In direct and sometimes angry remarks, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Friday questioned how Cornell University’s police department and the local district attorney handled sexual assault allegations made by a former student, who said she had been raped at a fraternity house in 2024. Ms. Hochul said she had been troubled to learn that the student, identified as Jane Doe, had given an interview to the campus police about the episode that included an unequivocal statement that she had been raped. That language was missing in the condensed statement that was sent to the district attorney’s office in Tompkins County, N.
Y., which decided not to file criminal charges. “In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had literally been gang-raped” and not send that allegation to the district attorney, Ms. Hochul said at a news conference in Manhattan. She stood alongside the state attorney general, Letitia James, whom the governor had just appointed to oversee a new investigation into the allegations. The move inserted the state’s top officials into a case that has shocked many Americans, renewed a long-running national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses and led to a reckoning on Cornell’s.
Jane Doe, a 20-year-old sophomore at the time of the encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, said in a lawsuit last month that she had been plied with alcohol and drugs and then raped by several men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. She is suing the fraternity, seven men, the university and her sorority. The seven accused men have denied wrongdoing.
Four acknowledged sexual contact but said it was consensual; the others denied participating in sexual encounters. Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney, initially defended his office’s decision not to pursue criminal charges at the time, saying that while “everybody across the world agrees that what happened was wrong,” the allegations made by the woman at the time did not rise to a crime under state law. In recent days, as a backlash grew, he said that his office would reopen the investigation.
The appointment of Ms. James to oversee it effectively takes the case out of his hands. Mr. Van Houten said in a statement after the news conference that he supported the appointment of Ms. James, and that his office would cooperate fully with hers. “It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the university,” he said. “The focus has been and should continue to be” on the victim, he said. Cornell has said that the students involved received a range of disciplinary actions, including suspensions and expulsions. The university has not publicly commented on the statement that its police sent to the district attorney in 2024.
Asked about Ms. Hochul’s criticism of the campus police, a spokesperson for Cornell said that the school would not comment because of the active investigation. The university had said that it supported Ms. James’s appointment and efforts to examine Cornell’s handling of the case. In a statement on its website, Cornell said it “will continue to examine and strengthen our policies to ensure we are doing all we can to foster a culture where sexual misconduct is never tolerated, those who come forward are supported, and individuals found responsible through our processes are held accountable.” A 2024 internal university inquiry into the allegations obtained by The New York Times this week showed how Jane Doe struggled for weeks with what had happened to her.
She reported the incident to the Cornell University Police Department several weeks after it occurred. On Nov. 14, she sat with an investigator for hours. She told him how what had begun as a consensual sexual encounter with a man she liked had spiraled into what she described as a prolonged, drug-fueled attack, according to the documents obtained by The Times. “I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped,” she told them at one point. “I can say with 100 percent confid...
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