Jane Doe’s 2024 Cornell Statement Prompts Fresh Questions as Investigation Reopens

A signed statement Jane Doe gave to Cornell University police in 2024, when she first came forward to school officials with allegations that she had been gang raped, is now at the center of a reopened investigation and new questions about what law enforcement knew at the time.

The six-page statement, obtained by CNN’s Pamela Brown from a source familiar with the investigation, details what Doe told investigators about the night of Oct. 19, 2024, when she says she was assaulted by multiple members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity. ABC News first reported on the statement.

According to the statement, Doe told police she was comfortable with an initial encounter but said later in the night she did not consent. She also described being physically hit.

In a separate document — a transcript of a November 2024 interview with campus police obtained by CNN affiliate WCBS — Doe makes a more explicit accusation.

“I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” she said in the transcript, which WCBS obtained from a source.

It is not clear whether Cornell University shared the transcript with the district attorney’s office. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told CNN, “We never received it and still don’t have it. It was not part of what Cornell provided to us.” The transcript is separate from the six-page statement the university submitted, he said.

Van Houten said he learned of the allegation from WCBS on Tuesday evening and that his office will investigate the reported statements “fully.”

A Cornell University spokesperson did not specifically address the transcript but said the university “shared all investigatory information” with the district attorney’s office. When pressed on what documents Cornell police turned over, the spokesperson said Cornell police shared “a lengthy police investigation report” with the district attorney’s office and referred other questions about the documents to Van Houten.

The revelations raise fresh questions about why law enforcement did not file criminal charges at the time of the incident and what the district attorney’s office knew about the assault allegations. Calls for answers have intensified in light of Doe’s civil lawsuit filed this month.

As investigators reopen the case, here are the key questions that remain.

What Doe told Cornell police

WCBS reports it obtained a transcript of Doe’s interview with Cornell University police in November 2024, weeks after the alleged rape. Doe also signed a six-page written statement to Cornell University police at the time.

In her signed statement, Doe described being heavily intoxicated on the night of the alleged rape.

The transcript details how she told police she was “pretty OK” with the initial sexual activity but did not consent to what occurred later in the night, according to WCBS.

In the statement, Doe said she consented to some sexual acts, such as a threesome, but repeatedly refused others, including a foursome allegedly proposed by one of the fraternity brothers.

She said she “finally gave in” after she was asked “to have sex so many times,” according to the statement.

“To me that felt like coercion,” she said. “Also, I felt like due to my intoxication, they should have known how intoxicated I was based on how I was slurring my words.”

Doe also described becoming “extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out” and thinking, “if I passed out and the men had sex with me, then they could be charged with Rape.”

WCBS reports she spoke to Cornell police on Nov. 14 and 15, more than three weeks after the alleged gang rape. A campus police investigator led the questioning, with a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate and Doe’s adviser also in the room for the first day of the interview, according to WCBS. CNN has reached out to Doe’s attorney.

In a statement to CNN, Van Houten said his office was not provided the transcript and that, with the benefit of it, “will be investigating this fully and determining the truth.”

“I will be looking into whether this is true and the specific circumstances of this allegation. I was not provided the transcript, and the specific statement that has been attributed to Doe was not included in the written statement that I received from Cornell PD,” he told CNN.

Asked about Van Houten’s response, a Cornell spokesperson said, “The Cornell University Police Department investigated the matter in 2024 and shared all investigatory information with the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office, which is the established protocol if the department believes it is possible a crime has occurred.” The spokesperson repeated a statement the university included in an FAQs post released Tuesday night.

Why no charges were filed

The new disclosures put scrutiny on why law enforcement did not file criminal charges when the incident occurred.

Van Houten told CNN earlier this week that the woman had not provided university police with the same information alleged in the civil complaint released earlier this month.

In a statement Monday, Van Houten declined to release the full, complete original six-page statement Doe signed for Cornell University police, citing privacy concerns. But he and his office released a handful of excerpts in which she described the events of that night. The district attorney described those excerpts as “facts from Jane Doe’s statement that were relevant.”

That 2024 statement had “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” Van Houten said Monday, adding that her lawsuit “omits any reference that Jane Doe consented to the sexual contact.”

The district attorney says it was this statement that determined no charges should be filed.

“Multiple prosecutors and criminal investigators reviewed Jane Doe’s statement and correctly determined the alleged facts as set forth in the statement do not constitute a crime,” he said.

