Cornell student’s statement to police in 2024 reveals new details about the night of her alleged rape

The Cornell University student who alleged in a lawsuit that she was gang raped and drugged at a fraternity house in 2024 described the hours-long incident to police in an affidavit, according to the document obtained by NBC News.

Jane Doe told police she agreed to an initial sexual encounter with two of the men, was encouraged to take drugs and did not remember parts of the night.

“I would say it was the drunkest time of my life,” she told police about how she felt later that evening. “I felt like I was incapable of making decisions because of my inebriation.”

Jane Doe voluntarily gave a sworn statement to Cornell University police on November 14, 2024, 26 days after the alleged assault. In it, she details the night of October 19-20, when she initially agreed to a threesome, but says she felt increasingly incapable as the night progressed, had gaps in her memory, and at one point was “extremely uncomfortable.”

“Added to my feeling of isolation was the fact that my phone was across the room and I felt like I couldn’t access it, and I had no means of payment to order an Uber to get me out of the situation I found myself in,” she told police.

The former student’s lawsuit, filed Sept. 16, sparked a national furor over the way the university and prosecutor handled the case. That prompted the prosecutor to take a fresh look after his office previously determined there was “insufficient evidence to support criminal charges” when reviewing the case in 2024.

Tompkins County Prosecutor Matthew Van Houten released a lengthy statement Monday, which included portions of Doe’s sworn statement to Cornell police in November 2024, and defended his initial decision not to pursue criminal charges.

Her statement did not contain details in which Doe referred to how, at one point, she felt the most incapable she had ever felt in her life, nor how she felt she could not leave the room.

Doe’s statement

The lawsuit alleges she was sexually assaulted, raped and forced to snort ketamine after a night of heavy drinking. Her complaint names seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers who she says sexually assaulted her.

His statement to police reflected many of the allegations in the lawsuit. She described drinking 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, to which she said she agreed.

Later, another man knocked on the door of the room they were in and she let him in because, she said, she was told it was probably the man they were in. She had sex with the third man, according to the release.

“I don’t remember much about that trio,” she told police. “I was pretty inept.”

Although Doe does not remember having sex with the third man, she does remember hearing two men “saying something about ‘having a turn’.” This, she told police, made her realize that the men were “using me without caring what I was getting out of the situation.”

At one point, “several men came into the room” and, she told police, “I was immediately 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 stood between her and the exit.

The lawsuit says several other men entered the room after a fraternity member sent a message to a group chat, a screenshot of which was included in the suit, indicating that there was free “p—-” available on the floor where Doe was.

Doe described his level of drunkenness after four other men entered the room and said the night “gets really blurry for me at that point.”

After one of the men began kissing her, she told police, she quickly backed away and described feeling dissociation.

“I was starting to become completely numb to the whole situation,” she said in the statement.

She said she had taken ketamine earlier in the evening and was offered it again. Doe had never taken the drug before, according to the lawsuit. Her thinking, she told police, was that “if I take ketamine again, I might pass out. I thought if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they might be charged with rape.”

Doe described realizing the next day that what happened to him the night before was being talked about on campus. “Several friends made me understand that Chi Phi members were bragging,” she told police. She added that “it was now obvious that everyone knew that it was me that this had happened to.”

In her statement, she highlighted instances of repeated refusals from men, expressing discomfort and feelings of coercion.

Doe also spoke of an alleged encounter after being led upstairs to what she believed to be 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 it felt like coercion,” she said. “Plus, I felt like because of how drunk I was, they should have known how drunk I was based on how I mixed up my words.”

In a transcript of her interview with campus police on Nov. 14, Doe also reportedly said, “I can say with 100 percent certainty that I was raped,” CBS News reported Wednesday. NBC News has not seen the full transcript of this interview.

Van Houten told NBC News on Wednesday that the specific allegation was not included in the written statement his office received from Cornell police in November 2024, when they were evaluating whether to file charges. Cornell said its campus police department was “sharing all information related to the investigation” with the district attorney’s office.

What the prosecutor says

Van Houten said in her statement Monday that Doe did not allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped in her sworn statement to police.

“To the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement describes her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, knowing, and consensual,” her statement reads.

He also noted that she had written about her difficulty remembering parts of the night as the evening progressed.

Doe’s statement, he said, did not meet the legal bar of proof beyond a reasonable doubt of lack of consent under New York state criminal law. He added that her statement did not allege that she was incapable of controlling her conduct, that drugs were administered to her without her consent, that she was unconscious or that she did not clearly express her refusal.

Van Houten said “several prosecutors and criminal investigators have reviewed Jane Doe’s statement and correctly determined the alleged facts.” as stated in the declaration do not constitute a crime. »

“According to the statement, whenever Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual behavior, the sexual behavior ended,” he said.

Doe’s attorney, Thomas P. Giuffra, said he was “very disappointed” by Van Houten’s assertion Monday that Doe’s interactions that evening were consensual.

“If my client consented, why would you report to the police and say I was assaulted? Why would she say a crime took place? Why would she go to the police in the first place? That makes no sense,” he told NBC News in an interview Monday.

He said in an email Monday that his client was never contacted by the prosecutor’s office or any investigator other than the officer who took her initial complaint, and he called the decision to reconsider charges “a step in the right direction, albeit a late one.”

None of the seven fraternity members named in the complaint have been criminally charged. The fraternity was suspended from campus and remains banned.

Cornell said Monday it conducted an extensive, months-long investigation under Title IX, which is separate from criminal law, and issued “a series of sanctions including expulsions and suspensions” from the university. Cornell did not disclose who received what disciplinary action, citing federal privacy law. The suit claimed the men were allowed to write essays to “mitigate their conduct” — a claim the university also denied Monday.

The attorney for Scott Kretzschmar, one of the Cornell students accused in Doe’s trial of pouring ketamine on his body and snorting it, called the allegations against him “disingenuous” and “morally repugnant.”

“While Scott responded and made an immature comment on Snapchat, he did nothing else. Nothing. During the few minutes he was in the room with the plaintiff, Scott did not see her under duress or undress, did not participate in any sexual activity, did not touch the plaintiff in any way, and did not ingest any ketamine,” said her attorney, Jeremy Saland.

The attorney for another accused Cornell student said his client “denies sexually assaulting the plaintiff.”

The lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, cited Cornell’s “thorough” investigation.

“In fact, several dozen people were interviewed, there were several 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, contemporary communications and other evidence that provide important context that is missing from the current public narrative. These differences, and the evidence that relates to them, will seriously undermine Jane Doe’s narrative.”

NBC News attempted to contact the five other fraternity members named in the lawsuit, but was unable to reach them or receive 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 Doe was a member of and its national organization.

The national Chi Phi fraternity said in a Sept. 18 statement that it could not discuss specific allegations during ongoing litigation, but called the allegations “deeply concerning.”

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 bring in an outside lawyer for an independent investigation into its handling of Doe’s case. The university upheld 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 connect you with your local rape crisis center. You can also access RAINN’s online chat service at rainn.org/get-help.