Text Messages Show Jane Doe Chatting With Roommate During Alleged Rape

A woman who alleges that members of a Cornell University fraternity sexually assaulted her at a Hawaiian-themed party in 2019 was exchanging text messages with her roommate during the incident, according to newly surfaced messages.

Identified only as Jane Doe in court records, the woman claims she was pressured to take drugs and assaulted by seven members of the now-defunct Chi Phi fraternity on October 19, 2024.

In a civil lawsuit filed last month, she alleged that the ordeal continued for roughly seven hours, beginning at about 11pm and lasting until approximately 5.45am.

Text messages obtained by TMZ show that Doe replied to her Delta Delta Delta sorority roommate at 3.05am. That was between 30 minutes and an hour after she said several men snorted ketamine from her body while she was too intoxicated to understand what was taking place.

The roommate asked: “You coming home tn [tonight]?”

Doe responded: “idk,” meaning “I don’t know.”

According to TMZ, one of the men named in Doe’s lawsuit now contends that the exchange indicates she could read, understand and answer messages—an argument he says conflicts with her account that she was heavily impaired by alcohol and drugs.

When Doe had still not returned by about 11.15am on October 20, her roommate posted a photo of their room on social media, writing: “It was a good night when only one out of three of us made it back.”

In a statement provided to Cornell police, Doe said she arrived at the fraternity house feeling “about a five out of 10” intoxicated. She had reportedly taken several shots with sorority sisters before ordering a mixed drink at a downtown Ithaca, New York, bar, which has since denied wrongdoing.

Doe said she initially had a threesome with defendants Matthew Ingalls and Jonathan Newell. She alleged that the situation became increasingly chaotic as additional fraternity members entered the room.

At 1.42am, Newell allegedly wrote in a fraternity Snapchat group that there was “free p***y” upstairs.

Doe later recalled two more men coming into the room, grabbing and kissing her. She said one of them then took part in another sexual encounter involving her and a second man.

In her written account to police, obtained by NBC News, Doe said she felt “super isolated” and believed the men treated her as though she “didn’t matter as a person.”

“I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out and so my thought was, ‘If I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out,’” Doe wrote.

She added: “My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.”

Around 2.30am, other fraternity members began asking in the group chat what was happening in the bedroom. Ingalls allegedly responded: “Boys, come whip it out.”

Back in the bedroom, Doe alleged that men began snorting drugs from her body as she became “extremely tired” and tried to shield her face with her hands.

Later, she said, one man who lived in the bedroom with another man entered and said ‘something like “OK we’re shutting down whatever the f**k this is”‘ after which ‘the group of men all began to scatter.’

Still, she said, two of the men ushered Doe upstairs to what she said she thought was the fraternity president’s office, where the three took ketamine.

Doe said she then felt ‘extremely high’ as the two men ‘were asking me to have sex so many times that I finally gave in.’ 

‘To me, that felt like coercion,’ she told police. ‘Also, I felt like due to my intoxication, they should have known how intoxicated I was based on how I was slurring my words.’

The sexual encounter was said to have lasted until roughly 5.45am, when Doe went to sleep in one of the rooms at the fraternity house.

When Doe then returned to her sorority house, her sisters asked what had happened to her at the party – to which Doe said she simply replied ‘ketamine.’

Later that day, Doe said in her statement, she learned that what had happened to her the night before had become common knowledge after members of Chi Phi bragged about having an ‘eightsome’ with her.

‘It was now obvious that everyone knew it was me that this had happened to,’ Doe recounted in her written statement.

In the aftermath, she said she went to Cornell Health to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

At that appointment, she told her doctor she contracted a UTI in a ‘traumatic fashion.’

Yet Doe apparently downplayed the interaction in text messages to Newell and Ingalls in the days that followed.

‘At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal, and honestly i really liked being w u and matt,’ she wrote in one message to Newell.

‘I don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf,’ she wrote. 

In a separate message to Ingalls, she suggested that people were speaking out about the incident because they were jealous.

‘But also like everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex and s**t is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common,’ she wrote, before telling Ingalls: ‘I luv u king.’

Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, however, told Our News Outlet that the messages do not suggest that the sexual intercourse was consensual.  

He instead argued that Jane Doe was showing ‘classic symptoms of delayed recognition’ about the gravity of the incident, meaning it took some time for her to realize that she had been the victim of an alleged crime. 

‘This is a well-known phenomenon which is widely reported in medical and psychological literature,’ the attorney said. ‘Most rape survivors do not immediately identify what happened to them as rape.’

Cornell officials wound up launching a monthslong probe into Jane Doe’s allegations. At least 12 formal hearings were held from January to May 2025 and saw faculty and staff review the evidence. 

In the end, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten decided not to file charges against any of the seven men, all of whom have denied any wrongdoing.

Instead, Ingalls and his frat brother Jonathan Newell were both expelled from campus, Jane Doe’s legal filing stated. 

Two others were suspended and placed on disciplinary probation, while a third who had graduated from the school by the time punishments were handed out was barred from campus.

The final two men were ordered to take sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention courses. They were also told to write ‘reflection papers,’ according to the lawsuit. 

Both of them said they were only in the room with Jane Doe for five minutes, but the alleged victim claimed in her lawsuit that they snorted ketamine off her body.

Our News Outlet has reached out to Doe’s attorney for comment.