The Cornell University student who alleged in a lawsuit that she was gang-raped and drugged at a fraternity in 2024 described the hour-long incident to police in a sworn statement, according to the document, which was obtained by NBC News. Jane Doe told police in part that she had agreed to an initial sexual encounter with two of the men, described being encouraged to use drugs and said she did not remember parts of the night. “I would say it was the most intoxicated I’ve ever been in my life,” he told police about how he felt later that night. “I felt like I couldn’t make any decisions because of how intoxicated I was.” Jane Doe voluntarily gave the sworn statement to Cornell University Police on November 14, 2024, 26 days after the alleged assault. In it, she detailed the night of Oct. 19-20, when she initially agreed to a threesome, but said she felt increasingly incapacitated as the night went on, had gaps in her memory, and at one point felt “extremely uncomfortable.” situation I was in,” he told police. The former student’s lawsuit, filed Sept. 16, has sparked a national furor over the university’s and district attorney’s handling of the case. It has prompted the district attorney to take a fresh look after his office previously determined there was “insufficient evidence to support criminal charges” when the case was reviewed in 2024. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten issued a lengthy statement Monday, which included parts of Doe’s sworn statement to Cornell police in November 2024, and defended her initial decision not to file criminal charges. Her statement did not include details in which Doe referred to how, at one point, she felt more incapacitated than she had ever felt in her life, or how she felt like she could not leave the room. complaint names seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers who she claims sexually assaulted her. Her statement to police reflected many of the allegations in the lawsuit. She described drinking sometime after 6:30 p.m., going to two different Ithaca bars, and finally going to the Chi Phi fraternity house around 10:30 or 11 p.m. to meet a friend. There, a friend asked her if she was interested in a threesome. She responded that she agreed. Later, another man knocked on the door of the room they were in and she let him in because, she said, he was probably the man whose room they were in. She had a sexual encounter with the third man, according to the statement. “I don’t remember much about this threesome,” she told police. “While Doe didn’t remember having sex with the third man, she remembered hearing two men “say something about ‘having a turn.'” At one point, “several men came into the room” and, she told police, “I was instantly horrified.” She ran across the room to hide under the covers of another bed, the statement said, which she said seemed like the only option because they were standing between her and the exit. fraternity sent a message to a group chat, a screenshot of which was included in the lawsuit, that said there was “free p—-” available upstairs where Doe was. Doe described her level of intoxication after four more men entered the room and said the night “really became a blur for me at that point.” the situation,” he said in the statement. He said he had taken ketamine earlier that night and was offered it again. Doe had never taken the drug before, according to the lawsuit. His thought, he told police, was that “if I take ketamine again I might pass out. My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.” “Several friends made it clear to me that the Chi Phi members were bluffing,” she told police. She added that “it was now obvious that everyone knew it was me that this had happened to.” In her statement, she highlighted instances of men repeatedly rejecting her, expressing discomfort and feeling coerced. Doe also spoke about an alleged encounter after she was taken upstairs, which she believed which was the fraternity president’s office, where, she said, two men “asked me to have sex so many times that I finally gave in.” “To me, that felt like coercion,” she said. “Also, I felt that because of my intoxication, they should have known how intoxicated I was by how I slurred.” In a transcript of her interview with campus police on Nov. 14, Doe also allegedly said, “I can say with 100% confidence that I was raped,” CBS News reported Wednesday. NBC News has not seen the full transcript of that interview. Van Houten told NBC News on Wednesday that the specific allegation was not in the written statement her office received from Cornell police in November 2024 when they were evaluating whether to file charges. Cornell has said the campus police department “shared all information from the investigation” with the district attorney’s office. What the district attorney says Van Houten said in her statement Monday that Doe did not allege that she was drugged against her will. gang-raped in her sworn statement to police. “In contrast, Jane Doe’s statement described her involvement in the drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, knowing, and consensual,” her statement said. He also noted that she wrote about having difficulty remembering parts of the night as it went on. alleged that she was unable to control her behavior, that she was administered drugs without her consent, that she was unconscious or that she did not clearly express her non-consent. Van Houten said that “multiple prosecutors and criminal investigators reviewed Jane Doe’s statement and correctly determined that the alleged facts as set forth in the statement do not constitute a crime.” According to the statement, each time Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual conduct, Doe’s attorney, Thomas P. Giuffra, said he was “very disappointed” by Van Houten’s claim Monday that Doe’s interactions that night were consensual. “If my client gave consent, why did he file a police report and say he had been assaulted? Why would you say a crime occurred? Why would you go to the police in the first place? “It doesn’t make sense,” he told NBC News in an interview Monday. He said in an email Monday that his client was never contacted by the district attorney’s office or any investigator other than the officer who made her original complaint, and called the decision to reconsider the prosecution “a step in the right direction, albeit a late one.” None of the seven fraternity members named in the lawsuit were criminally charged. The fraternity was suspended from campus and remains banned. Cornell said Monday that it conducted a thorough Title investigation. IX, which is separate from criminal law, which imposed “a series of sanctions including expulsions and suspensions” from the university. Cornell did not disclose who received what disciplinary outcome, citing the federal privacy law, the lawsuit claimed that the men were allowed to write essays to “mitigate their conduct,” a claim the university also denied on Monday. inhaling it, called the accusations against him “dishonest” and “morally repugnant.” “Although Scott responded and made an immature comment on Snapchat, he did nothing further. Nothing. During the few minutes he was in the room with the plaintiff, Scott did not see her under duress or undress, he did not engage in any sexual activity or touch the plaintiff in any way, and he did not ingest ketamine,” said his attorney, Jeremy Saland. A lawyer for another of the accused Cornell students said his client “denies that he sexually assaulted the plaintiff.” Attorney Andrew Miltenberg cited Cornell’s “extensive” investigation. “In fact, several dozen people were questioned, there was [were] “Multiple days of hearings and testimony, and an investigative report containing hundreds of pages, all over an extended period of time,” he said in a written statement. “It is these statements, contemporaneous communications, and other evidence that provide important context that is absent in the current public narrative. Those differences, and the evidence supporting them, will seriously compromise Jane Doe’s narrative.” NBC News has attempted to contact the five other fraternity members named in the lawsuit, but was unable to reach them or received no responses. In addition to the seven men and the university, the lawsuit also names one of the bars Doe visited that night, Cornell’s Chi Phi Chapter, Chi Phi National and the university chapter of the sorority of which Doe was a member and its national organization. The National Chi Phi fraternity said in a statement on Sept. 18 that it could not discuss specific allegations during the pending proceedings. litigation, but called the allegations “deeply troubling.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a video statement Wednesday that she spoke with Cornell’s president on Wednesday and that the university agreed to hire outside counsel for an independent investigation into its handling of the Doe case. The university confirmed the decision. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. The hotline, run by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), can put you in touch with your local rape crisis center. You can also access RAINN’s online chat service at rainn.org/get-help.
