Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has reopened the criminal case against seven current and former Cornell fraternity members, and the reason he gives is a document rather than public pressure: the six-page statement the accuser gave Cornell police in 2024 describes her drug use and sexual activity as voluntary, in his account, while the civil suit she filed in September describes a drugging and a gang rape. Almost no one outside the DA’s office and her lawyers has seen that statement, which is the part of this story the viral coverage skips.
Most of what has circulated is the complaint itself, a Snapchat message quoted from it, and a flood of comparisons to the Hockey Canada trial. What the coverage has not done is put the two accounts side by side, because only one of them is public. According to the Ithaca Voice, the DA’s office said the sworn statement it received in November 2024 differs greatly from the allegations in the lawsuit. Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, disputes the prosecutor’s characterization of it.
| When | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Oct. 19-20, 2024 | The alleged assault at the Chi Phi house, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, was 20. |
| About three weeks later | She goes to campus police. The fraternity and seven members are temporarily suspended the same day. |
| November 2024 | Van Houten declines to file charges after reviewing her six-page statement. |
| Mid-September 2026 | She sues Cornell and seven fraternity members in New York County Supreme Court. |
| Late September 2026 | The DA reopens the review and says he will take evidence to a Tompkins County grand jury. |
What the DA Is Actually Saying
Van Houten has been blunt about why he stopped in 2024. In an account relayed by ABC11, he said “she clearly consented in the beginning, and there was never any indication that she changed that to the things that she participated in,” and pointed to New York law on how far intoxication goes toward an inability to consent. He plans to meet with her to build rapport before she testifies, and the grand jury could hear her testimony and weigh the new evidence in the lawsuit, as FingerLakes1 reported. No date or charges have been announced.
The defense has its own account. An attorney for one defendant, Jeremy Saland, says the incident described in the complaint did not happen. Cornell says it ran a thorough Title IX investigation that ended in expulsions and suspensions, and that it supports the grand jury review. The plaintiff’s side says the two-year gap may have cost evidence.
Where We Land
Reopening was the right call, and it should not have taken a lawsuit and a national pile-on to get here. A prosecutor who declined a case on the strength of one statement has now told the public that a second filing changes the picture, which concedes that the first review stopped at one document. A grand jury is the proper place to test the two versions against each other, with witnesses and phone records instead of hashtags.
Until it does, certainty from either side is unearned. These are allegations, not findings, and nobody has been charged. The standard to hold the DA to is simple: if the statement and the complaint really do diverge, say how, in public, as far as the law lets him. Right now one of the most consequential pieces of evidence in the most-searched story in America is one the country is being asked to take on faith.