Cornell campus police left rape claim out of case file, report says
University campus police omitted a student’s explicit claim that she had been raped when they sent a summary of the case to prosecutors, according
Cornell University campus police omitted a student’s explicit claim that she had been raped when they sent a summary of the case to prosecutors, according to a report cited Thursday by The New York Times. The missing detail mattered. Prosecutors later declined to bring charges.
The case centers on a Cornell sophomore who said she was assaulted inside the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024 after an encounter involving ketamine and alcohol. In interviews with campus police the following month, she described waking up naked and surrounded by a “ring of men.” She also said, plainly: “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”
What the police file left out
Documents reviewed by the newspaper show officers turned hours of interviews into a condensed six-page voluntary statement. The version sent to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten did not include the student’s clear assertion that she had been raped.
That omission shaped the next step. Relying on the summarized file, Van Houten decided there was not enough evidence at the time and did not file criminal charges against seven men.
Not a small detail.
Case reopened after new scrutiny
The disclosure has renewed scrutiny of how Cornell police handled the investigation. The district attorney has since reopened the criminal case and is presenting it again, according to the reports.
CBS News New York reported that the university carried out an internal investigation that led to expulsions, suspensions and other sanctions. The law-enforcement side, though, is now under fresh examination because the transcript and the summarized police file appear to diverge on a point that went to the heart of the allegation.
The student’s interview began on Nov. 14, 2024, more than three weeks after the alleged assault, and continued the next day. A campus police investigator led the questioning, with a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate and the student’s adviser in the room on the first day, CBS reported.
In her account, she described drinking and using drugs, and said parts of the night were missing from her memory. She distinguished between the initial sexual activity and what she said happened later.
The reopened review now puts a sharp question back on the table: what did investigators hear, what did they write down, and what did prosecutors never see? The answer may matter well beyond Ithaca, where universities around the world continue to face pressure over how they document and report sexual violence cases. Van Houten’s office first declined charges after reviewing the abbreviated statement. Now he is taking another look.
Source: nytimes.com
