Prosecutors in New York have reopened a criminal investigation into the alleged gang rape of a student at Cornell University, a prestigious Ivy League institution in Ithaca, New York, after a civil lawsuit filed by the alleged victim sparked widespread public outrage and calls for accountability. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced on Monday that his office would present evidence to a grand jury, saying the community response to the case — and the severity of allegations in the lawsuit — demanded a fresh examination of why no criminal charges had previously been brought.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe in court documents, alleges that on the night of 19 October 2024, she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell's campus. According to her lawsuit, she had consumed approximately ten drinks over three hours before arriving at the fraternity house, where she says she was pressured into snorting ketamine and given marijuana and high-proof rum. A message was allegedly sent to a fraternity Snapchat group announcing a sexual encounter, and at least five additional members then entered the room. Her ordeal, the lawsuit states, lasted until around 5.45am, when she lost consciousness. She reportedly woke with bruises and later learned the incident had spread through campus gossip. She filed the civil complaint on 16 September 2026, nearly two years after the alleged assault, naming the seven men, the Chi Phi fraternity, Cornell University, and a local bar as defendants.

The reopening of the case has exposed significant tensions between the accuser's account and her original police statement. Van Houten noted that when Jane Doe reported the incident to Cornell University police in November 2024, her sworn statement described her participation in drug use and sexual activity as voluntary and consensual, and did not allege she had been drugged against her will or gang raped. Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, responded that she had been traumatised and in a state of shock at the time, and that she was never interviewed by trained investigators — only by the officer who took her initial report. Van Houten later acknowledged that healing from trauma can take years and that his office had relied solely on Cornell's campus police investigation without conducting an independent inquiry. Giuffra said the Snapchat group chat screenshot and other key evidence had been available to authorities since 2024.

Cornell has pushed back against claims that it failed to act. The university says it conducted a multi-day internal disciplinary hearing before a panel of trained faculty and staff, resulting in sanctions that included expulsions and suspensions, and that the Chi Phi chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus. It denied that students were offered essay-writing as a primary consequence, though Jane Doe's lawsuit and her lawyers say only two of the seven were expelled while others received lighter penalties. Cornell also noted that a campus sexual assault task force formed in 2025 found that 35% of undergraduate women reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at the university — a figure the task force described as