Cornell Fraternity Gang-Rape Case Reopened Two Years After DA Declined to Charge Anyone

Cornell Fraternity Gang-Rape Case Reopened Two Years After DA Declined to Charge Anyone

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced Monday, September 28, that his office is reopening the criminal investigation into an alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity, nearly two years after deciding not to file any charges.

The reversal comes after a former Cornell student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, filed a 101-page civil lawsuit on September 16 against Cornell, several fraternity organizations, an Ithaca bar, and seven named men: Scott Kretzschmar, Scott Norris, Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes and Diego Sarabia.

What the lawsuit alleges

Doe says she was 20 years old in October 2024 when she went to visit a friend at the Chi Phi house while already intoxicated. According to the lawsuit, she was pressured into snorting what she was told was ketamine, then sexually assaulted by Ingalls and Newell without her consent.

The complaint alleges Newell sent a message to a Chi Phi Snapchat group, and at least five more fraternity members showed up and joined in. The lawsuit says the assault continued until she lost consciousness around 5:45 a.m., and that frat brothers poured lines of ketamine on her body. She reported it to campus police roughly three weeks later.

None of the seven men were criminally charged. The lawsuit claims they were only made to write essays, attend workshops, or serve short suspensions, with two expelled.

Why the DA didn't charge anyone in 2024, according to Van Houten

Van Houten says his office reviewed the case in November 2024 based on an investigation by the Cornell University Police Department, and that Doe's own sworn statement at the time did not match what's now in the lawsuit.

"Jane Doe's sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped," Van Houten said. "On the contrary, Jane Doe's statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual."

He told ABC News that her original statement never claimed she was drugged without her knowledge, never alleged she was forced into anything, and never said she was unconscious or incapacitated at any point at the fraternity house.

Van Houten also said the Snapchat group-chat photo central to the lawsuit was never turned over to his office in 2024, and that Doe's attorneys never reached out to flag a discrepancy or ask him to reconsider until after the lawsuit made headlines. He says he was the one who contacted them.

He also acknowledged, in comments to CNN, that his office relied entirely on Cornell University Police's investigation in 2024 and did not conduct an independent probe of its own, something he described as standard practice at the time.

The other side

Doe's attorney, Thomas Giuffra, disputes the DA's account of the original statement and says the real problem was who took it. "In my experience, speaking with an abuse survivor requires delicacy, understanding and specialized training," Giuffra said, according to ABC News. "An average University Police officer would not have these skills. Ms. Doe was never contacted by anybody with those skills."

Jeremy Saland, an attorney representing one of the accused men, told Newsweek the allegations are "intentionally dishonest" and called them "morally repugnant," pushing back hard on the lawsuit's version of events.

Cornell, for its part, disputes the lawsuit's framing that punishments were minimal. The university told the Los Angeles Times that a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days, that both the accuser and accused had a chance to testify, and that some students were expelled while others were suspended. "Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false," the school said, adding that repeating that claim "will make survivors feel less safe and supported." Cornell's vice president for university relations, Kyle Kimball, separately called the allegations "deeply disturbing" and said federal privacy law bars the school from detailing individual student discipline. The Chi Phi chapter was shut down and barred from campus in 2024.

What happens now

Van Houten says a senior prosecutor will now prepare the case, including Doe's testimony and whatever new evidence surfaces from the civil complaint, for presentation to the Tompkins County Grand Jury. "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," he said.

No charges have been filed. No indictment has been returned. The grand jury has not yet heard the case. Whether Doe's 2024 statement to campus police really said what Van Houten claims it said, and whether that statement should have triggered a specialist follow-up interview as Giuffra argues, is now a factual dispute that will play out in front of grand jurors rather than in press statements. The national Chi Phi organization did not respond to requests for comment from the Los Angeles Times, and Cornell has not said publicly how many students were expelled versus suspended.