The lawyer for the Cornell University student who says she was gang raped at a fraternity house in 2024 has accused the university of a cover-up, saying its police failed to take basic investigative steps because officials cared more about protecting the school’s reputation than about accountability.
In an interview with CBS News on Friday, the lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, said university investigators never questioned the men involved, never interviewed witnesses identified in the fraternity’s group chat and never secured phones and other evidence while it was fresh. The woman, known in court papers as Jane Doe, reported the October 2024 assault to Cornell University Police three weeks after it happened, when she was a 20-year-old sophomore.
“I’m more and more convinced there was a cover-up,” Mr. Giuffra said. “I mean, at first I thought it was just bumbling, but now I think there was a cover-up. I think they were worried about protecting the reputation of the university. They were protecting the big source of revenue in the county.” Of the university police, he said, “I was shocked, really,” adding: “They were in over their heads.”
Ms. Doe was “completely, grossly intoxicated” when she arrived at the fraternity house and was pressured to take ketamine that left her feeling as if she were “floating above herself” and like a ragdoll, unable to stop what was happening, Mr. Giuffra said, citing transcripts of her testimony in the university’s Title IX investigation. “She didn’t have consent from the time she walked in the door; she was incapable of consent,” he said.
Her lawsuit, filed Sept. 16, names Cornell and seven former fraternity brothers in a 101-page complaint. Four of the men are accused of rape. The Tompkins County district attorney reopened the criminal investigation on Monday, and by week’s end Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York had appointed state’s attorney general, Letitia James, as special prosecutor.
A screengrab included in the lawsuit appears to show one defendant posting to a Snapchat group of more than 50 fraternity members that a woman upstairs was there for “free” sex. “Not one of those 50 men did anything to stop it,” Mr. Giuffra said. The only person who did the right thing, he said, was the man who leaked the chat, because without it “we wouldn’t have the smoking gun.”
The case has a complicating detail. Screenshots obtained by a CBS News New York investigative reporter, Mahsa Saeidi, show Ms. Doe texting one of the defendants days after the alleged assault that “none of the sexual stuff was illegal.” Mr. Giuffra confirmed the two exchanged texts shortly afterward but could not confirm that exchange. He said his client was in denial at first; as rumors spread across campus, she “came to the realization that [she] had been gang raped,” according to newly obtained records from the Title IX investigation.
None of the seven men has been criminally charged. Lawyers for two of them denied the allegations in response to CBS News New York, and a third man’s lawyer has denied wrongdoing publicly, according to The New York Times. Cornell said in a statement that it conducted a “thorough Title IX investigation” over several months and that it supports the district attorney’s decision to reopen the case.
Ms. Hochul said she was “deeply disturbed” by the handling of the case and called the Cornell police decision to forward the woman’s six-page sworn statement without her full transcript “a failure,” faulting the district attorney for conducting no interviews. On Friday, Ms. Hochul said she intends to close what she called a loophole in state law that makes it difficult for survivors to argue they were mentally incapacitated if they were voluntarily intoxicated.
The case has also set off an online campaign in her defense. After an independent journalist issued a public call on Monday to name Ms. Doe “so we can all evaluate her veracity,” then claimed to have identified her before deleting the post, thousands of people began posting “I am Jane Doe” across TikTok, Instagram and Threads to bury any identifying details. One video had been viewed more than 5.2 million times by Friday, and many posters described their own assaults, in what has been compared to the 2017 #MeToo reckoning. “People need to realize this is happening to so many women, not just one brave woman at Cornell University,” one wrote. The journalist Katie Couric collected first-person accounts and posted them on Threads on Wednesday.
Takara Small, a technology journalist in Toronto, told CBC News Network the posts are meant to confuse search engines and algorithms, though a digital footprint can never be fully erased, and urged people not to share anything that could be linked to Ms. Doe. About one in four undergraduate women experience rape or sexual assault after enrolling in college, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
Mr. Giuffra said the lawsuit came after his client finished Cornell’s Title IX process and decided she could handle the backlash. “There was a time period where she didn’t feel like she would be able to handle any backlash that came out of it, and she reached a place where she felt that she was ready,” he said. Of the seven named men, he added: “They’re not all gang rapists. They’re all sexual abusers, though.”