Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney who declined to bring charges against members of a Cornell University fraternity in 2024 after a woman alleged she was drugged and raped, told MS NOW’s Peter Alexander that an “extremely troubling” new transcript of the woman’s interview with police “certainly merits reopening” the investigation.
The two-year-old case gained national attention after a former Cornell student, identified only as Jane Doe in court filings, filed a civil lawsuit earlier this month, alleging she was sexually assaulted and drugged by seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers at an on-campus fraternity house in October 2024.
Some of the seven men named in the lawsuit have issued statements through their attorneys denying criminal wrongdoing.
Jane Doe reported the alleged assault to the university’s police department about three weeks later, according to the lawsuit. While Cornell conducted an internal investigation into the incident, which led to expulsions and suspensions, the district attorney’s office did not pursue criminal charges. Prosecutors argued at the time that Jane Doe’s initial accusations did not meet the legal threshold under New York law and said she described her participation as voluntary and conscious.
“The definition of lack of consent under New York State penal law specifically excludes someone who was voluntarily incapacitated due to their voluntary consumption of alcohol or drugs,” Van Houten told Alexander on Wednesday morning. “If someone wasn’t capable of making a smart decision because of their intoxication, that is not a basis to say they couldn’t consent. That’s a loophole in New York State law that I know there’s legislation seeking to fix, and I support that.”
While Van Houten said the “facts as we knew them in November 2024 did not change,” he said there now “may be additional evidence that we did not have possession of or was not disclosed to us that we want to consider.”
On Tuesday, CBS News reported details from a transcript of the alleged victim’s interview with Cornell University Police. A campus police investigator led the questioning, while a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate and Jane Doe’s adviser were also in the room during the first day of the interview. According to that transcript, she told investigators, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” However, that did not make it into the signed statement campus police handed over to Van Houten’s office.
The New York prosecutor said he only learned of the transcript Tuesday evening. While he said his decision not to bring charges “was not a close call, based upon the evidence that we had in November of 2024,” he said the new information was “extremely troubling” and “certainly merits reopening” the investigation.
“We believe her. We want to give her justice. So we are reopening the case,” he said.
When Alexander pressed Van Houten on how he could have only recently learned of the transcript’s existence, he said his office depended on the Cornell University Police Department to “be thorough and provide us the information.”
“It appeared to be comprehensive,” he said of the statement provided to prosecutors in November 2024. “It appeared to be very detailed and a full account of what happened. I can’t explain why additional information did not make it to my office.”
Van Houten suggested that perhaps the presence of a Title IX investigator during Jane Doe’s interview with police may have prevented the transcript from being turned over “since the Title IX proceedings are confidential.” However, he also noted it was “very unusual” for a Title IX investigator to be “present during the police interview.”
He told Alexander that when he learned about the transcript, his office reached out to Jane Doe’s attorney. “I sent him an email first thing this morning to connect with Jane Doe and move this case forward,” he said.
“If the whole truth didn’t make it to my office in 2024, that’s a travesty, and that’s a disservice to Jane Doe, and we can fix that,” Van Houten said. “And that’s my goal: to find the truth and to help her obtain justice.”
Thomas Giuffra, who represents Jane Doe, told CBS News that neither he nor his client had “any confidence” in Van Houten’s “ability to handle this investigation and prosecution.”
“What more did [he] need to do a thorough investigation and prosecute? He had a woman who told an officer she was raped and a group chat inviting sexual assaults,” Giuffra said, referencing an image of messages reportedly sent on the app Snapchat to members of the fraternity the night of the alleged rape, which campus police were given during the investigation. “The failure to do anything is shocking.”
In a statement to MS NOW, Cornell University said it “supports the decision of the Tompkins County District Attorney (DA) to provide an opportunity” for Jane Doe’s story “to be heard by a criminal grand jury.” The university also noted its Title IX investigation into the incident resulted in “a range of sanctions” against several of the fraternity members, “which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell.”
You can watch Van Houten’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
The post Cornell case prosecutor: ‘Troubling’ transcript ‘certainly merits reopening’ investigation appeared first on MS NOW.
