The Cornell 7: A Breakdown of the Horrific Case That Has Rocked the Nation
BY: CAMILA TABORA / SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
Please be advised that this article contains reports of sexual assault and rape.
The court case filed on Sept. 16 surrounding the past 2024 gang rape of a young woman on the Cornell University campus has raised national outrage.
The woman, going by the alias “Jane Doe”, attended a Chi Phi fraternity house party, and under heavy intoxication from a combination of alcohol and hard drugs, was taken advantage of by what is being referred to as “the Cornell 7.” These men are reported to be Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Winston Lee, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar, respectively.
The night of the rape, Oct. 19, 2024, the plaintiff was reported as arriving at the house intoxicated, both from drinking in her sorority house and going to local bars, where, despite her under-21 status, she was served “at least one drink inside.”
Once arriving at the fraternity house to visit defendant Ingalls, according to the Cornell Police statement given, Jane Doe flirtatiously danced with this man and agreed to relations with him and one other fraternity member, defendant Newell.
Regardless, she also rated her intoxication level as a “five out of 10” and in the suit mentioned that she considers herself to have been “incapable of consenting” at this time.
In this interaction, she claims to have been pressured to ingest ketamine, a drug known for causing dissociative and hallucinatory side effects, marijuana, and what is believed to be a high-proof rum. She was also left with significant bruising.
After this, Ingalls became sick and rested. Newell made out with Doe as she “swatted his hand away.” Defendant Lopes knocked on the door and was let in because “it was his room,” leading to more abuse.
After an assault by the three, Ingalls woke up and requested to join, to which Doe vehemently said, “Hell no.” Lopes left the room. Around 1:42 a.m., Newell would post in the fraternity’s Snapchat group chat with 57 members that there was “free p*ssy” in the room and to show up. Ingalls added the men could just “walk in and whip it out.”
All the other “Cornell 7” members would arrive, and the plaintiff would attempt to hide her body under the covers. Defendant Sarabia, amongst these men, grabbed her face, degraded her and forced a kiss to which she backed away. She would be pressured into ingesting even more ketamine.
Afterwards, it is alleged that defendants Ingalls, Newell, Lee, Lopes, Sarabia, Norris and Kretzschmar sniffed ketamine lines off of her back. Ingalls and Lee took her into a separate room to continue the assault, giving her more ketamine, at which point she would rate her intoxication an “8 out of 10”, the most intoxicated she had ever been in her entire life. Eventually Doe, according to the lawsuit, “lost consciousness.”
The story spread across campus, to the shame of Jane Doe. In a text exchange on October 23 with Ingalls, she wrote “i[sic] will also say this is f*cking RUINING my life temporarily/my reputation is destroyed, and i’m[sic] utterly ashamed/…all I do is sleep and cry all day.”
Over the course of a couple of weeks, after discussions with her sorority sisters, she came to terms with her rape, getting treatment for a UTI she told a Cornell health care professional was contracted “in a traumatic way.”
In a recently released phone call with Ingalls, they discussed the event. She mentioned it having “so much damage on my body and brain” and told him, “What y’all did would be classified as gang rape… you already knew when I came in… I was 10 shots deep.”
To this, Ingalls claimed that she had told him she was sober. Further in the call, when questioning him on the additional men that came after the initial threesome, he said, “I have racked my brain for this mystery. You know it’s possible that both of us, like, remember this and it’s not true.”
She responded, “No, because I remember looking up and being like, ‘That is too many people.’”
Her text exchanges also showed increasing awareness of the situation. In a text exchange in Nov., she wrote, “90% of what happened that night was not consensual.” On November 8, she wrote, “i[sic] think i’m[sic] done talking to you. i[sic] know you lied.”
Her lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, remarked that these were “classic symptoms of delayed recognition…a textbook response to sexual assault.” After collecting evidence, she came forward to Cornell University police on November 8, 2024.
In a transcript of her interview with them, she stated, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” and reiterated that she was coerced into performing these sexual acts. She also noted feeling incapacitated and being “horrified” when more men entered the room.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, based on her signed statement, did not press charges. She claimed in a press release that “Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
Cornell did not provide the transcript with the explicit rape accusation to the DA. They had their own Title IX investigation, leading to the closing of the Chi Phi chapter. They concluded that Doe was not raped by every fraternity member she accused.
Newell and Ingalls were expelled, both being found of sexual assault. Lee was suspended for two years and Lopes for 3 semesters, with both facing disciplinary probation, being ordered not to contact Doe and “to study sexual harassment and to write reflection papers.”
Sarabia was barred from campus for three years. Norris and Kretzschmar were only ordered not to contact Doe, “to study sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention, and to write ‘reflection papers.’” None of the men were legally charged.
Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff also was not aware of the specifics of the event, or even that Jane Doe had dropped out or that students were expelled or suspended.
Jane Doe is suing the seven men on charges of “sexual assault, sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress,” as well as Cornell for “negligence and breach of contract.”
Other Chi Phi fraternity members that night are being sued for “negligent supervision,” and Moonies—the bar in which the plaintiff attended earlier in the night of the rape—is being faced with violations of New York’s Dram Shop Act for supplying her alcohol while she was knowingly under the legal age.
With the national backlash after coverage by the Cornell Sun and increasing numbers of released evidence, DA Houten reopened the case. Governor Kathy Hochul, calling the case “horrifying,” appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor after she “lost faith” in Houten’s handling of the case.
Cornell Faculty Senators also held an anonymous vote that came to the resolution of “no confidence in the ability of the central administration to effectively address the ongoing crisis of sexual assault at Cornell University.”
This case brought to light the university’s consistent record of lax handling of similar cases. A CNN review of school records found that nearly half of students accused of sexual assault were let off with “extra study programs and written reprimands.” In many cases, the accuser was found guilty on the charge of sexual assault.
An unnamed alumna claimed that her attacker received zero punishment, unlike the need to apologize or write an essay. Only two students out of 51 separate complaints between mid-2020 and mid-2024 were ever expelled.
Cornell University has come out in support of Hochul’s actions and has banned all frat parties for the rest of the university year. The school’s president has also made several statements promising to improve the university’s handling of sexual assault cases.
All seven offending defendants and their judicial teams have either claimed the events were “consensual or [that] they weren’t involved.” Attorneys for Diego Sarabia also attempted to institute a gag order to restrict members of the case from speaking about it outside of court. Judge Phaedra Perry-Bond has since denied this request.
The criminal investigation is currently ongoing. Members of the internet have also compiled a website detailing each of the seven members and their involvement in the assault at thecornell7.org.
For anyone dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic sexual assault, you can call the free, confidential RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at (800) 656-4673 or text “HOPE” to 64673. You can find even more resources at the RAINN website at rainn.org and justice.gov at their page for the Office on Violence Against Women.
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