Details emerge in case of former Cornell student alleging rape by frat members

New details are emerging in the case of a former Cornell University student who claims she was allegedly drugged and gang-raped for multiple hours inside a fraternity house in October 2024.

The woman — identified only as Jane Doe, who was 20 at the time of the alleged incident — recently filed a civil lawsuit against seven then-Chi Phi fraternity members and the university, claiming they failed to protect her and prevent the alleged assault. While Cornell conducted an internal investigation, no criminal charges were brought against the accused at the time.

The Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office confirmed Monday that it will be reopening the criminal investigation amid pressure from the community and will bring the evidence to a grand jury. The DA said the woman’s sworn statement from November 2024 was different from what she alleges in the civil lawsuit, while her attorney claims investigators never followed up on her allegations.

Here is what we know about the case so far:

Claims against Cornell

In the lawsuit against the university and the then-fraternity members, the woman alleges she visited a friend at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house while she was already intoxicated, and alleges that two fraternity members pressured her into taking what they said was ketamine. She alleges they then sexually assaulted her.

According to the suit, on the night in question at around 1:42 a.m., one fraternity member sent a crude message to a Chi Phi Snapchat group chat suggesting that a woman upstairs was available for sex. The woman alleges more men entered the room and the assaults continued until 5:45 a.m.

The complaint says the woman filed a report with the university’s police department three weeks after the alleged rapes. 

“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, said in a statement to CBS News.

“Other than her initial contact with Cornell Police, she was not contacted by investigators from the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office or any investigators trained in interviewing rape survivors,” Giuffra said.

Cornell conducted an internal review of the allegations after she filed the report with campus police. Giuffra asserted to CBS New York that two of the fraternity members were expelled, while five others received lesser sanctions including suspensions, workshops and writing essays.

“Not one of these guys was arrested. Not one. That I can tell you for a fact,” Giuffra told CBS New York, adding that the woman dropped out of the school after the alleged assault.

Cornell disputed the idea that some of the accused only had to write essays for punishment.

“None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement,” the university said.

The lawsuit accuses Cornell and the other defendants of breach of contract, negligence and violations of state law. She is seeking monetary damages, including compensatory and punitive damages. The lawsuit does not specify how much she is seeking.

Cornell’s response and internal investigation

Cornell said it conducted a thorough Title IX investigation into the former student’s allegations over several months.

“After investigation, and pursuant to federal law, the matter was sent to a hearing where a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days,” Cornell’s statement said. “The complainant and respondents had the opportunity to testify and present evidence.”

The university said the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions against the accused students, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell. 

Cornell President Michael I. Kotlikoff specified in a Sept. 29 meeting with the student government that two of the accused were expelled, two suspended for at least two semesters, one had already graduated before any punishment could be handed down, and two were found not to be responsible for sexual misconduct.

The fraternity chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.

“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Cornell 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.”

The Ithaca Police Department told CBS New York that the alleged incident was never reported to them.

Former Cornell University police chief Anthony Bellamy, who is now deputy chief at the Ithaca Police Department, told CBS News he has no comment.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told CBS News that the DA’s office doesn’t have access to Cornell’s Title IX records on the alleged incident, and that he is asking Jane Doe’s attorney to provide those documents.

He also said “we don’t have any indication” police at the time interviewed the seven then-fraternity brothers accused in the lawsuit.  

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a statement calling for “outside counsel to conduct a transparent, independent review of the university’s response to determine whether Cornell met every obligation to protect its students and pursue justice.” Hochul described the woman’s allegations as “nothing short of horrifying.”

Snapchat and text messages

CBS News New York exclusively obtained additional video of the fraternity’s group Snapchat conversation from the night the woman alleges the incident occurred. 

A message sent to the group at 1:42 a.m. suggested in crude language that a woman was available for sex.

“Shop still open?” one fraternity brother wrote later. 

The response was “Yea.” 

Screenshots of a separate text exchange, also reported exclusively by CBS News New York, show what a source describes as messages sent two days later between Jane Doe and one of the defendants now accused in the lawsuit. 

The man started by apologizing for “how things went down.” He said his memory is “kinda fuzzy,” and that he and another man feel bad for being too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

The woman in the text chain replied that her memory is “super clouded too,” and said they had all been heavily intoxicated. 

She also wrote, “non(e) of the sexual stuff was illegal.” She said she liked being with him and another man. Later, she suggested they smoke together again, “but like leave out the extra 5 billion men and ketamine.” 

The woman’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, confirmed she exchanged texts with this defendant shortly after the alleged assault, but he could not confirm whether these were the specific texts.

Giuffra said she was in denial and traumatized shortly after the alleged assaults. He said she was intoxicated to the point of incapacity that night and was trying to find out what happened.

He said she felt like she should not take an aggressive tone with this defendant if she wanted answers.

Criminal investigation is being reopened

The Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office confirmed that it will reopen the criminal investigation after being “asked by the community to revisit the decision whether to pursue criminal charges” against the then-fraternity members.

