A woman who says she was the victim of a gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity told school investigators last year that she “felt like bait” because the attackers were “like lions around me,” according to records from the school’s disciplinary investigation.
The documents, reviewed Friday by The Associated Press, include excerpts from interviews Cornell investigators conducted with the woman and the men she accused and shed more light on the university’s handling of the case.
Although largely redacted, the documents offer a more complete, but sometimes contradictory, timeline of events and insight into how the men responded to the allegations. Some disputed the woman’s account and said they were not involved in any assault.
WATCH: Appointing Cornell special prosecutor for sexual assault, Hochul says she won’t let anyone ‘sweep this matter under the rug’
The woman, identified in court documents only as Jane Doe, sued Cornell and seven former students last month, alleging she was given ketamine and repeatedly assaulted at a fraternity house in October 2024.
She went to campus police three weeks after the confrontation and gave a detailed account of what happened, but the local prosecutor decided not to file criminal charges or seek further investigation after reviewing the police summary of her interview.
Only the school’s investigation, under federal Title IX law, persisted, with the aim of deciding the discipline of the students involved.
Lawsuit filed by one of the accused men reveals details of the investigation
This week, an attorney for one of the defendants filed documents from the school’s investigation in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the university’s sanction and remove it from his academic record. They include a 99-page report on the disciplinary findings of a campus hearing board and a summary of events submitted by university attorneys.
Although they represent only a fraction of the thousands of pages collected during the investigation, the files show the scope of the university’s investigation, including 50 interviews with 32 witnesses and 12 days of hearings.
On Thursday evening, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to lead a new criminal investigation, saying she had lost confidence in Tompkins County Prosecutor Matthew Van Houten.
According to Title IX documents filed in court, which represent only part of the entire investigation, the woman and several of the men gave investigators similar accounts of drug use and sexual activity that took place at the Chi Phi fraternity house — but differed sharply in how much of those accounts was consensual.
Snapchat messages attracted other men
The woman had been invited there by a member of the fraternity for whom she had long had strong romantic feelings and sexual interest, according to the findings of the disciplinary committee. The panel concluded that she initially consented to having sex with this man and one of his friends, although she later alleged in her trial that she was pressured to take ketamine, marijuana and alcohol and was too drunk to consent.
Then other men began appearing in the room, some drawn by a message sent by one of the fraternity brothers to a Snapchat group at 1:42 a.m., using a vulgar term to announce that a woman’s body was available for free. Later, another person in the chat asked if the “shop” was still open.
WATCH: New details intensify scrutiny of Cornell’s handling of gang rape allegations
The woman told investigators her intoxication left her partially defenseless. She said she remembered smoking marijuana and knew she was taking ketamine for the first time, but had no independent memory of it. The drug, she said, left her in a state of “vague consciousness.”
“You look like a functioning human being,” she told school investigators during a hearing in May 2025. “You don’t necessarily look dead or asleep. So the lights are on, but there’s no one home. Your brain is not functioning at its proper level.”
She said some men inhaled drugs on her naked body.
“I felt like bait. I felt like lions were around me. It was just a totally debilitating place to be,” she told investigators.
Accused student says he only entered room for health check
One of the men accused by the woman of snorting drugs off her body – but not taking part in other elements of the attack – has denied her version of events.
He told investigators he was only in the room for five minutes at most and did not go there for sex.
“That wasn’t our intention at all. We were just checking if everything” was OK, he said.
READ MORE: State laws on intoxication and consent face new scrutiny after Cornell rape allegations
He insisted he never saw the woman naked — she was under blankets, he said — and that he had not used drugs. He said he sat on a couch and talked for a few minutes, then left after the woman and another man present both indicated they were fine.
A Cornell disciplinary panel later cleared him of allegations of sexual assault or exploitation, but found him responsible for attempted sexual exploitation because it did not believe his claim that he had gone into the room for altruistic reasons.
The fraternity member, who is challenging Cornell’s disciplinary process in court, also posted in the Snapchat conversation, saying what was happening in the room was no joke, adding, “No first-hand pov at all.” The student later told investigators he didn’t remember sending the message, according to Cornell’s account.
Woman’s trial calls for tougher penalties
In her lawsuit, Jane Doe accused two of the other men who entered the room of performing sexual acts on her without her consent, while she was partially incapacitated. She accused another man of kissing her without her consent. According to Title IX documents, Jane Doe told investigators that two other men were standing at the foot of the bed acting “more like voyeurs than anything else.”
The trial aims to hold the seven men responsible for rape. She is seeking unspecified damages.
Cornell did not detail the results of its investigation, but said it resulted in the expulsion of some students.
The man who sued to challenge his punishment was allowed to stay at Cornell, but he was ordered to stay away from the woman, take a course on sexual harassment and bystander intervention, and write a paper reflecting on the circumstances for which he was found responsible and include a proposal to train other students on sexual harassment prevention.
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