More on the Cornell 7 Case

At the core of this case is some differences between what the woman said in an interview with police and a 6-page summary of her account which was shared with the DA. Today the NY Times confirms those accounts have some differences. 

At a campus police department on Nov. 14, 2024, a Cornell University sophomore detailed how she found herself naked in a fraternity house nearly a month before, with a “ring of men” around her. She was drunk and had been given ketamine, she said. Her phone was across the room.

“There was really no escape,” she said.

The woman spoke for hours with an officer, telling him how what began as a consensual sexual encounter with a man she liked spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack by several men inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.

“I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped,” she told them. “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

All of that sounds very clear cut. She's saying it was rape or partly rape (she consented initially) and that she was "given" ketamine, apparently against her will. But the summary of the interview prepared by police left out or changed some of those details.

The officer then condensed the interview into a six-page “voluntary statement” written from her perspective, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day.

While the shorter statement explained that she felt some of that night’s events were a crime, it omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped.

In New York, you can still consent to sex if you are drinking and taking drugs so long as you took them willingly. Only if you are forced to take (or drink) them are you considered no longer capable of consent. That means that the issue of whether or not Jane Doe took the drugs willingly or was forced to do so makes a big difference in the case. And the summary statement seems to say that she took the Ketamine willingly, snorting it off the body of one of the men.

That's why Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten recently came out and said that the summary, "described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual." Based on the information he got, he probably made the right decision. 

But that's now what the lawsuit filed this week says.

In the lawsuit, she claims she had not tried ketamine before and was pressured into snorting it. The lawsuit then details a series of sexual assaults and continued drug use involving her friend and six other men.

Pressured. Is that the same as forced? How will that hold up legally? It's not clear.

In any case, I wanted to point out one line in today's story which is quoted above: "The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day." So Jane Doe did review the 6-page draft and did make changes before signing off on it. What the DA saw was not just a version prepared by the police, it was a version she personally approved.

The Times sort of glides over this point pretty quickly but it seems to me that any errors in the summary are clearly her fault at that point. If the summary was lacking critical information that's not the fault of the DA or the cops, not unless they intentionally left out something she asked them to include.

There's also a story about the accounts given by the 7 men, three of whom claim they never had sex with her at all.

They said their interactions with Jane Doe began when one of the men, Matthew Ingalls, asked if she wanted to have a threesome with him and another fraternity member, Jonathan Newell...

The other men involved that night said that Jane Doe and those around her did not seem overly inebriated and that they themselves had not had too much to drink.

“They weren’t slurring their speech,” said Winston Lee, one of the accused men. “They seem perfectly normal.”

Another fraternity brother, Gillio Lopes, who, along with Mr. Newell lived in the room where the sexual encounters took place, said that he had “a pretty solid recollection” of the night because in his view he had not drunk that much — roughly six beverages, he estimated, in the form of three Keystone beers and three vodka-and-Hawaiian Punch mixed drinks.

When asked about his involvement with Jane Doe, Mr. Lopes said that she initiated their sexual contact and did not ask for his consent — a statement flatly at odds with her account of the night.

The Times seems to be discounting the claims of the men involved but doesn't really offer any proof that they are lying.

Mr. Lee also said that Jane Doe initiated sexual activity without asking. He said he snorted a line of ketamine off her body and she tried to initiate sex...

later that night, Mr. Lee said he asked for Jane Doe’s consent before engaging in a threesome with her. He recalled telling Jane Doe that “if you’re uncomfortable with any of this or you won’t want to do this, that’s perfectly fine. We can call it a night.” He said Jane Doe replied: “We’re all consenting adults here.”

At one point, two other men came into the room but Jane Doe said they were "more like voyeurs than anything." So there were seven men, two of whom she agreed to have sex with, two or three of whom she did not have sex with and two who claimed she consented to a threesome but who she claimed raped her. All of them were drunk/drugged to varying degrees at the time.

Unless someone changes their story, I think it's going to be difficult for Jane Doe to prove her case. That doesn't mean she's not telling the truth. The men could be lying about what they did. But obviously it's a lot more complicated than some people are saying. We'll have to wait and see where this goes and whether any other evidence turns up.