Skip to main content

Who Investigated the Alleged Cornell Gang Rape?

This morning, my mind froze as I read about an alleged gang rape involving eight Cornell University students that occurred nearly two years ago, in 2024.

Most of us learned the details only after Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit on September 14, 2026, in New York State Supreme Court, New York County, against Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar, alleging that the seven men raped her while they were students at Cornell University. The alleged assault occurred during the night of October 19 into the morning of October 20, 2024. Jane Doe later reported the incident to Cornell University Police. Cornell separately conducted its own disciplinary investigation, followed by hearings under its Title IX process, while Cornell University Police conducted the criminal investigation that was referred to the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office.

at LACMA

No criminal charges followed. The District Attorney’s Office did not conduct an independent investigation. It did not separately interview Jane Doe. Instead, prosecutors relied on the investigation conducted by Cornell University Police—a police department employed by the same university where the alleged crime occurred and whose students stood accused.

A first-year law student could spot the problem. The police department investigating an alleged rape is employed by the university whose administrators are simultaneously responsible for protecting the institution, its students, and, inevitably, its reputation. Whether or not that arrangement satisfies the legal definition of a conflict of interest, it hardly presents the appearance of an investigation insulated from institutional interests.

But that wasn’t what froze me.


Universities have a documented history of failing to conduct sexual-misconduct investigations free from institutional bias and competing interests, so there was nothing particularly novel about discovering yet another case in which a university was permitted to investigate alleged sexual violence within its own walls. Nor is there anything particularly novel about a university invoking student-privacy law when asked to disclose the disciplinary consequences imposed on individual students. Cornell initially did exactly that, although it has since confirmed that its proceedings resulted in expulsions and suspensions without details. Cornell has not publicly said how many of the seven were expelled, how many were suspended, or which individual received which sanction.

What stopped me was Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten’s explanation for why his office did not pursue criminal charges in 2024.

According to Van Houten, the statement his office received through Cornell University Police did not allege that Jane Doe had been drugged without her knowledge or that she had not consented to sexual activity. He said she acknowledged voluntarily consuming drugs and alcohol and did not say that she had been forced into sexual acts, physically helpless, unconscious, or incapacitated while at the fraternity house. Based on the information his office had before it, prosecutors concluded that they could not establish the lack of consent necessary for criminal charges.

I must have missed the memo in which voluntarily drinking alcohol and taking a recreational drug became consent to have sex with seven men for hours.


Ketamine alone can cause dissociation, impaired awareness, impaired judgment and coordination, sedation, and memory impairment. Alcohol can compound those effects. Whether Jane Doe was actually impaired, and to what degree, is a question for evidence—not assumption. But the reported combination of alcohol and ketamine should have made her degree of impairment and capacity to consent an obvious subject of investigation. Voluntarily taking a drug answers how the drug entered her body. It does not answer whether she was capable of consenting to what allegedly happened afterward.

New York law makes the distinction rather important. Under Penal Law § 130.00(7), a person is physically helpless when unconscious or otherwise physically unable to communicate unwillingness—and New York courts have repeatedly held that voluntary intoxication does not prevent someone from being physically helpless. In People v. Shevchenko, a case involving alcohol and ketamine, the court found sufficient evidence to support a finding of physical helplessness, citing evidence that ketamine could cause unconsciousness or sedation.

So the fact that Jane Doe reportedly consumed the alcohol and ketamine voluntarily did not dispose of the question. It made determining her actual condition during the alleged assaults rather important.

And the sheer complexity and gravity of the allegation should have demanded an independent criminal investigation. We are talking about one woman alleging that seven men sexually assaulted her over several hours, under circumstances involving intoxicants and potential coordination among multiple people. That is not a minor factual dispute to be resolved by reading another police department’s file. It is precisely the kind of allegation that demands interviews, corroboration, preservation of electronic evidence, examination of communications among the accused, and direct questioning of the woman making the accusation.

Which brings us to Snapchat.


The civil complaint includes an image purportedly showing a Chi Phi Snapchat group chat from the night of the alleged assault. Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, says that evidence was provided to authorities in 2024. Van Houten says his office never received it.

That discrepancy alone raises an extraordinary question: How does potentially significant evidence allegedly provided during an investigation of a gang rape fail to reach the prosecutor deciding whether that gang rape can be prosecuted?

Perhaps an independent investigation would have answered that question two years ago. Perhaps something as elementary as the District Attorney’s Office interviewing Jane Doe would have revealed that the evidence existed.

Instead, nearly two years later, a civil lawsuit appears to have done what the original criminal process did not: force the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office to look again. Van Houten has now reopened the criminal investigation and assigned a senior prosecutor experienced in sex crimes to prepare the case for presentation to a grand jury.


