How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking Justice

(Times Exclusive)In October 2024, about a week after a Chi Phi fraternity party at Cornell University, the sophomore who would come to be known as Jane Doe was milling around an online forum about Greek life when she encountered a post that stopped her cold."Are Chi Phi brothers Crips or Bloods because I hear they have been doing hell Gang Banging?" someone had written."They do drugs and gang r*ped a sophomore," another user said. "Report them."Since the evening that began Oct. 19, 2024, Jane Doe had recounted the night's events to her roommates without identifying herself as a rape victim. She had exchanged friendly text messages with men she would later accuse of assault. She had heard uncharitable appraisals of herself from undergraduate gossips.Then she read the words."That's the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn't a whore and that I was assaulted," Jane Doe told investigators, according to documents from a university review of the accusations obtained by The New York Times.Those records, which have not been previously reported, help illuminate a case that has horrified the nation and plunged one of its elite institutions into crisis. They shed light on the crucial three-week period between the fraternity party and Jane Doe's decision to take her story to the campus police, accusing multiple fraternity brothers of sexual assault and alleging that she was coerced into taking ketamine.The bare facts of what happened after she made her accusations are by now well known: The Tompkins County, New York, district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, reviewed her complaint and declined to bring criminal charges, saying there was not sufficient evidence to do so. Jane Doe filed a complaint that prompted at least a dozen hearings by the school's Title IX committee, which is supposed to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.On Sept. 16, Jane Doe also filed a lawsuit against seven men, accusing them of sexual assault. Lawyers for at least three of the accused men have broadly denied criminal wrongdoing; others have not yet made public statements.What had not been known publicly, until now, were the detailed filings collected during the private Title IX proceedings -- hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with Jane Doe, her friends and those she accused.Taken together, the raw materials sketch Jane Doe's journey from an unknown sophomore to the embodiment of another searing national dialogue about sexual assault and consent. (Although Jane Doe is identified in the documents, the Times is withholding her name.)Some women around her, the documents show, were quick to say they viewed the events of the evening of Oct. 19 as sexual assault. But Jane Doe, the interviews and text messages reveal, first appeared to grapple with shame, humiliation and concerns about her reputation before she began to consider herself an assault victim."I don't really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred," one of her roommates had said of the first hours after Jane Doe returned home the morning of Oct. 20, according to the Title IX files, which were compiled as part of the school's formal process for investigating allegations of sexual harassment and assault.On page upon page, the documents make for difficult reading, vacillating between the merry shorthand of college students -- asides about the gym, Snapchat, Greek life -- and the blunt-force details of an alleged gang assault that the victim appeared to be processing in real time.From the beginning, the case has seemed to double as a referendum on so many vexing questions about what it means to be a young woman on a college campus, even a campus as nominally esteemed as Cornell's: Who is believed, and who is coddled? How much good can Title IX do? Has anything changed, really?For Jane Doe, the records suggest, the first task was to make sense of what had happened to her. 'A traumatic way' At 3:05 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, one of Jane Doe's roommates sent her a text."Are you coming home tonight?" she asked.Four minutes later, Jane Doe texted back that she didn't know.The roommate went to sleep, she would tell investigators. When she woke up at 11 a.m., she uploaded a photo of her empty room to Snapchat. "Only I made it back home," she wrote on the post.Around 11:15 a.m., she said, Jane Doe arrived home, still in her "big boots and small dress" from the night before, according to the roommate. She had consumed ketamine and had sex with multiple men, she told her two roommates. One roommate told investigators that Jane Doe did not use the word "rape" or "assault" yet.It seemed like she was "in shock," her other roommate later told investigators, "not really understanding the gravity of what she was saying."The next day, on Oct. 21, Jane Doe went to her "big sister" -- a woman designated as a mentor -- at Cornell's Tri Delta sorority and told her there were rumors circulating that she was a "slut." The big sister, a junior at Cornell, told investigators that Jane