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DA admits his office never independently investigated the alleged Cornell gang rape

Alleged Cornell Gang Rape: DA Admits His Office Never Investigated on Its Own, Now Goes to Grand Jury

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 28, 2026 · 5 min read
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The Tompkins County, New York, district attorney who declined to bring charges in an alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity house now says he will take the case to a grand jury, and he has acknowledged that his office never conducted its own investigation the first time. District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told ABC News that his office relied on the investigation by the Cornell University Police Department, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.

The reversal came only after a former Cornell student filed a civil lawsuit in mid-September 2026 laying out, in graphic detail, what she says happened to her.

What the lawsuit alleges

The plaintiff, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, was 20 at the time. According to the complaint, as reported by Gray News, she arrived at the Xi chapter of Chi Phi around 11 p.m. on October 19, 2024, to spend time with a friend who is one of seven men she accuses. The suit says she was visibly intoxicated after about 10 drinks over three hours. She alleges she was taken upstairs, sexually abused by seven fraternity members, and forced to take drugs and drink alcohol into the early hours of October 20. She says she was left unconscious around 5:45 a.m. and later found bruising.

The most damning allegation involves a group chat. According to the complaint, a message sent to a Snapchat group of fraternity members announced that there was “free p—-” upstairs, effectively inviting more members to join while she was there. Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, says those messages were given to authorities in 2024 and calls them a critical piece of evidence. Van Houten says the image of the group chat included in the lawsuit was never provided to his office.

The suit names Cornell University, several Chi Phi organizations, seven current and former students and others as defendants. The allegations have not been proven in court, and attorneys for at least some of the accused men deny them. One defense attorney told the Cornell Daily Sun that his client “never sexually assaulted or even touched the plaintiff in any way.” Another of the accused told ABC News, according to Gulf News, that he did not take part in sexual activity or drug use, though he acknowledged sending a Snapchat message included in the complaint.

What the DA did in 2024

Doe reported the incident to Cornell University Police around November 8, 2024. At the time, Van Houten’s office found “insufficient evidence to support criminal charges.” No one was arrested. “Not one of these guys was arrested. Not one. That I can tell you for a fact,” Giuffra told WCBS.

Van Houten has now acknowledged to ABC News that his office did not conduct its own independent investigation and instead relied on the campus police department’s work, according to the Daily Sun and Gulf News. He defends the 2024 decision by pointing to what Doe originally told police. That statement, he says, did not allege that she had been unknowingly drugged, forced into sexual acts, or that she was unconscious or incapacitated. “She never says that she was drugged without her knowledge. She admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge,” he told ABC News. He describes the account in the civil complaint as “dramatically different.”

Giuffra disputes that characterization and says the problem was the investigation itself. Interviewing a sexual assault survivor takes particular expertise, he argues, and his client was never later interviewed by a detective or prosecutor trained to do it. “Ms. Doe was never contacted by anybody with those skills,” he said. He also says that, despite being given the group chat, neither Cornell police nor the district attorney’s office followed up with Doe.

Now, a grand jury

Van Houten says he is reopening the case. “It’s our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe’s cooperation,” he told ABC News. “We want to reexamine whether there’s additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case.” He has not decided whether criminal charges will be filed.

That is the right decision. It is also a late one. A prosecutor does not need a lawsuit to pick up a phone, interview a complainant again, or ask campus police for a group chat that the complainant’s lawyer says was handed over two years ago. If the 2024 statement was as thin as Van Houten says, that is an argument for a deeper investigation, not for none at all.

Cornell’s version of accountability

Cornell’s own handling has drawn as much fire. The university issued temporary suspensions for Chi Phi and the seven men while it investigated, and the chapter was later placed on indefinite suspension. Cornell’s Title IX office held at least 12 hearings in May 2025. According to Giuffra, only two of the seven accused were expelled; the others received lesser punishments. The lawsuit claims some were offered the chance to mitigate their conduct by writing essays. Cornell rejects any suggestion that essays were the only punishment, saying, according to Gulf News, that its process produced a range of sanctions including expulsions and suspensions.

Cornell says it is aware of the “deeply disturbing” allegations and that they were investigated and led to discipline consistent with university policy. “The Xi chapter of Chi Phi fraternity remains barred from our campus,” the university said, adding that “Federal privacy law prohibits Cornell from disclosing specific information regarding individual students and we therefore are unable to make a public statement on any other disciplinary response.”

According to her attorney, Doe is no longer a student. “She’s not in college anymore because of this,” Giuffra told WCBS. “She’s barely hanging on for what these guys did to her.”

Whatever a grand jury decides, the sequence here should trouble anyone who believes the justice system works the same for everyone. A young woman went to the police. The prosecutor took the campus police file as the whole story. The university handed out discipline it will not describe. Two years later, it took a civil lawsuit to get anyone to look again.

Justice that only starts moving after a lawsuit goes public is not diligence; it is damage control.

Sources

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