New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed an executive order appointing State Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to oversee the investigation into a former student’s allegations that she was gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity house. In a civil lawsuit filed last month, the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, alleged that several members of a campus fraternity drugged and assaulted her in October 2024.
The case raised questions about how law enforcement and the university initially responded after the woman, then 20, made a report to police a few weeks after the alleged incident occurred.
Hochul said the newly released information raised questions about the investigation conducted by the Cornell Police Department and the decision by Tompkins County prosecutors not to pursue charges against the seven accused, dubbed ‘Cornell 7’ in the lawsuit. The case raised questions about how law enforcement and the university initially responded after the woman, then 20, made a report to police a few weeks after the alleged incident occurred. In recent days, several new reports have revealed more about what law enforcement knew in 2024. The report also pointed out that accounts of nearly all men varied, frequently contradicted each other and generally ran counter to the testimony given by the woman to the Cornell police in 2024.
James said her office would “fully and fairly” investigate the allegations. “The Governor has entrusted my office with this investigation, and we do not take that responsibility lightly,” James said in a statement. Instead, according to hundreds of pages of confidential records obtained by the publication, they asked where the men had been, what they had said and why they were in the bedroom at all.
The others denied participating in sexual encounters, but one went ahead and claimed he was “a victim of sexual misconduct” because the woman had given him oral sex when he was “too incapacitated” to consent.
The NYT investigation found that in hours of interviews and a statement collected during Cornell’s administrative investigation over the winter of 2024, four acknowledged having sexual contact with the woman but said that their interactions had been consensual.