Doe added with a laugh that "unfortunately they are true.""I could tell that -- just from personal experiences -- that what she was going through is that she had not yet processed what had happened," the big sister told investigators.That same day, Jane Doe received a text message from Jonathan Newell, one of the men she would go on to accuse of sexual assault."I just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night," Newell wrote. He then said that he and Matthew Ingalls, another of the men she would later accuse of assault, both felt terrible for being too under the influence of drugs and alcohol to "shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand."Jane Doe replied and reassured him."At the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly i really liked being w u and matt," she wrote.A lawyer for Newell did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Ingalls declined to comment.The next day, on Oct. 22, Jane Doe made an appointment at Cornell Health to see a doctor because she had contracted a urinary tract infection and wanted to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. She told the doctor she contracted the UTI "in a traumatic way," according to a transcript of her conversation with investigators."She didn't really follow up on that," Jane Doe said of the doctor. "She just suggested I go to therapy." 'Say it didn't happen' On Oct. 23, Jane Doe texted Ingalls."Bro," she wrote, "everyone knows."She said the episode was "RUINING my life temporarily" and that her reputation had been destroyed. She said all she could do was "sleep and cry all day."According to the documents, Ingalls assured her that it would all blow over soon, noting "how fast nonsense spreads at this school," and said she did not have "anything to be ashamed of.""You're right," Jane Doe wrote. "It'll get better."Jane Doe's sorority big sister received a text that week: "Have you heard the rumor about your little?"In the meantime, Jane Doe had delivered strict instructions to one of her roommates: "If anyone asks about this," she said, according to the roommate's testimony, "say it didn't happen."The roommate was plainly concerned. Initially, she said, Jane Doe was "kind of recounting it as this sort of crazy thing that she had done.""As the days went on," the roommate continued, "I think she kind of came to realize that it was something bad. And that she didn't really enjoy her time there."On Oct. 25, Ingalls texted Jane Doe: "U good?"Jane Doe replied that Newell had "def told people."Days later, she sent Ingalls an image of the forum post accusing Chi Phi of gang rape."???" she wrote."Ridiculous," Ingalls wrote. "I'm gonna report that." Uninvited from the party As Halloween approached, Jane Doe's roommates told investigators, her understanding of what had happened to her appeared to have shifted.Around Oct. 28, Ingalls was on the phone with Jane Doe and, according to one of her roommates who said she overheard the conversation, he apologized to her. But rather than assure him everything was OK, Jane Doe took a different tone."How could you let this happen?" the roommate recalled her saying."I think she wanted it to be consensual," the roommate told investigators, looking back on how Jane Doe had processed the alleged assault. The roommate told investigators that Jane Doe had been sexually assaulted before, which made it particularly hard for her to talk openly about what had happened."I'd have conversations and she would describe a part of what happened and I would tell her that that is what could be classified as rape," the roommate said.At Chi Phi, the fraternity was preparing for a Halloween party, and Jane Doe was eager to attend. Text messages included in the investigation show Ingalls assuring Jane Doe that he and other fraternity members wanted her to be there."chi phi is your house and you are welcome here," he wrote, relaying the views of the fraternity's president, who was not among those accused of sexual assault."thank u i really appreciate that," Jane Doe responded. "<3 i'll bring my cigs tomorrow"But then Jane Doe received a phone call from the fraternity's president, according to the text messages.She was disinvited from the party. It was for her own good, he said.Jane Doe sent a biting text to Ingalls."I knew this was going to happen," she wrote. "The woman will always get the short end of the stick. Yall aren't my friends. Yall are covering your asses."By Nov. 3, Jane Doe appears to have concluded that she was assaulted at the October party. She sent a text to Newell."let's be clear that 90% of what happened that night was not consensual. i was given more key than i can remember," she said, using a shorthand for ketamine, "and i know that i told u i felt uncomfortable and i didn't know anyone in the room."The text continued with her telling him that one of her only memories was doing ketamine off of his penis "in front of everyone like a sex doll/worker."Four days later, on Nov. 7, according to the documents, Jane Doe went to an emergency room in Ithaca and requested a rape kit.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.