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When a woman sued Cornell University last month over an alleged sexual assault at a fraternity, the case reverberated across the nation, igniting shock and anger about the persistent phenomenon of sexual misconduct on campuses.
Those involved have fought for control of the narrative, with the woman’s lawyer, lawyers for the accused men and a district attorney making assertions that often appeared at odds.
Now, The New York Times has obtained more than 1,000 pages of material from Cornell’s internal investigation into the 2024 rape allegations that are at the center of the bombshell lawsuit against the university.
The files, compiled for Cornell’s Title IX administrative hearing process and distributed in early 2025, include an extensive transcript of the original police interviews with the 20-year-old undergraduate, who accused the men of sexually assaulting her at the Chi Phi fraternity on Oct. 19, 2024.
They also include the original six-page statement that the Cornell Police Department submitted to the Tompkins County, N.Y., district attorney; investigatory interviews with six of the seven men whom the woman accused of being involved in the sexual assault; and interviews with 20 additional witnesses. A trove of emails, text messages and screenshots of message boards are included, some showing how rumors about what had happened that night raced around campus.
While it will take reporters several days to fully comb through the material, here are some of the main early takeaways.
Jane Doe’s statement sent to the district attorney left out key context.
On Nov. 14, 2024, about three weeks after the incident, the woman who filed the suit, known as Jane Doe, spoke for hours to a Cornell police investigator and an investigator from Cornell’s Title IX office, which makes sure the university complies with federal regulations related to sex discrimination. She had with her a support person — someone who provides emotional support during the hearing process — and an adviser to explain her rights.
The transcript of their conversation stretches about 120 pages. It was condensed by the police investigator into a six-page official statement that the woman signed.
This statement was crucial because the Tompkins County district attorney says it was the main piece of evidence he considered when deciding not to bring a criminal case.
But the official statement omits much of the context about Jane Doe’s state of mind, her history as a sexual assault survivor and her thoughts as she was processing what was happening to her. It is these details, in addition to the actions she alleges, that help explain how a series of sexual encounters that started off “pretty OK” had devolved into a situation that was “just raping,” in her words.
“I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped,” she told the police investigator about what happened by the end of that night, in a statement that did not make it into the six-page summary report.
The omissions may help explain why the district attorney did not think he could bring a criminal case based on her allegations.
The summary made clear, however, that she felt that some of what was happening to her was a crime, and had thought about taking the drug ketamine to escape it.
“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,” it quotes her saying. “My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.”
Her thinking about the incident evolved.
Jane Doe considered two of the men friends. She and the men involved that night had taken ketamine. Things had started off consensual — though she was drunk — and some of her memories were hazy, the transcript shows. She had lost control. Her initial impulse was to keep quiet about what had happened.
But within a day or two, “everyone involved in sorority and fraternity life knew what had happened,” she told investigators. Most of the gossip blamed her, calling her “a whore that had an eightsome with the Chi Phi guys.”
She had not known how or why so many men had showed up in the room that night. But then she heard that a Snapchat message had been sent to the fraternity, inviting members to join what was happening. And when she saw on a message board that someone had said that Chi Phi members were “gang banging,” the pieces started coming together.
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Cornell University’s investigation of a 2024 sexual assault allegation included interviews, emails and screenshots. Credit…Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times
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