The men accused in the disturbing Cornell University case have offered starkly different accounts of what happened at the fraternity party.
After a former student was allegedly violated, the seven accused members of the Chi Phi fraternity told a completely different story to the investigators of the university’s Title IX office, making claims about the alleged victim’s behavior and statements during the encounter.
Highlights
- The seven men accused in the Cornell case denied wrongdoing during interviews conducted in 2024.
- These interviews, conducted by the university’s Title IX office, were recently published in the media after about two years.
- Known as the “Cornell 7,” the men’s account of the night was starkly different from the alleged victim, identified only as Jane Doe.
- One even claimed that he was the victim after Doe committed an intimate act without asking him.
The accused “Cornell 7” have offered starkly different accounts of what happened at the fraternity party
Trigger Warning: This article contains sensitive content that may be distressing for some readers.
Horrific details about what unfolded inside Chi Phi’s frat house the night of October 19, 2024, were provided in the explosive 101-page lawsuit filed last month by the alleged victim, identified as Jane Doe.
Doe accused the frat’s seven members of s**ually ass**lting her together while she was intoxicated and unable to consent. She also accused them of plying her with illicit substances.
All the men denied any wrongdoing while being questioned by university officials about their actions. Their interviews, which were not previously disclosed to the public, were obtained by the New York Times as part of hundreds of pages of confidential investigative files obtained by the outlet.
These statements were given by the accused “Cornell 7” over the winter of 2024.
The “Cornell 7” agreed that the night began with an invitation for a threes**e, according to the records
While four of the men acknowledged having some form of intimate contact with Doe, they also asserted that it was carried out with the woman’s consent.
Meanwhile, others denied having any kind of s**ual involvement with her.
The report claimed that the men’s accounts contraindicated each other at some points, and one even claimed that he was a “victim” because Doe had performed oral s** on him while he was too intoxicated to consent.
During these interviews conducted in the university premises, none of the men were explicitly asked whether they rap*d Doe. Instead, they were asked questions like where they were on the night in question, what they said, and why they were in the same bedroom on October 19.
As per the men’s accounts, the s**ual encounters began after frat member Matthew Ingalls asked Jane Doe if she wanted to have a threes**e with him and fellow member Jonathan Newell.
Newell claimed during his interview that he agreed to participate in the threes**e, assuming that Ingalls had asked for permission on his behalf. He also admitted that both he and Ingalls threw up that night from having a lot of alco**l and consuming marij***a and ketam***.
According to Doe’s lawsuit, Newell had blasted out a text on Snapchat to the rest of the frat members, saying: “free p**sy” in the bedroom.
During the interviews, the other accused men said Doe and the people around her didn’t seem too intoxicated or hadn’t drank too much.
Winston Lee, who was part of the group, said the others “weren’t slurring their speech” and seemed “perfectly normal.”
One frat brother, Gillio Lopes, said he and Newell were living in the room where the alleged encounters took place.
He claimed Doe was the one who initiated s**ual contact with him and proceeded without his consent.
Things took a turn as a Snapchat message brought more fraternity members into the room
Eventually at around 2 a.m., Lopes apparently left because he felt “uncomfortable” and went to a McDonald’s with three friends. He claimed he hadn't told the friends what happened because he was "embarrassed."
Lopes also insisted that he had a “pretty solid recollection” of what transpired that night, claiming he hadn’t had much to drink. His estimate of around six drinks over the course of the night included three Keystone beers and three vodka-based drinks.
When it was Lee’s turn to share his account, he also claimed it was Doe who initiated some form of s**ual act with him.
After snorting a line of an illicit substance off her body, Lee claimed Doe tried to have s** with him. But “I kind of took a step back because I didn’t want to engage in anything like s**,” Mr. Lee said. “I thought it wasn’t the time for that.”
However, at a later point during the night, Lee admitted to asking Doe for consent before engaging in a threes**e with her, saying: “if you’re uncomfortable with any of this or you won’t want to do this, that’s perfectly fine. We can call it a night.”
“We’re all consenting adults here,” Lee quoted Doe saying in response.
Another frat member, Scott Kretzschmar said he was “befuddled” upon reading Newell’s Snapchat message and entered the room with his friend Scott Norris to see what was going on. By the time they arrived, Kretzschmar claimed Doe didn’t appear too drunk but still asked her “if she was all right just because the nature of the text, and there was one female in the room with a couple dudes.”
“We’re all consenting adults here,” one of the accused men recalled the alleged victim saying
“We were just checking out to see if everything was OK, and it was,” he said.
Kretzschmar later added that it Doe wasn’t okay, he would “like to think that [he] would have helped out and did something about it.”
Norris claimed he was initially “somewhat concerned” after the Snapchat message but assumed it was “crude humor.” He denied using illicit substances or engaging in any kind of s**ual encounter with Doe. He claimed the then-Sophomore student was “conversational” with people at the time. This “alleviated whatever concerns I had from the text before,” Mr. Norris said. He also claimed he wasn’t in the room for more than five minutes, noting that all the men around her were either completely or partially clothed at the time.
As per her own account, Doe claimed that Kretzschmar and Norris were “more like voyeurs” to the entire situation.
The seventh frat member, Diego Sarabia, said he entered the room after 2:30 a.m. and was shocked to witness a scene he had never seen in the frat house before. He did not disclose whether the people in the room where dressed or not.
“I was immensely concerned since I’ve never seen anything like this in my four years at the house,” he said during the interview. The people in the room allegedly told him to come in, and that’s when his concerns alleviated, he claimed.
“I remember the girl in specific saying something along the lines of, ‘This was normal in the medieval times,’” he said.
In Doe’s account, she claimed Sarabia had insulted her after entering the room. She also accused him of grabbing her and kissing her.
Back in 2024, the university’s Title IX investigators had also interviewed Doe and about 20 other people, including her friends and other witnesses.
Doe was also interviewed by the university’s Title IX investigators in 2024
Doe said in her own interview that she was plied with drinks and large amounts of illicit substances while the men, whom she barely knew or had never even met before, engaged in s**ual acts with her without consent. “I was super drunk,” she said, saying she couldn’t reach her phone as the incident unfolded. The university’s Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus following the incident. However, none of the “Cornell 7” faced criminal charges.
After Doe filed a civil lawsuit last month, prosecutors in central New York said they were reopening the investigation
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said the men were not criminally charged in 2024 because at the time, Doe hadn’t told Cornell police the same key allegations that were now mentioned in her lawsuit. He said the allegations are “dramatically different” from her statement to cops in 2024.
“We want to reexamine whether there's additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct,” he said in a statement to ABC News.
“If we’re not taking her at her word, no reason to take them at theirs,” one commented online
