Three of the ‘Cornell 7’ break their silence over alleged gang rape as new text messages from accuser reveal what she told a friend

Three of the seven Cornell fraternity brothers accused in a disturbing lawsuit of drugging and raping a female student have broken their silence as the case draws national attention – with one attorney criticizing actress Florence Pugh for ‘inflammatory rhetoric.’ 

In the suit, filed in New York earlier this month, a woman identified as Jane Doe claimed she was plied with alcohol, pressured to take ketamine and repeatedly sexually assaulted for hours at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024.

The 101-page complaint alleged she was ‘gang raped’ after one of her alleged attackers sent a Snapchat message telling fellow fraternity members there was ‘free p***y’ upstairs.

But newly surfaced text messages purportedly exchanged two days later show Doe telling one of the accused that her memory was ‘super clouded’ and that ‘none of the sexual stuff was illegal.’ Her attorney has said she was traumatized and in denial at the time.

Doe’s allegations have sparked widespread outrage and intense scrutiny of Cornell and local authorities. Three of the accused seven have publicly denied the claims. One has been fired from their job.

Florence Pugh was among several high-profile figures to address Doe’s allegations over the weekend, writing in a post on Instagram that she felt ‘uneasy and sick and anxious’ after reading about the case.

‘We are not hard enough on those that want to damage human lives,’ Pugh wrote. ‘I salute all those at the college that are fighting for that girl, exposing those boys and making life unbearably impossible to find joy during their terms. They should not be allowed to walk freely like the rest of us who treasure and care for souls.’

But Jeremy Saland, an attorney for accused student Scott Kretzschmar, who denies the claims, warned against allowing public outrage to become a presumption of guilt and accused Pugh of adding ‘fuel to the fire with wrongful assumptions and inflammatory rhetoric.’

‘It is absolutely fair to express concern and outrage over any type of sexual abuse. It is a scourge we can all agree should be eradicated,’ Saland told the Daily Mail.

‘Just like any Mr Smith or Ms Jones, Florence Pugh, or anyone for that matter, can opine all she wants,’ he said.

‘But unless she doesn’t believe in the rule of law, [or believes] that facts do not matter, and the presumption of guilt supersedes that of innocence, she should not add fuel to the fire with wrongful assumptions and inflammatory rhetoric.’

Saland invoked the Duke lacrosse scandal, in which three players were falsely accused of rape in 2006 before being declared innocent the following year after the case collapsed. Their accuser, Crystal Mangum, later admitted to fabricating the claims.

‘If the hobbling of young men in the Duke Lacrosse tragedy has taught us anything, we need to cast aside the pitchforks of prejudgment and let the facts come out,’ Saland added.

Pugh’s representatives have been contacted for comment. 

Amid mounting public pressure, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced on Monday that his office had reopened the criminal probe, nearly two years after prosecutors initially declined to bring charges. 

Van Houten said investigators will now assess whether new evidence that wasn’t available to prosecutors in 2024 changes their view of the case.

A senior sex-crimes prosecutor has been assigned to the case and will present the evidence to a grand jury.

The DA said his office did not conduct an independent investigation into the claims in 2024, but was instead asked by Cornell University Police to review Doe’s statement and determine whether the conduct she described amounted to a crime under New York law.

Prosecutors were not made aware of the Snapchat exchange that is central to Doe’s lawsuit, including the ‘free p***y’ message, Van Houten said.

A report by CBS New York uncovered additional messages sent in the same Snapchat thread on the night of the alleged attack. 

‘Shop still open?’ one fraternity brother later wrote, seemingly referencing the earlier message that suggested a woman was available for sex.

‘Yea,’ another responded.

Doe’s attorney Thomas Giuffra has repeatedly questioned how thorough Cornell PD’s investigation was, telling the Daily Mail there was little meaningful follow-up after his client first reported the allegations.

But Van Houten has also highlighted a significant complication: Doe’s initial account to police in 2024 differs sharply in places from the allegations made in her lawsuit.

In a statement Monday, the DA quoted extensively from the six-page sworn account Doe gave Cornell University Police in November 2024, several weeks after the alleged incident.

Doe described herself as being a ‘5 out of 10’ on a scale of intoxication when she arrived at Chi Phi and said she agreed to take part in an initial threesome because of her attraction to one of the men and her ‘drunken curiousness.’ 

Doe also described taking ketamine voluntarily during parts of the night and replied ‘sure’ when one man asked whether the group could take drugs off her body, according to her statement.

Her 2024 account also said that while that was happening, one of the seven accused plus another man entered the room and one said words to the effect of, ‘Ok, we’re shutting down whatever the f**k this is.’