There is another part of Van Houten’s explanation that leaves me equally bewildered. He has said that Jane Doe did not tell Cornell University Police that she had been forced into sexual activity.

Are you as confused as I am?

Jane Doe went to the police. She reported what she says was a sexual assault involving seven men. Did the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office believe she had gone to the police for a casual conversation about having sex with seven fraternity members?

Certainly, reporting a sexual assault does not, by itself, prove that one occurred. That is precisely why we have criminal investigations.


But somehow, in this case, the absence of certain words in the account delivered to prosecutors appears to have mattered enormously. She did not say she was “forced.” She did not say she was unconscious or physically helpless.

Fine.

Then ask her.

Ask what she remembers. Ask what she meant when she reported the encounter. Ask whether she consented. Ask whether she could walk. Ask whether she could speak coherently. Ask how impaired she was. Ask what happened before, during, and after. Ask the questions one might reasonably expect someone to ask while investigating an alleged gang rape.

The astonishing part isn’t that prosecutors required evidence of nonconsent before bringing criminal charges. Of course they did.

The astonishing part is that, faced with an allegation this grave, the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office apparently relied on someone else’s investigation to decide that the evidence wasn’t there—without ever sitting across from the woman making the allegation and asking her themselves.

And that leaves me with a question I cannot quite shake.

If a brutally beaten, unconscious male student had been found on Cornell’s campus, do we really believe the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office would have simply left the investigation to campus police?

_____
More:

ESSAYS | RECIPES | STYLES | IG


Articles sélectionnés
I earn commission on qualified purchases.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Please Normalize Sex

I couldn't help feeling that Shane Gillis's monologue on the October 10 episode of Saturday Night Live was a stab at the alleged victim of the Cornell University gang rape case and the uproar surrounding it. Of course, I have no idea what he intended, other than to be funny, when he said, “I haven't been to the gym in so long, I didn't know women just dress like whores now?” But the joke played into a familiar narrative, one in which women's clothing and sexuality become measures of their character, and sometimes even their credibility. With Jane Doe and her attorney reportedly receiving death threats amid the controversy, the timing struck me as particularly distasteful. at LACMA Perhaps my problem is that there was simply nothing funny about it. Not because he called women whores, but because the joke failed to land. Strip away the provocation, and what remains? A rather pedestrian observation about women's gym attire, masquerading as comedy. Very weak. I get...
Post a Comment
Read more

12 Timeless Sweaters

Somewhere in my closet is a black cashmere sweater I picked up at a sample sale well over a decade ago. It is asymmetric, beautifully understated, and now held together in a few places by my own handiwork: a needle, black thread, and the firm conviction that some things are simply worth saving. I have mended it rather than replaced it, not because black cashmere sweaters are particularly difficult to find, but because this particular one is impossible to replace. at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA At this point, it has become something of a comfort sweater. The sort I reach for when I want to feel entirely like myself, without the fuss of getting dressed and with all the pleasure of looking effortlessly put together. Fashion has a remarkable talent for convincing us that last season's treasures are this season's embarrassments. My old cashmere sweater has spent more than a decade making a rather persuasive argument to the contrary. It has survived changing trends, wardrobe purg...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Art of Calabrian Chicken

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Newly opened last month after years of anticipation, it was a visit I approached with some hesitation. My disappointment with LACMA's David Geffen Galleries earlier this year had yet to settle. I felt as though I had wandered into a fabulous space where art and artifacts had been arranged without much intention, without stories to tell, rather like an art fair with booths. I carried that impression with me as I prepared to visit the Lucas Museum. After the Prom by Norman Rockwell I knew I would be mesmerized by its architecture. What surprised me was the storytelling within. I hadn't expected Norman Rockwell's gallery to captivate me quite as much as it did. There was something profoundly beautiful about the smallness of life he portrayed, the ordinary moments of family, childhood, and everyday rituals elevated into something worthy of our attention. Rockwell's America was often idealized, certainly, bu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Haemul Pajeon, Korean Seafood Green Onion Pancake

Whoever coined the phrase “bigger is better” clearly never consulted a five-foot-three-inch woman. I have long maintained that fabulousity often comes in small packages. There are exceptions, of course, and Haemul Pajeon, the Korean Seafood Green Onion Pancake, makes a rather delicious case for abandoning my principles. When it comes to this Korean favorite, thickness is everything. Packed with shrimp, squid, green onions, zucchini, and yellow onions, these savory pancakes are a glorious celebration of excess, at least where ingredients are concerned. While many recipes favor thinner pancakes or arrange the ingredients neatly on top, there is a reason the thicker, generously stuffed versions served at Korean restaurants have gone viral. With their crisp, deeply browned exteriors giving way to tender, seafood-packed interiors, they deliver a combination of flavor and texture that thinner versions simply cannot match. Sometimes, bigger really is better. Or, in this case, thicker. INGREDI...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fiercely Chic in Leather

