Jane Doe was determined to remain at Cornell University, even though doing so meant potentially encountering students she had accused of sexually assaulting her on campus.
In October 2024, she reported to campus police that she had endured an alleged sexual assault lasting several hours inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.
Doe had moved hundreds of miles away from her family to pursue the Ivy League education she had worked toward for years, and she was determined not to give it up.
“She really wanted to stay the course because this was her dream,” her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, told Our News Outlet in an exclusive interview about the private battle Doe faced after the alleged assault.
“She didn’t want what these men allegedly did to destroy the future she had envisioned for herself.”
Over time, however, remaining at Cornell became harder to manage.
Giuffra said campus gossip, hostile stares and unsettling messages wore Doe down. Encounters with some of the men she had accused also contributed to her growing fear and sense of vulnerability.
“She began to feel singled out,” Giuffra said. “She was doing everything she could to hold on.”
The claims outlined by Jane Doe in a civil lawsuit filed last month in New York Supreme Court have sparked renewed national debate over Greek life and sexual assault on college campuses.
In the lawsuit, Doe alleges that she was given alcohol, pressured to use drugs and sexually assaulted multiple times over several hours at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024. Several defendants have denied the allegations, and no criminal charges were brought.
According to Giuffra, Doe was raised by parents who were financially comfortable but not wealthy. Like many families, they had spent years saving to provide their daughter with the strongest education possible.
She was a sophomore when, according to the later civil complaint, she was supplied with alcohol and pressured to take ketamine before allegedly being assaulted by multiple Chi Phi fraternity members during the night of October 19, 2024.
In the aftermath, Doe struggled to reconstruct what had occurred as word of the incident circulated among students.
“Bro, everyone knows,” she wrote in a message to one of the men she would later identify in her lawsuit, describing the experience as “RUINING my life temporarily,” according to records from Cornell’s internal inquiry. She asked others to insist that nothing had happened and said she could do little more than “sleep and cry all day.”
As Doe questioned friends and some of the people who had been in the room, her account of the night evolved. During a secretly recorded call on November 7, she characterized the alleged incident as something that “would be classified as gang rape.”
The next day, following encouragement from friends, Doe reported the allegations to Cornell University Police. The university opened an investigation and placed Chi Phi, along with the seven students later named in the lawsuit, on temporary suspension.
Her mother also began making frequent trips from the family’s home in the Southern US to Ithaca, New York, increasingly staying by her daughter’s side.
“She wanted to go home, but she couldn’t go home. Eventually, it became overwhelming,” Giuffra said.
“You want to be somewhere you feel protected, and she no longer felt safe. She couldn’t keep doing it. It was a daily experience of being re-traumatized.”
Doe eventually told her parents what she alleged had happened at Chi Phi. In February 2025, she withdrew from Cornell and stepped away from college life. Court filings say she left struggling with anxiety and depression, as well as persistent sleeplessness.
Her parents were ‘extremely, extremely supportive,’ Giuffra said.
A screenshot of Snapchat messages exchanged between the frat boys and filed with the complaint details conversations around Doe on the night of the alleged attack
The chain included an image of Doe with one of the men, according to Giuffra
One man involved in the Snapchat group had allegedly asked ‘Shop still open?’ shortly after the photograph of Jane Doe was shared
Cornell’s internal investigation into Doe’s allegations stretched on for months. It ultimately resulted in punishments ranging from no-contact orders and educational sanctions to multi-year suspensions and the expulsion of two students. The fraternity was permanently closed and banned from campus.
A separate criminal investigation ended without charges after the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
For nearly two years, Doe lived a largely reclusive existence, according to Giuffra, struggling with the lasting fallout of the alleged assault.
Then, last month, she filed a lawsuit against seven current and former Cornell students and the university, thrusting the allegations into the national spotlight, engulfing Cornell in scandal and igniting a wider reckoning over how sexual assault allegations are investigated on American college campuses.
More than 1,000 students have since marched through Cornell in her name, demanding change and accountability. Messages of support have poured in from around the country, while celebrities and prominent public figures, including singer Olivia Rodrigo and actress Florence Pugh, have spoken out about her case.
