Woman in alleged Cornell gang-rape case was ‘failed’ by system, New York governor says

Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, said on Friday that she would “ensure” that all the facts of the alleged gang-rape at a fraternity house at Cornell University “are brought into the light”, while harshly criticizing the elite institution for how it handled the 2024 case.

Hochul, a Democrat, said the woman in the case, was “failed” by people obligated to protect her, including the police and the county prosecutor.

“I’m deeply disturbed at Cornell University’s police and how they handled this,” Hochul said of the Ivy League university in Ithaca in upstate New York .

In a rare legal development, Hochul late on Thursday announced that the state attorney general, Letitia James , was taking over the entire case as a special prosecutor.

“I will not allow anyone to sweep this case under the rug,” Hochul said in a press conference on Friday morning alongside James.

“Every New Yorker deserves to know that when they report a crime, they will be investigated fully and fairly. That they will be seen and heard. I stand ready to lead a process guided by the facts and the law,” James said.

James will oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury in a process that could lead to criminal charges.

Hochul sharply criticized the investigation that began in 2024 after the woman in the case went to the police.

“In what world would the police learn from a victim that she’d been literally gang-raped while intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house, and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney?” Hochul said, of the alleged assaults.

The governor also criticized what she called “a gap in state law” that makes it very difficult to bring charges relating to accusations of sexual crimes when the alleged victim was voluntarily intoxicated.

She said: “If someone is too intoxicated to consent, it should not matter whether they chose to use drugs or alcohol. Voluntary intoxication is not a license for sexual assault or gang-rape. Period.”

Hochul said on Thursday she was appointing James after she “lost faith” in the ability of the local Tompkins county district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, to oversee the case after he decided not to prosecute the case in 2024, among other reasons. Prior to James’s appointment this week, Van Houten had reopened the investigation.

A former Cornell University student, who identifies by the pseudonym Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit in September alleging she was gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024, when she was 20. She said she was drugged and repeatedly raped over the course of seven hours. The case has sparked national outrage, roiled the campus and raised questions about why no criminal case was brought.

Thomas Giuffra, a lawyer for Jane Doe, told CNN on Friday morning that his client was “not doing well” amid the uproar and that they feel as though “a cover-up was going on” in order to protect the university and its reputation. He added that he had “a real issue” with the district attorney and accused him of trying to “throw” his client “under the bus”.

On Friday, Cornell University said it supported Hochul, including her effort to pass legislation to update the relevant law.

“We fully support the appointment of a special prosecutor and efforts to change New York State’s rape law and are committed to an independent external review of all aspects of how Cornell has handled this case,” a spokesperson said.

Two members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell were expelled, but none of the seven were arrested nor faced any legal consequences. Some were made to write essays, attend workshops or serve short suspensions. Now, Doe is suing the seven men whom she said perpetrated the assault, and also the university itself, the fraternity and others. Some in the group argue that sexual contact was consensual, others deny such participation.

On Monday, Van Houten said the allegations presented in the lawsuit were “dramatically different” from the statement the alleged victim gave the police two years ago. He said the woman’s first testimony did not include allegations that she was drugged, incapacitated beyond the ability to consent or forced into sex. However, he later told CBS News he had never seen her detailed account, but relied on a statement written by a campus police officer.

Hochul further said on Friday that Van Houten had said that Doe’s statement “did not establish that a crime had occurred” – but that new reporting raises serious questions about the information his office relied upon when it made that decision.

Now, she demanded that James conduct a “fresh and thorough review of all the facts” and “go wherever it leads”.

Hochul said: “Every parent who sends their child off to college expects them to be safe, and if something terrible happens, the student deserves to know that the people they turn to will listen to them, protect them, and fight for them. That is the bare minimum.”

James said her first priority was the criminal investigation into the alleged rape. “At this time we will not be focusing on the actions of the district attorney,” she said.

Cornell, which is a private sector elite university, has suspended the Chi Phi fraternity indefinitely. A fraternity is a selective, traditionally all-male club at a university in which some male undergraduate members may live together in residential fraternity houses on or near campus.

Cornell agreed on Wednesday to bring in outside lawyers to independently investigate how it handled the woman’s allegations.

Copyright for this text belongs to The Guardian.