“Our body our choice,” Cornell’s Jane Doe wrote in a text exchange with one of the seven men she has accused of sexually assaulting her during a 2024 encounter, according to screenshots published this week by TMZ. Doe, who now claims she was raped, casually described the incident as a “gangbang” in the message sent days after it took place.
But those comments, which cast further doubt on Doe’s claim that her participation was involuntary, are missing from articles published by The New York Times and CBS New York that were based on the same text thread. Both The Times and CBS New York reported on a text exchange between Doe and Jonathan Newell — a man she would later accuse of rape — in which she reassured him that none of the sexual activities they engaged in were illegal.
Citing that text exchange, The Times reported that Newell apologized “for how things went down the other night” and for not “shut[ting] it down and kick[ing] people out before it got way out of hand.”
The Times report continued:
Jane Doe replied and reassured him.
“At the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly i really liked being w u and matt,” she wrote.
A lawyer for Mr. Newell did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Ingalls declined to comment.
The next day, on Oct. 22, Jane Doe made an appointment at Cornell Health to see a doctor because she had contracted a urinary tract infection and wanted to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. She told the doctor she contracted the U.T.I. “in a traumatic way,” according to a transcript of her conversation with investigators.
The Times ended its quote from the text message with “…u and matt.” Readers may have believed that that’s how the actual message ended.
Two days prior, Mahsa Saeidi of CBS New York, an affiliate station of CBS News, wrote a story entitled “Exclusive text messages reveal new details in alleged gang rape at Cornell University.” Saeidi reportedly “received new screenshots from a source.”
Saeidi quoted some of the same snippets of the exchange as The Times, including Doe’s admission that “non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal” and that Doe liked being with the two men.
But neither The Times nor Saeidi included other crucial portions of that same message: Doe calling the activity a “gangbang” and reassuring Newell that their decisions were “our body our choice.”
The full Oct. 21 text from Doe to Newell shows one continuous message, according to TMZ:
aw jonathan i really appreciate this text. my memories super clouded too. i think we were all way to [redacted] drunk and high. i’m getting a little heat (pi phi girls ([redacted] and [redacted]) can’t get my name out of their mouth)) but that’s to be expected. but at the end of the day non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly I really liked being w u and Matt. so anything anyone has to say about the gangbang is out of their jurisdiction. I don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf…
When The Federalist asked CBS New York whether Saeidi had reviewed the entire text exchange, a CBS New York spokeswoman said she had. “Our reporter reviewed the full text exchange before publishing, and our editorial decisions reflected that review,” the spokeswoman said when pressed to answer why key portions like Doe’s “our body our choice” comment had been left out. “We also included her attorney’s explanation and gave our audience the context necessary to understand why some of those messages may be disputed,” she added.
Asked the same questions, The New York Times did not respond. However, in its story, Times reporters indicated that their reporting was based on “detailed filings collected during the private Title IX proceedings — hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with Jane Doe, her friends and those she accused.”
The Federalist also asked a spokesman for CBS News whether the national media outfit stands by the reporting of its local affiliate, but CBS News declined to provide an on-the-record response.