For Doe, Giuffra said the extraordinary outpouring has provided her with the sense that people are finally listening.
‘She felt alone, she felt unsupported in the entire process by the police, by the prosecutor, by the university,’ Giuffra said.
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‘The fact that now you have her fellow Cornell students marching for change and marching in support of her, that lets her know that she finally is being supported for what happened to her.
‘It’s long overdue.’
But the sudden attention has been accompanied by a frightening new reality.
Giuffra said people have tried to uncover Doe’s identity and contact her parents, while she has received dozens of hostile messages – some telling her she ‘should die’ or ‘should be killed.’ One threat contained three handgun emojis, he said.
‘It’s been a double-edged sword,’ Giuffra said. ‘It’s difficult to focus on the positive when you’re getting direct messages saying you should die and you should be killed.
‘They’re trying to shut her up, to retraumatize her, to abuse her, call her names, threaten her… It’s really disturbing.’
Footage obtained by ABC News allegedly shows the frat-house bedroom where Jane Doe claims she was assaulted by seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers
The footage shows trash littered around the room where Doe alleges she was assaulted. The clip also shows a metal bedframe without a mattress and a platform bed inside the bedroom
In a frightening escalation, Giuffra said Doe was recently targeted in a swatting incident that sent armed police to her home, with officers drawing their guns on members of her family and a friend.
Other threats have become chillingly specific. Messages obtained by the New York Post named Doe’s relatives, listed their addresses and warned they would be shot, while a caller allegedly threatened someone close to her.
The calls were so frightening Doe called the police, Giuffra told the outlet.
Yet, for Doe, the sheer scale of support has helped outweigh the abuse.
‘If she didn’t have all this outpouring of support from all over the world, from people from all walks of life, people who’ve had similar experiences, it would be far, far worse,’ Giuffra said.
‘I think that has helped to give her strength and the courage to move on to get accountability.’
The allegations are now the subject of a renewed criminal investigation led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was appointed special prosecutor after Governor Kathy Hochul removed the Tompkins County district attorney from the case.
None of the seven men have been criminally charged. Scott Kretzschmar, Scott Norris and Gillio Lopes have publicly denied wrongdoing, while Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee and Diego Sarabia have not publicly responded to Doe’s lawsuit. All seven denied wrongdoing during Cornell’s internal investigation.
Ingalls told Cornell investigators he was too intoxicated to consent and claimed Doe had sexually assaulted him, later emailing the Title IX investigator to accuse the university of failing to treat him as a survivor, according to records reviewed by ABC News.
The original investigation has come under mounting scrutiny amid reports that Cornell Police gathered witness interviews, recorded calls, anonymous tips and other evidence that was not all reviewed by prosecutors before they declined to bring charges in 2024.
District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has defended that decision, maintaining the evidence presented to his office did not support charges and blaming Cornell Police for failing to provide the full picture.
Cornell has pushed back, defending its own handling of the case and maintaining that prosecutors declined an offer to review additional evidence gathered.
Doe desperately tried to hold onto the Ivy League education she had spent years working toward
For Doe, however, neither the renewed investigation nor the widespread support can restore the life she claims she lost.
Giuffra said one of the hardest realities for her was watching some of the men she accused continue with the futures that Doe had once imagined for herself.
‘One of these guys got his Cornell diploma and he’s banned from campus for three years,’ he said. ‘He’s going to be able to walk through the world with his head held high with his Ivy League degree. Jane Doe is not going to have that.’
Today, he said, she is just ‘trying to hold it together.’
Doe remains in therapy and surrounded by loved ones, and Giuffra speaks with her daily as she navigates the extraordinary attention surrounding her case.
‘I’m trying my best to advocate for her because I want her to feel like she’s being heard,’ he said, calling this the ‘most important case’ of his 32-year career.
Whether Doe will eventually return to college remains uncertain.
‘I’d like to think that’s in the future for her because she’s very smart,’ Giuffra said.
For now, her focus is simply on ‘getting through this, feeling safe’ and hoping the case ultimately becomes about something bigger than what happened to her.
‘The hope is that this isn’t just about her,’ Giuffra said. ‘That something comes out of this to effectuate positive change for all women.’
