Woman told Cornell investigators she ‘felt like bait’ during alleged gang rape

A woman who says she was gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity told the school’s investigators last year that she “felt like bait” as the attackers were “like lions around me,” according to records from the school’s disciplinary investigation. The documents, reviewed Friday by The Associated Press, include excerpts of interviews Cornell’s investigators did with the woman and the men she accused and shed more light on the university’s handling of the case. While heavily redacted, the records offer a fuller but sometimes conflicting timeline of events and a glimpse at how the men responded to the allegations.

Some disputed the woman’s account and said they weren’t involved in any assault. The woman, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe, sued Cornell and seven former students last month, alleging she was given ketamine and repeatedly assaulted at a fraternity house in October 2024. She went to campus police three weeks after the encounter and gave a detailed account of what happened, but the local district attorney decided not to file criminal charges or push for more investigation after reviewing a police summary of her interview.

Only the school’s investigation, under the federal Title IX law, persisted, with a goal of deciding discipline for the students involved. Lawsuit by one of the accused men reveals details on investigation This week, a lawyer for one of the accused men filed documents from the school’s investigation in a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the university’s punishment and remove it from his academic record. They include a 99-page report on a campus hearing panel’s disciplinary findings and a summary of events submitted by the university’s lawyers.

Though only a fraction of the thousands of pages amassed in the investigation, the records show the breadth of the university’s inquiry — including 50 interviews with 32 witnesses and 12 days of hearings. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to lead a renewed criminal investigation, saying she had lost faith in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten. According to the Title IX documents filed in court, which are only a portion of the entire investigation, the woman and several of the men gave investigators similar accounts of drug use and sexual activity that took place at the Chi Phi fraternity house — but d…