Photo Credit: Nathan Ellison/The Cornell Daily Sun
On Oct. 20, 2024, seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell University allegedly drugged and gang-raped an inebriated peer at a party. The case was reopened by prosecutors in Ithaca, New York after the victim, a former Cornell student known to the public as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit on Sept. 16 against the members of the fraternity and Cornell, claiming they failed to protect her.
In the lawsuit, Doe, at the time 20 years old, alleges that she went to visit a friend at the Chi Phi fraternity house, already intoxicated. Doe says she had a sexual encounter with two men she consented to initially.
Asked if she was comfortable with this initial encounter by a Cornell police investigator, Doe replied, "Yeah, as much as I can be because, again, I was super drunk when I got there. [...] But I was pretty OK with all of this,” according to CBS News.
At around 1:42 AM one of the members of Chi Phi sent a message in a Snapchat group chat saying “free pussy upstairs.”
Doe claims that more men entered the room and began assaulting her, and that she was then coerced into taking ketamine. The assault lasted until 5:45 AM.
"I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out, so my thought was, if I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out. My thought was that if I passed out and these men have sex with me, then they could have been charged with rape at this point," she said in a statement.
Doe reported the incident to Cornell Police Department on Nov. 8, 2024.
"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 P. Giuffra, shared.
Later that day, the chapter was placed on temporary suspension for an alleged violation of the student code of conduct, according to The Cornell Daily Sun. According to the lawsuit, the seven men who allegedly raped Doe were given the opportunity to write an essay which would mitigate their conduct.
After further internal review conducted by the university, two of the fraternity members were suspended, and the other five received less severe disciplines such as workshops, and the aforementioned essays. “None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement,” said the university.
On Oct. 22, Jane Doe visited the campus’s medical clinic, Cornell Health, to address a urinary tract infection and get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Doe shared with the healthcare professional that the UTI had been contracted in a “traumatic way,” according to a statement from Giuffra.
According to CBS News, Giuffra claims, "all the medical professionals … did was to advise Ms. Doe to 'speak with somebody,'" regardless of Doe’s reference to the trauma. "By the time she went for the rape kit on 11/7, all of the DNA evidence was gone."
After the lawsuit has been filed, representatives for two of the seven fraternity members have denied accusations in a statement made to CBS News.
On Sept. 28, the case was confirmed reopened with a criminal investigation by Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten.