Former members of Cornell University’s now-defunct Chi Phi fraternity allegedly met to discuss concealing a reported group sexual assault in 2024.
The former fraternity members have been accused of giving a female student alcohol and drugs at a party in October 2024 before allegedly raping her.
According to records obtained by ABC News, Cornell’s police department received an anonymous report alleging that Chi Phi leaders urged potential witnesses to remain silent. The caller said members were warned that “the reputation of all involved and the frat would be ruined” if the allegations circulated across campus.
“The whole fraternity had meetings to try to cover this up and to be part of the conspiracy of silence,” Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, told CNN on Tuesday night.
“That’s really frightening that this happened. There were 57 people who got that group chat and not one of them — other than the person who leaked it to her — did anything,” he said.
“Nobody walked out of those meetings and said, ‘Hey, this is wrong. We’re going to the police, we’re throwing these guys under the bus and holding them accountable,’” Giuffra alleged.
“All they were interested in was protecting their fraternity brothers and keeping it as business as usual — that’s what they were interested in, not justice, not this woman,” he said.
Thomas Giuffra, the attorney for a woman who has accused former members of Cornell University’s now-defunct Chi Phi chapter of gang sexual assault, alleged that the fraternity attempted to conceal what happened.
Cornell police questioned at least two fraternity members about the alleged assault and communications within the fraternity house. Students are pictured walking past Cornell Police headquarters last week.
Witness claims Chi Phi held meeting after alleged assault
During interviews about a possible cover-up, a female student told investigators that Chi Phi members held a meeting to coordinate their accounts of the alleged incident.
“I know for a fact there are GroupMe messages about the situation,” she said, according to records obtained by ABC News.
She also told campus police that fraternity members referred to the encounter as a “consensual orgy” while worrying that it “would be bad for [their] image.”
Cornell police separately interviewed at least two fraternity members about the alleged assault and the discussions that took place inside the fraternity house.
One member reportedly said the matter was mentioned informally during a regular weekly meeting, when fraternity leaders were discussing their “brother of the week and idiots of the week.”
“We didn’t have a meeting about it specifically,” he told investigators. “It was our weekly chapter meeting. We got through a bunch of stuff.”
Text messages reviewed by ABC News also appeared to show fraternity members attempting to manage the fallout after Cornell suspended the chapter from campus.
“When was the last time you spoke to [Jane Doe]?” the fraternity president asked Matthew Ingalls, who had invited the accuser to the house on October 19, 2024.
“Yesterday… what’s the plan of action?” the president wrote in a subsequent message, according to the records.
“Should I call [her]? I don’t think she would have reported this.”
Audio reveals conflicting accounts of alleged Cornell assault
The exchange came days after he reportedly said the alleged victim told him during a phone call that she was sober.
Audio from the phone call obtained by police showed differing recollections of the alleged attack, as Jane Doe told Ingalls that he ‘already knew I was 10 shots deep’ when he and six others allegedly sexually assaulted her.
‘If I wanted to take this somewhere, what y’all did would be classified as gang [sexual assault],’ she told him in one message.
At another point in the discussion, Jane Doe told Ingalls she did not remember who all of the men were during the encounter, and said she recalled four men in a bed at one point with more stood around them.
Ingalls responded: ‘I have racked my brain for this mystery. You know, it’s possible that both of us, like, remember this and it’s not true.’
Jane Doe argued back to this, saying: ‘No, because I remember looking up and being like, ‘That is too many people.’
The audio showed that while Ingalls appeared to try and calm Jane Doe’s feelings about the incident, he did not mention that he texted his fraternity group chat during the alleged assault, according to Jane Doe’s lawsuit.
He allegedly posted a photo of Jane Doe to the fraternity group chat, and said, ‘Boys come whip it out,’ the lawsuit alleges.
Matthew Ingalls, who had invited Jane Doe to the party on October 19, 2024, had claimed he was the one who was sexually assaulted.
Jane Doe claims seven men participated in alleged assault
Jane Doe now claims in a civil lawsuit that seven men eventually participated and that Doe became ‘completely incapacitated.’ She says the ordeal continued until around 5.45am, when she lost consciousness.
She then reported the allegations to Cornell University Police on November 8 after friends encouraged her to come forward, according to the lawsuit.
Ingalls, however, later claimed he was the one who was sexually assaulted, arguing that he was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual intercourse.
In an email to Cornell’s Title IX investigator in February 2025, Ingalls even accused the school of ‘entrapment’ and suggested he would file his own complaint against Jane Doe.
‘After all, you received information that I was sodomized by her while I was incapacitated back in November and you never once thought to alert me of my rights under these procedures as a survivor of this assault?’ he wrote in the email.
‘The very fact that I had to bring this to your attention now in February confirms my worst fears: that this process is rolled [sic] with gender discrimination.’
Cornell officials announced on Tuesday they hired former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to review the school’s handling of the case and its broader sexual assault policies.
Cornell expelled two students after sexual assault investigation
Ingalls was later expelled from the school along with Jonathan Newell, who engaged in a threesome with Jane Doe and Ingalls and allegedly struck the victim.
Suspensions and disciplinary probation orders were also handed down to Winston Lee and Gillio Lopes, according to records obtained by The New York Times.
Both men were also ordered not to contact the alleged victim, and were required to study sexual harassment and write reflection papers.
Meanwhile, Diego Sarabia was barred from campus for three years. He had already graduated from the school by the time of the disciplinary panel’s ruling in March 2025.
The other two men, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered not to contact Jane Doe, to study sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention and to write ‘reflection papers.’
They were not part of the alleged attack, but were accused of entering the room after Newell allegedly posted in a fraternity Snapchat group that there was ‘free [expletive]’ upstairs.
But none of the men involved in the alleged assault were ever charged with any wrongdoing, as Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten concluded there was a lack of evidence based on Jane Doe’s statement to police at the time.
His office has since reopened the case, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor.
Meanwhile, officials at Cornell University announced Tuesday they have hired former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to review the school’s handling of the case and its broader sexual assault policies.
The probe will cover Cornell’s ‘policies, practices and resources across the full range of prevention and response,’ university officials said.
That includes examining how reports are received and investigated, how hearings and disciplinary decisions are handled, as well as the role and response of campus police and its coordination with other law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and even oversight of fraternities and sororities on campus.
