New texts from Cornell frat house members shed more light on alleged attack
Newly uncovered messages sent on the night a former Cornell University student says she was drugged and sexually assaulted show fraternity members discussing her presence in the house and later apologizing for how the evening unfolded.
At 1:42 a.m. on the date of the alleged assault, a message was sent to the group chat suggesting a woman was available for sex. “Shop still open?” one fraternity brother wrote later, to which two others responded, “Yeah,” as reported by CBS News New York.
Two days after the incident, an unidentified fraternity member accused in the case texted the woman to apologize for “how things went down,” in messages cited by CBS News, acknowledging he should have “shut it down and kick[ed] people out before it got way out of hand.”
In response, the woman allegedly wrote that “non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal,” adding that her memory was “super clouded too.” Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, told the outlet he was aware of messages between the pair but could not verify their contents.
The revelation of the messages comes as Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced his office was reopening the criminal investigation and referring the matter to a grand jury, despite maintaining that the student’s initial sworn statement to police did not detail a crime under New York State penal law.
Speaking to CNN’s Pamela Brown on Tuesday, Van Houten defended his office’s original decision not to press charges, while acknowledging that the behavior of the men involved was “morally disgusting.”
“We knew everything that happened, and we knew it, and we believed it because Jane Doe told us through her six-page written statement what happened,” Van Houten told CNN. “When you know that that very detailed, comprehensive account does not establish a crime, it’s not ethical for a prosecutor or for the police to go out and look for or cross-examine her to find evidence of a crime. We don’t have an agenda to make a criminal prosecution. Our agenda is the truth.”
Van Houten insisted that the Snapchat messages were not central to determining whether a criminal offense took place under the law.
“That’s a red herring in the sense of the legal analysis because we received it,” he said. “But it was not relevant to the assessment of whether Jane Doe consented or whether there was any evidence of lack of consent on her part, as defined by the penal law. … It’s repulsive, but it is not evidence as it relates to the penal law assessment of whether there was a crime.”
The prosecutor also disputed characterizations that Doe had reported a gang rape in her original police statement.
“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, telling CNN that “Jane Doe never alleged that she was ‘quote unquote’ gang raped, and that’s from social media.”
The September 16 civil complaint, however, explicitly accuses the defendants of organizing and participating in a “gang rape” inside the fraternity house.
When challenged by Brown on the wording of the civil lawsuit, Van Houten reiterated that police evaluated her initial account as voluntary.
“She went to the police because she knew it wasn’t right, and the police investigated it,” Van Houten said during the interview. “That does not mean, if it’s morally wrong or disgusting or offensive, it does not mean that the penal law was violated.”
