Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten says prosecutors now intend to put a reexamined Cornell University sexual assault case before a grand jury, after a former student sued seven then-fraternity members over an alleged October 2024 attack at the Chi Phi house. The move follows years without criminal charges and a civil complaint that Van Houten says diverges sharply from the account authorities say the woman first gave police.
Daily Mail reporting describes a new criminal probe built around Jane Doe’s cooperation, the same plaintiff who left Cornell and later detailed anxiety, depression, and sleepless nights in a sworn statement tied to the suit. The legal stakes are plain. A grand jury will test whether evidence now supports a finding of criminal conduct that prosecutors declined to charge in 2024.
The alleged incident is placed late on October 19, 2024, at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca. Doe reported to Cornell University Police on November 8. Cornell temporarily suspended the fraternity and seven students the same day. The Xi chapter of Chi Phi remains barred from campus.
The lawsuit, filed this month relative to the coverage, identifies Doe as then 20 and a Cornell student who arrived at the house already heavily intoxicated after drinking in Ithaca. It alleges she was pressured to take ketamine and given marijuana and high-proof alcohol, then repeatedly sexually assaulted as more fraternity members entered the room.
The complaint says seven men eventually took part and that the episode continued until around 5:45 a.m., when she lost consciousness and became “completely incapacitated.” Friends later urged her to come forward, the filing states, before the November 8 campus police report.
The New York Post names the civil defendants as Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar. Those remain allegations in a civil pleading. No criminal convictions are described in the available record.
The filing also describes purported Snapchat traffic in a “Chi Phi Actives” group. One member allegedly posted that there was “free p****” upstairs, referring to Doe. Another allegedly answered, “Like you can walk in and whip it out,” according to a screenshot described in the complaint.
Van Houten has stressed that the office’s original November 2024 assessment rested on Doe’s initial statement to authorities, and that his office relied on the Cornell University Police investigation rather than running a separate probe of its own. He has described that reliance as consistent with practice in many upstate New York counties.
On the first police account, the district attorney drew a hard line between that statement and the later civil narrative. He said the early statement did not match the drugging and incapacitation claims now central to the lawsuit.
Van Houten put the contrast in direct terms when discussing what Doe first told authorities.
"She never says that she was drugged without her knowledge,"
He continued on the same theme about voluntary use and the absence of force or helplessness claims in that first account.
"She admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge."
He also said she did not allege forced acts, physical helplessness, unconsciousness, or incapacitation during the time at the fraternity house. Coverage of his remarks has called the civil complaint’s allegations “dramatically different” from the initial police account. Just The News likewise notes that the earlier statement did not claim drugging without knowledge, non-consent, force, or incapacitation, and that she admitted voluntary drug and alcohol use.
Van Houten’s public posture now is procedural, not a declaration of guilt. Prosecutors want another look at whether evidence unknown to them in November 2024 would change the charging assessment.
"It's our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe's cooperation,"
He framed the review around new material and a possible shift in outcome.
"We want to reexamine whether there's additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct."
Breitbart reports that Cornell supports the reopening, says a hearing panel issued expulsions and suspensions rather than light essay-style penalties, and confirms the Chi Phi chapter was barred and closed to campus life. Federal privacy laws, Cornell has said, block release of individual disciplinary outcomes even as the university states it takes sexual violence allegations “extremely seriously” and that its civil rights and student conduct offices “investigated and adjudicated the allegations consistent with university policies.”
Attorney Thomas P. Giuffra, representing Doe, disputes the suggestion that investigators lacked a clear evidentiary trail. He argues the first response lacked the specialized approach he believes cases of this kind require, and he says authorities already had explosive group-chat material.
"In my experience, speaking with an abuse survivor requires delicacy, understanding and specialized training,"
Giuffra said an average university police officer would not have those skills and that a specially trained detective or prosecutor should have handled contact. He said Doe was never contacted by anybody with those skills. He also claimed investigators received the fraternity chat “inviting the members of the fraternity to rape my client,” calling it “a critical piece of evidence supporting that a crime had occurred.”
He went further on follow-up.
"Despite this there was no follow-up with Ms. Doe either by the Cornell Police or the Tompkins County District Attorney."
Van Houten, for his part, has said the group chat was never provided to his office. That conflict sits unresolved in the public record. Investigators and prosecutors will have to determine who had the Snapchat material, when they had it, and what investigative steps followed.
Giuffra described Doe’s life after leaving school in blunt terms, saying she is “basically stalled, and her life is devoted to dealing with the trauma,” calling it “a constant, constant reminder.” He added that she has dropped out of Cornell and out of college, and that money would not rewrite the story she is living with.
Named defendants have denied the criminal picture painted in the suit. Jeremy Saland, attorney for Scott Kretzschmar, said the alleged incident “did not happen” and offered a flat denial of contact.
"At bottom, Scott never sexually assaulted or even touched the plaintiff in any way. Period,"
Saland said the defense looks forward to confronting the plaintiff in court “for her selfishly false claims with both the evidence and her own words.” Scott Norris separately said he “did not participate in any sexual activity or drug use,” while acknowledging that he “thoughtlessly engaged in Snapchat and briefly stopped in the room where misconduct happened but not when it happened.”
Those denials matter for both the civil docket and any grand jury presentation. A grand jury is a charging filter, not a trial. It can vote indictments if jurors find probable cause. It does not decide guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. No public grand jury date has been released, and authorities have not announced completed criminal charges tied to this reexamination.
The institutional sequence is now stacked in layers. Campus police took the first report. The university ran student-conduct processes and kept the chapter off campus. The district attorney declined charges in 2024 on the strength of the early statement and the campus investigation. A civil complaint then advanced a heavier narrative of drugging, incapacity, and multi-offender assault. Prosecutors say they will reexamine that gap with Doe’s cooperation.
Open questions remain public and basic. Authorities have not released the full original police statement. They have not settled, on the record, the chain of custody and access fight over the Snapchat thread. They have not named a grand jury calendar. Cornell has not disclosed individual student discipline beyond the chapter bar and its general statement about expulsions and suspensions in some reporting. The civil case caption, court, and exact filing date are not spelled out in the seed material beyond relative timing.
For readers tracking campus crime and equal enforcement, the core test is evidence under oath, not online fury and not university branding. If prosecutors present new proof of non-consent, covert drugging, or coordinated assault, a grand jury may return charges. If the record still tracks the first voluntary-use account Van Houten described, the case may again stall short of indictment. Either result should turn on facts, witness credibility, and lawful process.
Campus prestige does not rewrite criminal law, and delayed outrage is not a substitute for proof. When elite schools, local police, and county prosecutors share a case file, the public deserves a clean accounting of who investigated, what they ignored, and whether every defendant and every accuser meets the same standard under the law.
