Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten is reopening the investigation into seven Cornell fraternity members accused of drugging and gang-raping a student.
Van Houten, the top prosecutor in central New York, said last week that his office now intends to present the case to a grand jury with the survivor’s cooperation. The decision follows a 101-page civil lawsuit filed Sept. 14 by a woman identified only as Jane Doe, who alleges she was coerced into taking drugs and then assaulted for hours by multiple men at the Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca during 2024.
The named defendants in the suit are Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. According to the filing, Newell sent a Snapchat message to a group called “Chi Phi Actives” at 1:42 a.m. That read “free p—y” after Doe had become nearly incapacitated, inviting other fraternity brothers to join the assault.
Van Houten acknowledged that his office had previously declined to bring charges, saying that the allegations in the civil complaint are “dramatically different” than the woman’s initial statement to authorities after the alleged incident. He admitted his office had relied heavily on the Cornell University police investigation and did not independently probe the matter.
“It’s our intention to present the case to the Tompkins County grand jury with Jane Doe’s cooperation,” Van Houten told the outlet.
“We want to reexamine whether there’s additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct.”
Thomas P. Giuffra, an attorney for Jane Doe, disputed Van Houten’s characterization of his client’s statement and revealed that a critical piece of evidence was never followed up on. Giuffra said that the Snapchat group chat was handed to authorities two years ago but was never provided to the district attorney’s office.
“In my experience, speaking with an abuse survivor requires delicacy, understanding and specialized training. An average University Police officer would not have these skills. It would be the role of a specially trained detective or district attorney. However, Ms. Doe was never contacted by anybody with those skills,” Giuffra said.
“My client went to the Cornell University Police because a crime was committed. It was the obligation of the police to investigate the complaints. They were given the group chat inviting the members of the fraternity to rape my client,” he continued.
“This was a critical piece of evidence supporting that a crime had occurred. Despite this there was no follow-up with Ms. Doe either by the Cornell Police or the Tompkins County District Attorney.”
The case has ignited national outrage since the lawsuit became public. At a town hall with Cornell and Ithaca College students on Sunday, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused elite institutions of protecting what she called a “factory of sexual assault.”
“I want to be clear that the culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States and including Cornell University in this instance,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“It has got to stop. This entire country is sick and tired of not just financially corrupt, morally corrupt leadership in every institution,” she told the crowd, sharing her own experiences with inappropriate sexual behavior as an undergraduate at Boston University.
“What I felt like I was in at that point was a factory of sexual assault. It was a sexual assault factory,” the congresswoman said.
“The fact that she had to lose her education, and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward? Never again,” she said of Doe’s case.
Actress Florence Pugh also weighed in via Instagram, writing that she felt “uneasy and sick and anxious” after learning about the allegations.
“Colleges/schools/universities repeatedly fail women around the world. You build men that get taught through time and time again that they can do extreme harm and that they won’t be harmed in return,” Pugh wrote.
“There is no equality until you respect our bodies. There is no equality until you stop damaging our souls… We are the life force of this earth, start f**king protecting us. Be angry for us. Please.”
Cornell has defended its handling of the matter. Vice President for University Relations Kyle Kimball said in a Sept. 21 statement that the school investigated the allegations according to its policies and that the Xi chapter of Chi Phi remains banned from campus.
“We take sexual violence extremely seriously,” Kimball said. “The Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault was launched shortly after this incident and issued a report in March 2026.”
That report found that 35% of undergraduate female students at Cornell reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact in 2025, up from 23% in 2023. The university cited federal privacy laws in declining to comment further on Doe’s specific allegations, saying it would respond “in detail through the legal process.”
The lawsuit claims that after a night of bar-hopping with her sorority sisters, the then-20-year-old student met Ingalls at the Tudor-style Chi Phi mansion. When she declined his offer of a threesome with two fraternity members, he allegedly pressured her to snort ketamine for the first time while also consuming marijuana and high-proof rum. Ingalls and Newell then allegedly began non-consensual sexual acts with her, and as one man left, another entered, the filing states. After Newell’s Snapchat invitation, fraternity members allegedly poured lines of ketamine on her body and snorted them, with one pouring powder onto his erect penis and commanding her to snort it. The assault allegedly continued until 5:45 a.m., after which Doe lost consciousness.
The attack was reported to campus and Ithaca police about a week later, and the fraternity plus the seven named men were placed on temporary suspensions, according to the suit. Cornell later offered the accused students an opportunity to “mitigate their conduct by submitting essays,” the filing alleges.
Scott Kretzschmar’s attorney, Jeremy Saland, fired back at the lawsuit in a statement, calling it “not only intentionally dishonest but morally repugnant.”
“While Scott made an immature comment on Snapchat, he did nothing else,” Saland said. “For the few minutes he was in the room with the plaintiff, Scott did not see her in duress or undress, was involved in no sexual activity nor touched the plaintiff in any way and ingested no ketamine.”
“The DA reported that the plaintiff never said she was drugged without her knowledge, admitted to consuming alcohol and drugs voluntarily, and acknowledged she wasn’t forced to engage in any acts,” he continued. “Equally shocking, and knowingly withheld from these young men, the plaintiff did not assert she was helpless, unconscious, or incapacitated at any time in the fraternity house.”
“The plaintiff can peddle any story she wants, but intentionally victimizing an innocent person for a money grab is reprehensible,” Saland added.
Attorney information for the other six men named in the lawsuit was not available by the time of publication.