Matthew Ingalls, a Cornell fraternity brother at the center of the “Cornell 7” gang-rape allegations, claimed in a February 2025 email that the accuser had “sodomized” him while he was incapacitated and accused the Ivy League school of ignoring his rights as a sex-assault “survivor.”
Ingalls, who the accuser identified in her civil lawsuit as the brother who invited her to the Chi Phi house and sparked the alleged 2024 assault, fired off the seething message to Cornell’s Title IX office after learning of the investigation against him and six of his fraternity brothers. “You received information that I was sodomized by her while I was incapacitated back in November, and you never once thought to alert me of my rights under these procedures as a survivor of this assault?” he wrote in the email.
“The very fact that I had to bring this to your attention now in February confirms my worst fears: that this process is rolled [sic] with gender discrimination,” Ingalls continued. He also accused the school of “entrapment” in its handling of the case.
The woman, identified only as Jane Doe in court filings, had told campus police about three weeks after the alleged attack that Ingalls plied her with drugs and alcohol, then propositioned her for a three-way that spiraled into multiple fraternity brothers entering the room to join in. Doe maintained she was too intoxicated to consent and called the incident rape.
Ingalls’ self-defense strategy relied heavily on his own level of intoxication that night. A 2024 statement from Doe described him repeatedly falling asleep during the encounter before waking to rejoin the alleged assault. Cornell investigative documents showed Ingalls then tried to leverage his own drug and alcohol use to recast himself as the victim.
Behind the scenes, Chi Phi leadership moved quickly to coordinate narratives once Doe reported the incident to police. An anonymous caller told campus cops the fraternity held a meeting to get everybody’s stories straight, with the agreed-upon framing calling the night a “consensual orgy,”.
“Chi Phi held a meeting essentially to get all of the men on the same page about what happened,” a female student told Cornell investigators. “I know for a fact there are group messages about the situation,” She added the brothers feared the night with Doe “would be bad for [their] image.”
Interviewed brothers downplayed the gathering’s significance. “We didn’t have a meeting about it specifically,” one brother said. “It was our weekly chapter meeting. We got through a bunch of stuff.”
Text messages between Ingalls and fraternity leadership told a different story. “When was the last time you spoke to [Doe]?” the Chi Phi president wrote to Ingalls. “Yesterday … what’s the plan of action,” Ingalls responded. “Should I call [her]? I don’t think she would have reported this.”
Ingalls also allegedly sent messages in a brotherhood-wide group chat inviting others to join the sexual encounter. After another brother wrote there was “free p—y,” Ingalls allegedly told friends to “come whip it out.” Doe claimed she was delirious with drugs by then and powerless to resist as brothers filed into the room.
The local Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges against any of the seven brothers, citing a statement Doe signed admitting she willingly drank and used drugs at the start of the night. The DA concluded she was legally responsible for her subsequent decisions. Cornell’s internal disciplinary process reached a different outcome: Ingalls and one other brother were expelled after being found responsible for sexual assault, while the remaining five faced suspension or lesser sanctions. All seven have denied raping Doe, and none have been criminally charged.
Prosecutors are now revisiting the case after the “free p—y” text messages surfaced in Doe’s civil lawsuit.