Doe’s attorney, Thomas P. Giuffra, told CNN on Monday that the Cornell police report prepared after Doe gave her statement “is not materially different” from her statements in the lawsuit filed this month.

“The legal complaint is much more detailed and lengthy because I took the time to meet with Ms. Doe multiple times and learn the specific facts of what had occurred,” Giuffra said.

CNN has not seen the transcript of her interview with Cornell police. CNN has asked Doe’s attorney and Cornell University police for a copy.

A delay in reporting, and questions about the investigation

Doe reported the incident to Cornell University police on Nov. 8, 2024, according to the complaint.

She was “traumatized, numb and unable to function or accept the horror of what had happened” in the days after the October 2024 alleged assault, Giuffra told CNN. Doe reported the alleged assaults to police “once she was emotionally ready.”

Cornell said Tuesday its police department investigated the incident in 2024 and “shared all investigatory information with the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office, which is the established protocol if the department believes it is possible a crime has occurred.”

It is unclear how extensive that initial police investigation was, but Doe’s attorney says he believes it was inadequate.

“It is challenging for me to understand how a thorough criminal investigation could have been conducted when she never spoke with anyone other than the officer who took her original complaint,” Giuffra said.

“Other than her initial contact with Cornell police, she was not contacted by investigators from the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office or any investigators trained in interviewing rape survivors,” Giuffra said in a release.

During a contentious interview Monday, CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed Van Houten on why there was not a more expansive investigation by law enforcement or the district attorney’s office after the initial report was made in 2024.

“We can’t change what happened in the past as much as the community is outraged,” Van Houten said.

The district attorney also told Tapper that his team did not initially see screenshots of a Snapchat group chat between Chi Phi members. Van Houten said the messages were “completely vulgar and disgusting, but they had nothing to do with her consent.”

“They were not part of our initial analysis, but I understand that Cornell had them, and they sent them to our team,” he said.

The university said Tuesday that Cornell police gave the district attorney the Snapchat screenshots in November 2024, along with the rest of the evidence it gathered.

Giuffra’s account also raised questions about why the nearby Ithaca Police Department was not involved in the investigation.

IPD said Monday it was “disturbed” to hear about the 2024 allegations but noted they were not reported to the agency. The department said it only learned about the alleged incident recently through the media.

The October 2024 incident occurred in Cornell police’s jurisdiction, according to the school, which said, “The Cornell University Police Department is a sworn law enforcement agency and performs the same functions as municipal police, but on Cornell property.”

Discipline, lawsuit and competing accounts

Doe’s attorney has said Cornell expelled two of the seven accused students while the others received lesser punishments, including suspensions, workshops or written assignments.

Cornell has disputed that characterization, saying there was a range of sanctions for the accused students, including suspensions and expulsions.

“None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement,” the university said.

The university has declined to confirm individual disciplinary outcomes, citing federal student privacy law. It said violations of university policy “could lead to sanctions up to and including suspension or expulsion,” adding, “We will respond in detail through the legal process.”

Those sanctions came after the university conducted a monthslong formal Title IX investigation, separate from the criminal investigation by law enforcement, and a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days, the school said.

The school also said it closed the Chi Phi fraternity chapter in 2024 and that the chapter remains barred from campus. It is unclear whether any of the accused men are still Cornell students.

Doe’s lawsuit faults Cornell for failing to properly discipline the accused after the alleged assault, “all the while sheltering them from speaking to law enforcement, and silencing victims.”

Cornell pointed to university resources available to survivors, adding, “individuals found responsible (for sexual misconduct) through our processes are held accountable.”

“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Cornell said in an earlier release. “A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault.”

But the lawsuit claims Cornell’s “conduct was so outrageous, shocking, despicable, and contemptible that it exceeds the reasonable bounds of decency as measured by what the average member of the community would tolerate and demonstrates an utter disregard for the consequences that would follow.”

The complaint is seeking a jury trial to determine monetary damages.

Doe has not been identified. It is common for New York courts to permit alleged sexual assault survivors to use pseudonyms when their privacy interests and risk of further harm outweigh the presumption of an open proceeding.

Doe was 20 years old on Oct. 19, 2024, the day of the incident, according to the complaint. Her attorney has said she is from a small town, and it was her dream to go to Cornell — which she no longer attends.

Help is available: For help in the US, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or chat 24/7 on online.rainn.org.

CNN’s Hanna Park, Holly Yan, Linh Tran, Cindy Von Quednow, Jeff Winter and Shoshana Dubnow contributed to this report.

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