“My hope is we’ll be able to put the case on the grand jury in the next 45 days. I want to move fast,” the DA, Matthew Van Houten, told CBS News correspondent Lilia Luciano. He said the grand jury “can consider the charges that were set out in the civil complaint, and they can consider other charges.”

In a statement earlier, Van Houten said the allegations made in the civil lawsuit are different from the sworn statement made by Jane Doe in November 2024. He said her 2024 statement “did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped” by multiple men.

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

He told CBS News, “I don’t see how more could have been done at the time, given that foundation of the case being her statement.”

Van Houten called the Snapchat message chain “disgusting, vulgar,” but said it “had nothing to do with the issue of consent, which is the legal issue.” He added, “certainly it will be presented to the grand jury.”

Giuffra, the woman’s attorney, said she was not contacted by investigators from the DA’s office after she made her report to Cornell’s university police.

“Interviewing a survivor is a challenging process that takes a lot of time and experience. It is never easy for a survivor to share details of an assault with a stranger. Trust must be developed and a lot of time spent learning the facts and engaging with the survivor,” he said. “It is challenging for me to understand how a thorough criminal investigation could have been conducted when she never spoke with anyone other than the officer who took her original complaint.”

Van Houten told CBS News the officer who took Jane Doe’s original statement was “an experienced investigator” who was “trained in trauma informed sexual assault cases,” and “not just somebody who was manning the desk.”  

Van Houten said he was never contacted by her attorneys to inform him that the original statement was inaccurate nor to ask him to reconsider his office’s decision to not pursue criminal charges.

“Rather, I reached out to Jane Doe’s attorneys after the lawsuit was filed to understand the discrepancy between the original statement and the lawsuit’s allegations and the proper path forward in light of the lawsuit’s allegations,” he said in a statement.

Van Houten said he has begun the process of reopening the investigation, including speaking with Jane Doe and her attorneys.

“Once we determine the appropriate charges, the case will be prosecuted in the most objective and impartial means available — by testimony to the Tompkins County Grand Jury,” he said.

“The Grand Jury will be able to consider the testimony of Jane Doe as well as any new evidence raised by the allegations of the civil complaint. Upon a vote by the Grand Jury to indict any or all of the individuals involved, this office will prosecute the charges zealously and to the fullest extent of the law,” the DA’s statement continued.

Giuffra told CBS News they welcome the reopening of the criminal investigation, saying it was “a step in the right direction, albeit a late one.”

“However, I hope that the DA will recognize the need to thoroughly present and investigate the case and develop what leads they can notwithstanding the delays,” he added. “My client and I would be very disappointed if it is a half-hearted effort.”

Van Houten told CBS News: “We want to treat her with respect and with humanity and compassion and hear from her what’s changed since November of 2024. We want to sit down with her and talk through what she knows now and what she has processed over that time so that we can put all of the evidence before the grand jury and let the grand jury decide.”

Cornell said it supports the district attorney’s decision to reopen the case.

Defendants deny accusations

The lawsuit identifies one of the accused then-fraternity members as Scott Kretzchmar, who allegedly sent two responses in the Snapchat group.

His defense attorney, Jeremy Saland, acknowledged to CBS News that the messages were inappropriate but said they are not evidence of sexual assault.

“This is a situation where there was an ugly Snapchat — ugly, period. … But that doesn’t make my client a rapist, and it certainly doesn’t make anyone a sex offender,” Saland said.

Saland said Kretzchmar briefly entered the room where the woman was, in response to the message “that many people have seen,” and said he did not touch her “in any way, shape or form” and left in a matter of minutes.

“She was not incoherent but in fact was coherent and again left that room without touching her or having any physical interaction with her whatsoever,” Saland said.

The attorney said the university found Kretzchmar was not responsible for anything that the woman alleges in her complaint.

As for the accusation of ketamine use, Saland said Kretzchmar took a hair follicle test that determined he had no ketamine in his system.

“We certainly would present evidence of the hair follicle test which demonstrably and scientifically shows that he did not ingest ketamine as alleged by the complainant,” he said.

Saland said that while no one has contacted him about a renewed investigation, “we welcome the opportunity.”

“We are available to present exonerating evidence. I just hope the right thing is eventually done, this case is closed, and my client can live his life and not be subject to this selfish, repugnant, vile claim by this woman about him,” he added.

Andrew Miltenberg, an attorney representing Gillio Lopes, another then-fraternity member accused in the civil lawsuit, told CBS New York that his client “unequivocally denies the allegations against him.”

“Cornell previously investigated these allegations. The allegations now being made publicly differ from what was reported and investigated during that process,” Miltenberg said. “These are serious accusations, but accusations are not proof. Mr. Lopes should be judged on the evidence, not prejudged based on allegations made in a lawsuit or repeated in the media. We will address these issues through the appropriate legal process.”

Tara Davis, an attorney for defendant Grillio Lopez, said he denies the allegations against him.  

CBS News has reached out to the other defendants named in the civil lawsuit.

Lilia Luciano, Kinjal Patel and Mahsa Saeidi contributed to this report.