The attorney representing a former Cornell University student who said she was gang-raped for hours in 2024 after she was pressured to take ketamine decried the initial investigation and accused both law enforcement officials and the school of failing his client.
“She was a young woman who went to Cornell with high hopes, thought that this was her dream come true, and then that didn’t happen,” Thomas P. Giuffra told NBC News on Monday. “Now she’s not in college. She’s not pursuing her goals, and she’s just trying to hang on.”
In a written statement Monday, the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, said she hopes “to recover from this trauma but it is extremely difficult. It affects every aspect of my life. It will haunt me and be part of me the rest of my life.”
In a civil lawsuit filed this month, Doe alleges that Chi Phi fraternity brothers sexually assaulted her and that one sent a message encouraging other members to participate in the attack.
The fraternity chapter was subsequently barred from campus, but no one was criminally charged. According to the lawsuit, some of the students were able to “mitigate their conduct” by writing essays to the university.
“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Kyle Kimball, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, said in a statement.
Giuffra told NBC News that in the days following the alleged assault, his client was “traumatized, numb and unable to function or accept the horror of what had happened.” She was in “self-preservation mode,” he said, and had faith that university officials would investigate her claims thoroughly.
“She wanted to give Cornell the opportunity to make this right, because this was her expectation. So she didn’t want to start a lawsuit,” he said.
She filed the civil lawsuit, which names the Chi Phi chapter, Chi Phi National and Cornell University among others, this month.
Why a 2024 Cornell sexual assault case was reopened
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said that prompted him to reopen the case and consider whether to bring charges related to the 2024 allegations. The university said Monday that it supports Van Houten’s decision to have the case heard before a criminal grand jury.
“Now that this lawsuit has been filed, that raises the question that Jane Doe believes there’s additional evidence,” Van Houten told NBC News on Monday. “We want to talk to her. We want to flesh out with her what that additional evidence is.”
He promised to pursue any new evidence “zealously.”
“We understand that with human beings, especially processing trauma, it takes time sometimes to fully grasp and understand and process something that happened to you, and so we recognize that even though it’s been two years and we haven’t heard from her since then or her attorneys, that it’s never too late to reopen and pursue justice when there is additional evidence,” Van Houten said.
He said he looks forward to working with the woman before the case is sent to a grand jury. “We want to prepare with her, so she’s comfortable and feels confident that we are going to cover all the bases with her and support her,” Van Houten said.
According to Giuffra, his client went to the Cornell University Police Department after the alleged attack but did not speak with anyone beyond the first person who took her report. University officers failed to follow up on key pieces of evidence, including the group chat, Giuffra said.
“That available evidence was there. They could have utilized it,” he told NBC News. “What they should have done is investigated who was on that group chat and interviewed witnesses and developed evidence. That’s what investigators do, and that was not done at all.”
Ithaca police did not immediately respond to a request for information about their involvement in the case. The Ithaca Police Department is actively investigating the allegations, according to the civil lawsuit. Cornell police referred NBC News to the university’s previous statements defending how it handled the allegations.
Cornell pushed back on the suggestion that those involved in the incident faced few consequences at the time, saying in a statement Monday that the university’s Title IX proceedings resulted in a range of sanctions, including expulsions and suspensions.
The lawsuit names seven Chi Phi fraternity members. Scott Kretzschmar is among them. An attorney for Kretzschmar strongly denied the accusations and said his client welcomed the new investigation.
“The lawsuit against Scott Kretzachmar is not only intentionally dishonest but morally repugnant,” attorney Jeremy Saland said in a statement. “While Scott responded to and made an immature comment on Snapchat, he did nothing else. Nothing.”
NBC News tried to contact the six others named in the lawsuit but was not immediately able to reach them or did not receive responses.
