Cornell gang-rape accuser was 'misled' about criminal investigation, her lawyer says

(AP) — The woman accusing several men of raping her at a Cornell University fraternity party was “misled” about the status of the criminal investigation in the weeks after she went to police, her lawyer said Wednesday. Even as she took her allegations about a 2024 gang rape at the Chi Phi fraternity house through Cornell’s internal disciplinary process, the university’s police department gave her the impression that a criminal investigation was continuing, lawyer Thomas Giuffra told The Associated Press. In fact, the criminal inquiry ended almost as soon as it began.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, the local prosecutor, made the decision not to go forward with a criminal case within days of the woman giving her first substantial interviews to police. Van Houten has said that he asked Cornell’s police department to convey the decision to the woman, who is referred to in court documents as Jane Doe, but never spoke personally to her or her lawyer. Giuffra said the woman was told that the criminal investigation was ongoing.

She was told it was still — they weren’t going to prosecute, but they were still investigating,” Giuffra said. ”I was involved with this case early on. I thought they were still investigating.

It was news to me that they weren’t doing anything.” Giuffra added that at the time, he assumed investigators just needed more time to speak with witnesses and build a case. “But nothing was being done, and we didn’t know that,” Giuffra said. Messages seeking comment were left for Van Houten and Cornell police.

The district attorney said in a statement last week that he was confident that no further investigation was necessary after prosecutors and criminal investigators from his office reviewed a six-page summary of the woman’s account, written by a police officer. Based on that summary, Van Houten said he believed no crime had been committed, and that the woman’s participation in drug use and sex was “voluntary, conscious and consensual.” That description differs sharply with what the woman told police and university investigators, and with what she alleged in a lawsuit filed against seven Chi Phi fraternity members, Cornell and others last month. Among other things, Giuffra said, the six-page report omitted the woman telling investigators, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” that…