NY governor appoints special prosecutor to oversee investigation of alleged gang rape at Cornell

ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) — New York’s governor appointed a special prosecutor Thursday to oversee an investigation into a woman’s allegations that she was raped at a Cornell University fraternity house, saying she had lost faith in the local district attorney’s ability to handle the case.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said she had signed an executive order appointing the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James as the special prosecutor.

“Newly released information continues to raise serious questions about the investigation conducted by the Cornell Police Department and the decision by the Tompkins County District Attorney not to prosecute an alleged sexual assault on Cornell University’s campus in October 2024,” Hochul said. “This has, in turn, undercut my faith, and the public’s faith, in the District Attorney’s ability to effectively investigate and prosecute the case at this time.

Hochul said the attorney general would oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury.

“The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued. This action will ensure that the matter is fully and thoroughly investigated without conflict or bias, and handled independently with the rigor that this matter demands.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) — A former Cornell University student who alleges she was gang raped at a fraternity in 2024 received a text-message apology from one of the brothers soon afterward. After initially saying she didn't see what happened as illegal, she told him within days that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” according to a newspaper report citing records from the university's private investigation.

The documents, as described by The New York Times , trace the woman's shift from seeing the alleged encounter as a dismaying embarrassment to seeing it as a sexual assault — one she then reported to campus police, discussed with the university's internal investigators and is pursuing in a lawsuit filed in September. The case has roiled the Ivy League campus and has raised questions about why no criminal case was brought.

According to the Times’ report of records and statements gathered during the inquiry:

The day after the Oct. 19, 2024, party at the Chi Phi fraternity house, the woman got back to her room and told her roommates she'd taken ketamine — a powerful anesthetic sometimes used as a party drug — and had sex with multiple men. The roommates said that at that point, the woman didn't describe the events as rape or assault, but one roommate noted: “I don’t really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred,” the newspaper reported.

The following day, the woman got a text message from one of the men she would later accuse in her sexual assault lawsuit. He texted that he “just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night” and regretted that he and a fellow fraternity brother — also now a defendant in the woman's lawsuit — had been too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

The woman texted back that “at the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal” and that she had liked being with the two men.

But by Oct. 23, 2024, she was growing distraught that word of the episode had spread around campus. Soon, she saw a post in an online forum about campus Greek life that asserted that Chi Phi brothers had gang raped a sophomore and should be reported.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” she later told investigators.

In the days after that post, her tone became more aggrieved — “how could you let this happen?” — as she kept communicating with the first Chi Phi brother who'd texted her after the party. Still, she planned to attend the fraternity's Halloween Party until she was disinvited.

On Nov. 3, 2024, she texted the man: “let’s be clear that 90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” saying she'd been given a lot of ketamine. While her memories were patchy, they included a humiliating, drug-laced sexual act, she wrote.

“I know that i told u i felt uncomfortable and i didn’t know anyone in the room,” she added.

She went to Cornell campus police five days later and spoke to them again on Nov. 14 and 15, 2024, telling them: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” according to a report by CBS New York, which said it obtained a transcript of her police interview.

Cornell's student government planned a public forum Thursday on sexual violence to allow students to demand “institutional accountability" and talk about their own experiences on campus.

Cornell has said it suspended the Chi Phi fraternity indefinitely and disciplined or expelled some students, but the university has declined to provide specifics, citing student privacy rules.

The local district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, declined at the time to bring any criminal charges, but this week said he would reopen the investigation based on new information in the woman’s lawsuit, which identifies her only by the pseudonym Jane Doe.

He has maintained the woman’s first account to police didn’t include allegations that she was drugged against her will, incapacitated beyond the ability to consent, or forced into sex. After CBS News this week revealed details from the police interview transcript, he told the network he'd never seen her detailed account and had relied instead on a statement written by a campus police officer and signed by the accuser.

She's suing seven men who she said participated in the assault, as well as the university, the fraternity, and others.

Lawyers for two of the men she is suing have denied they participated in a sexual assault. One said his client hadn't touched the woman or engaged in any drug use. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach the other men or their representatives have been unsuccessful.

Under pressure from the public and politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul , the private university agreed Wednesday to bring in outside lawyers to independently investigate how it handled the woman’s allegations.