Long before leather became synonymous with rebellion and sex appeal, it was a marker of wealth and social standing. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, finely crafted leather gloves were indispensable accessories for women of privilege, signaling refinement and the luxury of hands unaccustomed to manual labor. How amusing that a material once associated with proper etiquette would eventually become one of fashion's most provocative expressions of independence. Leather, it seems, has always understood the importance of making an impression, even as its definition of good manners has changed rather dramatically. Paris, France By the twentieth century, leather had shed much of its polite disposition. Yves Saint Laurent brought motorcycle-inspired rebellion into the hallowed world of Christian Dior in 1960, while Vivienne Westwood later embraced leather's more subversive possibilities through punk and fetish-inspired fashion. Azzedine Alaïa sculpted it around the femal...
Post a Comment
Read more

Style Capsule: All Black

When Coco Chanel introduced her little black dress in 1926, she did more than offer women another wardrobe option. She helped transform a color long associated with mourning and solemnity into a symbol of modern elegance, independence, and sophistication. American Vogue famously compared the deceptively simple design to Ford's Model T, recognizing its potential to become a universal fashion essential. Nearly a century later, the little black dress remains indispensable, although Chanel deserves credit not only for perfecting the little black dress, but for recognizing that its greatest luxury was its simplicity. Women in Tub by Wayne Thiebaud Black's relationship with fashion, however, stretches much further back than Chanel's timeless silhouette. During the Renaissance, achieving a rich, consistent black required expensive dyes and considerable craftsmanship, making the color a conspicuous declaration of wealth and privilege. European monarchs and aristocrats adopted black...
Post a Comment
Read more

What If I Told You Tolerance Is Insane

A few years ago, I worked as a Project Manager for a marketing agency. What most people did not know was that I wasn’t simply managing marketing projects. Part of my job was to conduct root-cause analysis and privately address what I found with the VP of Operations. The agency was losing clients, and part of my assignment was to conduct root-cause analysis within the PMO. No one ever told me the two were connected, but I wondered whether leadership believed they might be. Ganna Walska Lotusland I worked alongside another Project Manager, a smart guy with a project management certification whose vertical happened to be one of the problematic ones. He didn’t know that evaluating his project pipeline was part of my assignment. His failure to follow project management best practices had already been escalated. He also had reluctance to escalate problems early enough to keep them from affecting clients. One Client Success Manager was a recurring problem. She routinely failed to turn in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curated Boots: From Ankle to Attitude

My first real memory of fashion begins with boots. I was still in elementary school, before my family immigrated to the United States, when my mom had a winter suit custom-made for me: dark red, two pieces, a blazer paired with a pleated mini skirt. Then came the styling decision that mattered most to me, a pair of red knee-high boots. For a little girl, the look was rather fashion-forward, and I adored it. I wore those boots practically everywhere, long after the suit had ceased to be the point. I have insisted on boots ever since, with a fairly consistent personal rule: the longer, the better. at Donum Estate, Sonoma, California There was, as it turns out, some fashion logic behind my childhood obsession. Boots have always carried more weight than most shoes, literally and symbolically. Born from utility, riding, military dress, and protection, they became increasingly expressive as women’s fashion changed, particularly in the 1960s, when rising hemlines gave tall boots new authority...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Rice, No Deal Stir-Fry Bowl

For a while, I restrained myself from using salt and pepper in my cooking, partly because I had come to think of them as the two most overused seasonings, capable of keeping a dish from becoming more interesting than the obvious. At one point, I even wondered whether I had developed a sensitivity to salt; the slightest over-seasoning began tasting bitter to me. Salty filets at Michael Mina at Bellagio and Delilah at Wynn Las Vegas last year did little to repair the relationship. Trust me, an overly salted filet at an upscale restaurant is its own particular trauma, quite different from realizing the horrible flavor of McDonald’s new limited-edition Spicy Chicken McNuggets. I never abandoned salt entirely. I continued using it to enhance other spices and ingredients, but deliberately salty flavors, even those built around soy sauce, became increasingly rare in my kitchen. Ceramic bowl was wheel-thrown and glazed by me. Until recently. No Rice, No Deal Stir-Fry Bowl is deliberately veg...
Post a Comment
Read more