Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of explicit sexual acts alleged to have occurred.
If there are still any die-hard proponents of the “believe all women” #MeToo ideology left breathing, they had better hope what’s happening at Cornell isn’t exposed as yet another “gang rape” hoax. If it is, nobody is going to ever take these stories seriously again.
The Tompkins County district attorney’s office in New York announced Monday it reopened a criminal case related to a 2024 rape allegation by a then-20-year-old Cornell University student, who says she was assaulted by seven frat members. The alleged victim filed a lawsuit against the male students and several others on Sep. 16. The district attorney has said the suit contains information not disclosed to authorities two years ago.
“My office obviously did not and could not have based our November 2024 decision on the allegations in a civil lawsuit that would not be filed until nearly two years later,” District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in a statement, according to The Washington Post. He said the information given to police in 2024 was “dramatically different” than what’s detailed in the lawsuit.
We don’t know exactly what the alleged victim told police in 2024. But we know she didn’t go to police until at least two weeks after the alleged incident. And we know that Van Houten says she told police her encounter with the frat members was “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” He told ABC News she admitted to taking drugs and drinking alcohol of her own accord. “She does not allege that she was forced to engage in any acts [at the time],” Van Houten said. “She does not say that she was physically helpless or unconscious or incapacitated at any point during the time at the fraternity house.”
We also know that the timeline has shifted considerably since 2024. On Nov. 8 that year, Cornell announced that police “received a report of a sexual assault” that took place on the night of Oct. 25, into the early hours of the next morning. The lawsuit filed this month, however, pins the alleged rape on Oct. 19 into the 20th. There is no explanation for the discrepancy in the lawsuit.
By the way, the alleged victim gets to retain her anonymity in the lawsuit and go by “Jane Doe,” while the frat members are publicly named.
Doe claims in the suit that she started her night drinking vodka to the point of intoxication at a sorority house before venturing to a bar that was hosting a campus Greek life event. Though Doe received “X” symbols on each hand from the bouncer, denoting her underage status, she was still “served” a drink, possibly more than one, according to the suit. Doe eventually left and headed to another bar with some sorority members before she eventually “stumbled alone” to a frat house to see a friend, identified as Matthew Ingalls.
The suit says Ingalls greeted Doe, gave her a beer, and the two “danced together in the main room of the fraternity house.” Ingalls then allegedly took Doe to a separate area and “propositioned her with having a threesome with her and another one of his fraternity brothers.” The suit says by this time, Doe was “incapable of consenting.”
Ingalls then allegedly led Doe upstairs to one room, where she spoke with an individual, who is not being sued, and then to yet another room, where there was another frat member identified as Johnathan Newell. The suit says Ingalls and Newell “then pressured Plaintiff into snorting” ketamine, a drug that can induce dissociation and hallucinations. They also continued to drink and use marijuana.
Thereafter, the suit alleges that Ingalls and Newell began to sexually assault Doe, but that at some point Ingalls went to a bed and slept. Newell allegedly continued attempting to assault Doe, who, the suit says, “pushed his hand away.” Shortly thereafter, a third Cornell student identified as Gillio Lopes entered the room, grabbed Doe and began kissing her. The two men then “began having sex” with her.
Shortly after 1:30 a.m., the suit says Newell texted a group on the Snapchat social media app named “Chi Pi Actives,” a reference to the fraternity and its active members. A screenshot of the group chat appears to show Newell saying, “free pussy in alum pu” to the group, which the suit suggests is an invitation from Newell to the others to join in the raping of Doe. Other names apparent on the screenshot are associated with others named in the lawsuit as having assaulted Doe.
Another four male students showed up to partake in the assault, the suit alleges. Doe’s “phone was on the other side of the room and she felt as if there was no way for her to escape this room full of predatory, fraternity men,” the suit says. That claim is immediately followed by a truly confounding detail: It says that the student named Newell “then poured a line of Ketamine onto his erect penis and commanded that [Doe] snort it, which she did.” And then, “While [Doe] was lying on her back on the bed,” all seven men “then began pouring lines of Ketamine all over her body and snorting them.”
After that, they went to another room, where Doe, the suit says, did another line of ketamine. “By this point,” according to the suit, Doe “was completely incapacitated.” (You don’t say.)
There’s allegedly more assault that takes place after that, and Doe eventually passes out close to 6 a.m. When she wakes up, she goes to her home where she “took preemptive medication for a urinary tract infection.” As the day went on, she “became aware that what had happened to her … was becoming public knowledge” on campus. Two weeks, or more, later, Doe went to the police, and there was an investigation on campus that resulted in some disciplinary action, presumably for the drug and alcohol use, but no criminal charges.
Van Houten has since summarized the way authorities were initially told of the incidents, as relayed by Doe. He said she agreed to a three-way with two frat members that night “due to how attracted [she] was” to an individual involved and that she “had difficulty remembering parts of what happened next.” He said, “While the behavior of certain Chi Phi fraternity members was without question disgusting and morally reprehensible,” none of it rose to the level of criminal prosecution.
Maybe all of it happened just as Doe said. Or maybe it’s just like Rolling Stone’s ultimately retracted “A Rape On Campus” story in 2014, wherein “Jackie” accounted a graphic gang rape at a frat house, the details of which couldn’t be corroborated by anyone, but not before the entire country was gripped in hysteria about well-to-do frat boys (white men) on a sexual assault rampage.
The #MeToo diehards should hope that’s not the case.
