not to pursue charges and the university’s internal disciplinary investigation shielded from the public, attention on the matter waned. Cornell said in a statement this week that it supported the decision to reopen the criminal investigation, adding that its own investigation had led to some students being disciplined or expelled.
The Chi Phi chapter remains barred from campus, but the university has declined to release more information on discipline for individual students, citing privacy rules. Earlier this week, Hochul called for a new investigation into the university’s handling of the matter. In a post on social media Wednesday, she said she had spoken with Kotlikoff and he “agreed to bring in outside counsel for an independent investigation. ” Cornell confirmed it had agreed but declined additional comment.
“This culture has to stop. And in New York, we’re going to do everything we can to stop it,” Hochul said.
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