New York state prosecutors have announced they are reopening a criminal investigation into an alleged rape at Cornell University in 2024, following the filing of a civil lawsuit by the alleged victim.

The woman, referred to in court documents as Jane Doe, filed the lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in September. In it, she alleges she was drugged and raped by multiple men for more than four hours at a Cornell fraternity house on the night of 19 October 2024.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced the decision in a nine-page statement. He said a senior prosecutor with experience in sex crimes has been assigned to begin preparations for presenting the case to a grand jury.

"Once we determine the appropriate charges, the case will be prosecuted in the most objective and impartial means possible," Van Houten said.

Jane Doe's lawsuit names seven men from Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity chapter as alleged assailants. She also names the fraternity, Cornell University, and others as defendants.

The lawsuit alleges the men assaulted her in an incident involving alcohol and the drug ketamine. Jane Doe states she was intoxicated during the alleged incident and was incapable of providing consent. She reported the incident to Cornell University Police on 8 November 2024.

The lawsuit also contains an image purported to be from a Snapchat fraternity group chat, in which a participant alerted other members, in vulgar terms, to the potential for a sexual encounter with Jane Doe.

No criminal charges were filed at the time. Van Houten said his office concluded in 2024 that evidence from Jane Doe's statement to authorities did not meet the legal threshold required to bring charges.

He noted that the claims in the civil lawsuit differ significantly from Jane Doe's original sworn statement to police.

"Jane Doe's sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped," Van Houten said. "On the contrary, Jane Doe's statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual."

Van Houten added that Jane Doe's attorneys had never contacted his office to indicate the original statement was inaccurate or to request a reconsideration of the decision not to prosecute. He said he reached out to her legal team to understand the discrepancy.

He later acknowledged "the reality that it can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them."

In a statement obtained by sources, Jane Doe's attorney Thomas Giuffra said: "In the days following the assault, [Jane Doe] was traumatised, numb and unable to function or accept the horror of what had happened. She was in self-preservation mode."

Giuffra said Jane Doe never spoke to anyone other than the officer who took her initial complaint. "I would have expected at the very least that she would have been interviewed several times and evidence collected by law enforcement and a case developed. This is the normal sequence for serious crime investigations," he said.

"The defensive posture I have gleaned from the DA's statements leads me to believe that they recognise that there were failures and they are trying to excuse them," Giuffra added.

Cornell University issued a statement saying it supports the case being brought before a grand jury, while defending its own handling of the matter. Kyle Kimball, vice president for university relations, said the university conducted a thorough Title IX investigation lasting several months.

Cornell said a hearing was held in which a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days, including testimony from all sides. Expulsions and suspensions were issued as a result, though the statement did not specify which individuals faced those consequences.

"Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false," Kimball said.

The Xi chapter of Chi Phi fraternity was banned from campus when details of the alleged incident first emerged in November 2024. Cornell also opened an internal investigation and a civil rights inquiry under Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in schools receiving government funding.

Jane Doe's lawsuit alleges that Cornell failed to protect her and did not adequately punish those involved, claiming the men were "afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays." The suit states she suffered "severe emotional and psychological distress and personal physical injury" as a result of both the incident and the university's handling of it.

Van Houten said his office received calls from members of the public demanding to know why the case was never investigated, as well as calls containing insults and threats, following intense social media scrutiny of the lawsuit.