Doe said she was feeling dizzy from the ketamine and a pre-existing medical condition, and that one of the men encouraged her to remain seated for as long as she needed.

Her original account did include unwanted conduct. Doe said she repeatedly swatted away one man’s hand when he reached toward her crotch, rejected another proposed sexual encounter and pulled away when another fraternity member kissed her.

But prosecutors said the statement did not allege she had been drugged without her consent, rendered unconscious or unable to communicate, or forced into the sexual activity they reviewed. Van Houten said it therefore did not establish the lack of consent required for criminal charges.

New text messages obtained by CBS, which were reportedly exchanged by Doe and one of the accused two days after the alleged attack, show the man apologizing for how things ‘went down’ and saying he and another man had been too intoxicated to stop things before they got ‘way out of hand.’

Doe replied that her memory was ‘super clouded too’ and wrote that ‘none of the sexual stuff was illegal,’ before later suggesting they smoke together again without the ‘extra 5 billion men and ketamine.’ 

Giuffra confirmed to the outlet that Doe exchanged messages with the defendant but said he could not verify the specific screenshots. He said she was traumatized and in denial at the time and was trying to piece together what had happened. 

Doe’s civil lawsuit presented a markedly different, more graphic account of the allegations than those depicted in the text messages and those detailed in the police report cited by Van Houten. 

Doe alleged in the complaint she was already too intoxicated to consent when she arrived at Chi Phi, was pressured into taking ketamine and repeatedly sexually assaulted as she became increasingly incapacitated before losing consciousness at around 5.45am.

Van Houten said neither Doe nor her attorneys contacted his office in the nearly two years after the original decision to say her statement was inaccurate or ask for the case to be reconsidered. He said he reached out to Doe after reading the lawsuit.

Still, he acknowledged in reopening the investigation that victims can take years to process sexual trauma and that new evidence can warrant another look.

‘Seeking justice sometimes requires us to reconsider or reopen cases when we are provided with additional evidence,’ Van Houten said. ‘Getting to the truth is the goal in this case.’

Kretzschmar and two other defendants, Scott Norris and Gillio Lopes, have now publicly denied participating in the alleged sexual assaults or drug use described in the complaint.

Saland said Kretzschmar acknowledges making what he called an ‘immature’ comment in the Snapchat chain cited by Doe and briefly entering the room where she was, but denies touching her, engaging in sexual activity or taking ketamine.

He said Kretzschmar was in the room for only a few minutes, did not see Doe in distress or undressed and took a hair-follicle test that he says showed his client had not consumed ketamine.

Saland accused Doe and her attorneys of unfairly grouping Kretzschmar with the more serious allegations against other defendants, noting that the complaint broadly accused all seven men of rape, while the specific allegation against his client was that he participated in consuming ketamine off of Doe’s body.

‘Even if the plaintiff was a victim by others, two wrongs do not make a right,’ Saland said. ‘She does not have the right to victimize Scott.’

He said Kretzschmar welcomes the reopened investigation and is confident it will clear him.

Norris has also denied participating in sexual activity or drug use that night, while acknowledging that he sent a Snapchat message included in the lawsuit and briefly entered the room.

‘I was not found responsible by Cornell for any of the accusations involving sexual activity and drug use for which others received serious consequences,’ Norris said through an attorney. 

‘I thoughtlessly engaged in Snapchat and briefly stopped in the room where misconduct happened but not when it happened.’

A third defendant, Gillio Lopes, similarly denied Doe’s claims entirely.

‘We represent Mr Lopes. He unequivocally denies the allegations against him,’ attorney Andrew Miltenberg said in a statement.

‘Cornell previously investigated these allegations. The allegations now being made publicly differ from what was reported and investigated during that process.

‘We will address these issues through the appropriate legal process and will have no further comment at this time.’ 

Diego Sarabia, a fourth defendant, has not yet publicly addressed the allegations but he was fired from his job at a Charlotte branch of Wells Fargo after the DA’s investigation was reopened, TMZ reported.

Sarabia was one of the men accused in the complaint of pressuring Doe to take ketamine, in addition to giving her marijuana and alcohol.

Cornell has supported the DA’s decision to revisit the investigation and said its own months-long Title IX process allowed Doe and the accused students to testify and present evidence before a panel of faculty and staff. 

Doe’s lawsuit further claimed that the university allowed all seven accused to ‘mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.’ 

The university has pushed back on suggestions that those found responsible escaped with minimal consequences, saying sanctions included suspensions and expulsions.

‘Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,’ a Cornell spokesperson said.

Chi Phi’s Xi chapter has remained barred from campus since 2024.