The case has grown more and more in recent days. That of the “Jane Doe” case, the nickname given to this unidentified woman who, on September 18, 2026, filed a civil complaint, claiming to have been drugged and raped by seven men when she was studying at Cornell in 2024, a prestigious American private university in New York state. According to her, the accused are members of the “Chi Phi” fraternity, an ancestral student organization on campus, 100% male.
While the case had not led to any legal proceedings after an initial internal report at the university, the new complaint filed, made public and providing new evidence, allowed the investigation to be reopened. For several days, on social networks, certain personalities have denounced a scandal and supported the victim.
The complaint, containing 101 pages, was made public. The document retraces step by step the evening experienced by "Jane Doe" in October 2024. Then aged 20, the student went to a "fraternity house", a house made available by the university to student organizations. That evening, she joined a friend who was attending a party with members of the "Chi Phi", a men's group, one of the oldest on the Cornell campus. The complaint alleges that “Jane Doe,” once she arrived there, was pressured to take ketamine. The young woman is also "drenched" with alcohol, before being sexually assaulted, initially, by two men.
Later that evening, other students from the same group were invited, via a Snapchat group, to join them in sexually abusing the victim. Explicit messages are sent, as shown by the CBS media: “Is the store still open?”, writes for example a member of the fraternity at 1:42 a.m. Another answers “yes”. The complainant finally explains that she was raped by a total of seven men for several hours.
At the heart of the controversy, widely relayed and commented on online, also exposing the photos of the seven men accused in this gang rape: the absence of legal proceedings after the first report by the victim to the police. In a press release, Matthew Van Houten, Tompkins County prosecutor, justified himself for not having initially prosecuted the perpetrators. According to him, the victim's testimony, collected at the time as part of an internal university investigation, did not establish a lack of consent. But since this new complaint, and "aware that the process of healing from trauma is personal and different for each individual", the prosecutor has reopened the investigation. He is considering criminal charges against the seven men.
Meanwhile, local police in the city of Ithaca posted a message on their Facebook page Monday, expressing dismay to learn of the case only two years later.
Now that the case has been made public, a number of personalities have spoken out on social networks. American actress Florence Pugh, followed by more than 10 million subscribers on Instagram, notably published a long message of indignation on her account. "Institutions of higher education, whether colleges, schools or universities, routinely fail women around the world. They produce men who are repeatedly told they can cause extreme harm without risking retaliation," she says.
Other personalities go even further. Toby Morton, known as one of the writers of the animated series South Park, even created a website called "TheCornell7.org". This page "will trace the story of this woman who was raped by seven members of the Cornell Chi Phi fraternity in October 2014, the complaint she filed and the reaction of institutions to her case", we can read on one of its publications. The author promises to provide his site with documents useful to the investigation. The names of the seven accused are displayed there.
The American political class is also beginning to react. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, rising figure of the Democrats, denounced on Sunday during a meeting a “culture of rape” in elite establishments. The plaintiff, “this survivor, is finished with her studies, because you can’t stay at university when something like this happens to you,” she said, accusing the institution of having “protected” them.
Kyle Kimball, Cornell spokesperson, assures that the university supports the decision to reopen the investigations. He also points out that the “Chi Phi” fraternity, to which the alleged perpetrators belonged, was dissolved in 2024 and that a series of disciplinary sanctions were taken against them, going “up to exclusion and suspension” from Cornell. In a press release published Monday, management explains that this decision follows an internal investigation carried out over several months, during which the complainant and those involved provided their testimonies.
