Prosecutors reopen 2024 Cornell fraternity rape case after victim's civil suit accuses school of leniency

Prosecutors in upstate New York have reopened a criminal investigation into an alleged gang rape at Cornell University, reviving a case that had been closed two years ago and sharpening a wider debate over how elite American colleges handle sexual assault on their campuses.

Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney for Tompkins County, which covers Ithaca and Cornell's home city, said on Monday that he intends to file criminal charges against seven men accused of drugging and assaulting a female student in 2024. The seven suspects are members of the Chi Phi fraternity, a social club for male students.

The decision follows a 101-page civil lawsuit filed this month in New York by the woman, whose identity is being protected. In it, she alleges that she was drugged with ketamine, then assaulted and raped in 2024 by the seven fraternity members. The suit also accuses Cornell of failing to impose sufficiently serious punishment, arguing that the institution protected the men rather than the student who was hurt.

The complaint seeks financial damages from both Cornell and the seven suspects, and states that the woman has suffered "severe emotional and psychological distress" as a result. Among the most striking pieces of evidence it reproduces is a screenshot of a Snapchat group message advertising "free pussy" during the night of the incident — an apparent invitation to other fraternity members to join in.

Van Houten said his office decided in 2024 not to prosecute, because the victim's testimony at the time did not establish a lack of consent. Speaking in a statement, he said it "can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them," and added: "Seeking justice sometimes requires us to reconsider or reopen cases when we are provided with additional evidence."

Cornell, an Ivy League institution, has said it backs the decision to reinvestigate. Kyle Kimball, the university's vice president of university relations, said the school supports prosecutors' move to look again at the case. He also firmly rejected one of the lawsuit's most damaging allegations — that the suspects were given the chance to write essays as a way to mitigate their conduct.

"Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false," Kimball said. According to the source account, Cornell closed the fraternity and temporarily suspended the students involved, several of whom were subsequently expelled.

The newly public details of the alleged assault have fuelled accusations that the university was too lenient, and have pushed the issue of campus sexual assault back to the top of the US political conversation. The case also illustrates how a criminal decision can hinge on the wording of consent — and on whether a survivor's account becomes clearer, or different, as time passes and trauma is processed.

Reaction from outside the legal system has been swift and angry. British actor Florence Pugh said she felt "uneasy and sick and anxious" after hearing about the case, and posted on Instagram: "Colleges/schools/universities repeatedly fail women around the world." She added: "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."

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent Democratic lawmaker, condemned what she described as a "culture of rape" at elite institutions such as Cornell. Speaking on Sunday, she said: "Jane Doe, that survivor, lost her education because you can't stay in school when something like that happens to you." She went on: "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."

The reopened inquiry puts prosecutors in the unusual position of building a case from a case they themselves declined in 2024, and puts Cornell under renewed pressure to explain both the original decision not to prosecute and the nature of the discipline it imposed. Charges have not yet been filed, and the allegations remain contested; if Van Houten follows through, the seven men will face criminal proceedings on the strength of evidence that a prosecutor's office had previously judged insufficient.

The story is reported in the United States from Ithaca, New York, and was written by FRANCE 24 with AFP. It is part of a broader reckoning over the handling of sexual violence on American campuses, in which survivors have increasingly argued that institutional discipline and closed-door settlements protect perpetrators more than they protect students. As the case moves forward, the central questions will be whether the additional allegations outlined in the civil filing are enough to satisfy the standard that prosecutors judged unmet two years ago — and whether the university's sanctions will be seen, in retrospect, as accountability or as protection.