Van Houten said Jane Doe’s 2024 account indicated she consented to the sexual activity.
A day after reopening an investigation into allegations that Cornell fraternity members drugged and gang-raped a student, the district attorney is defending his office’s decision not to bring charges when the case was first reported in 2024.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told ABC News the allegations were "morally disturbing," but said the information available to his office at the time did not support a prosecution.
“If what was said on social media about this case was true, those fraternity members would be in prison right now,” he told the outlet.
Van Houten said Jane Doe’s 2024 account indicated she consented to the sexual activity and did not allege that sexual activity continued after she withdrew consent.
“She clearly consented in the beginning, and there was never any indication that she changed that to the things that she participated in,” he said. “There is a disconnect in the sense of how the community and how social media has understood this to have happened. If at any point Jane Doe had said, ‘I don't consent to this anymore,’ or in those words, or in any form of communication. If there had been continued sexual activity, contact by these individuals, that would be a crime. But that's not what was alleged in her statement.”
Van Houten acknowledged his office did not review a photo of the fraternity’s Snapchat group but said the alleged messages would not have changed the decision not to bring charges.
He called the messages “disgusting and vulgar and immoral,” but said prosecutors focused on whether Jane Doe consented or was unable to consent.
“The issue was her consent,” Van Houten said, adding that the Snapchat message was not “critical” to that legal analysis.
His office announced Sunday it would reopen the 2024 case following Jane Doe’s civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged, assaulted and gang raped by seven current and former members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity.
Cornell barred the Chi Phi chapter from campus after the alleged Oct. 19, 2024, incident. None of the men named in the lawsuit were criminally charged at the time, according to the district attorney.
Van Houten said his office plans to meet with Jane Doe to “establish a rapport” before asking her to testify before a grand jury this fall.
Prosecutors have also requested documents from Cornell’s Title IX investigation through Jane Doe and may seek testimony from some of the fraternity members, he said.
Cornell said Monday it supports reopening the case and providing "an opportunity for the victim’s story in the 2024 Chi Phi fraternity sexual assault case to be heard by a criminal grand jury."
The university said it conducted a separate Title IX investigation and rejected claims that those involved faced few consequences.
“At its conclusion, the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell,” the university said, adding that the fraternity was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.
“Any suggestion that the University did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Cornell said.
Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas P. Giuffra, disputed Van Houten’s account and said his client’s claims were not thoroughly investigated. He also challenged Cornell’s conclusion that its process produced adequate consequences.
“It is challenging for me to understand how a thorough criminal investigation could have been conducted when she was never spoke with anyone other than the officer who took her original complaint,” Giuffra said.
He said the two-year delay may have cost investigators critical evidence.
The Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Heather Ainsworth)“I believe that opportunities to fully investigate these crimes were lost,” Giuffra said. “We will never fully know what occurred or the identities of everyone who was involved that night.”
An attorney for defendant Scott Kretzschmar denied the allegations, saying the incident described in the complaint “did not happen.”
“We look forward to confronting the plaintiff in a court of law for her selfishly false claims with both the evidence and her own words,” Kretzschmar’s attorney, Jeremy Saland, said.
