The Tompkins County District Attorney has reopened a sexual assault case involving seven members of Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity from October 2024.
The decision to reopen the case comes less than two weeks after an anonymous former Cornell student filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged, assaulted, and gang raped at the fraternity house.
The anonymous plaintiff alleges in her civil complaint, filed September 16, that seven Chi Phi fraternity members drugged and sexually assaulted her at the frat house in October 2024.
She further alleges that fraternity members invited others to join the assault through a group chat, and she included a photo of a Snapchat group message as evidence in the suit.
None of the seven fraternity members named in the lawsuit have faced criminal charges in connection with the alleged incident.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said the civil lawsuit raised allegations “dramatically different” than the woman’s original statement to police in 2024.
Van Houten said the original police statement did not mention that the woman had been drugged or that she had not consented to sexual activity, which led his office to decline charges at the time.
“It’s our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe’s cooperation,” Van Houten told ABC News, adding that his office wants to reexamine whether additional evidence exists that would change their assessment.
“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,” Van Houten said.
Van Houten acknowledged that his office relied solely on the Cornell University Police Department’s investigation and did not independently investigate the allegations, a practice he described as common across many upstate New York counties.
A key dispute in the case centers on a group chat in which the student claims fraternity members discussed the alleged assault, which Van Houten says was never provided to his office in 2024.
Her legal team, however, insists that police had the messages in 2024 and simply failed to follow up on them.
Cornell said in a September 21 statement that its Office of Civil Rights and Office of Student Conduct each separately investigated the case in 2024, resulting in the Chi Phi chapter being barred from campus.
Two of the seven men allegedly involved were expelled, while others received lesser disciplinary measures, including workshops and essays, according to ABC News.
In a subsequent statement, Cornell said it “supports the decision of the Tompkins County District Attorney to provide an opportunity for the victim’s story, in the 2024 Chi Phi fraternity Sexual Assault case, to be heard by a criminal grand jury.”
An attorney for defendant Scott Kretzschmar denied the allegations entirely, stating that the incident described in the civil complaint “did not happen.”
Defendant Scott Norris denied engaging in sexual activity or drug use, though he acknowledged sending a message that was included in the civil complaint.
The case has drawn widespread public attention, including from actress Florence Pugh, who said the allegations left her “uneasy and sick and anxious” and called on men to speak up.
