One of the so-called ‘Cornell 7‘ was expelled from the Ivy League university for having sex with his accuser without ‘affirmative consent,’ her lawyer claimed.
The accuser, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, alleged in a civil lawsuit filed last month that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity after a wild party in October 2024.
Jonathan Newell, one of the defendants in that lawsuit, is believed to have been expelled after the university’s Title IX investigation into the incident, attorney Thomas Giuffra told TMZ.
‘We believe that [text messages posted] were part of the Title IX process which led to Mr. Newell’s expulsion after twelve days of evidentiary hearings and extensive documentary evidence,’ Giuffra said.
‘It is undisputed that the Hearing Panel found that Mr. Newell violated Ms. Doe’s bodily safety in commencing intercourse without her consent.’
A person who reviewed the panel’s decision claims they did not find Newell had ‘affirmative consent.’
Giuffra also believes that Newell posting the message ‘Free p***y’ on a Snapchat for his fraternity alongside a photo of Doe on a bed led to further assaults.
‘The Hearing Panel also found Mr. Newell chose to sexualize and broadcast Ms. Doe’s vulnerability and invite further abuse which caused at least three men unknown to Ms. Doe — and likely more — to sexually abuse her,’ Giuffra added.
One of the so called ‘Cornell 7’ was expelled from the Ivy League university for having sex with his accuser without ‘affirmative consent,’ her lawyer claimed
Earlier Friday, Giuffra told the Daily Mail that his client maintains her allegations that she was drugged and sexually assaulted at the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024.
He brushed off text messages revealed by TMZ on Thursday that show Jane Doe downplayed the alleged assault in conversations with two of the men she accused, Newell and Matthew Ingalls.
She told Newell that ‘none of the sexual stuff was illegal,’ and described the incident as a ‘gangbang’ that was ‘our body our choice’ in text messages.
But Giuffra said the messages did not suggest the encounter was consensual.
He 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.’
Ingalls, Newell and the other accused fraternity members, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, have not been charged with any crime, and they all deny the allegations against them.
The fraternity brothers have insisted that they did not sexually assault Jane Doe, and those that admit to sexual activity have said the incident was consensual.
Local prosecutors declined to bring charges against the men, however the allegations from 2024 led Cornell to launch a Title IX investigation that resulted in Newell and Ingalls both being expelled.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul last week appointed her Attorney General Letitia James to investigate whether Jane Doe had been the victim of a crime.
In the messages revealed on Thursday, Jane Doe was shown to have been nervously messaging Newell and Ingalls about rumors of their tryst spreading around Cornell’s campus, and she said she was worried her ‘reputation is destroyed.’
They spoke of ‘narrowing down the suspects’ for who spread the rumors, and both men reassured Jane Doe that they had tried to shut down the gossip.
However, the messages also appeared to contradict the allegations of rape that Jane Doe brought in her civil lawsuit, including telling Newell: ‘At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal, and honestly i really liked being w u and matt.’
‘I don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf,’ she wrote.
Giuffra told the Daily Mail that despite the release of the text messages between Jane Doe and the two men, the civil lawsuit against the seven fraternity brothers contained a ‘mountain of evidence’ to support her claims.
‘It does a disservice to survivors to selectively utilize information without understanding what it means,’ the attorney said.
The texts show the accuser Jane Doe told fraternity brother Matthew Ingalls (above) that she was concerned her reputation was ‘destroyed’ by campus rumours
‘Following the assault, Ms. Doe exhibited the classic symptoms of delayed recognition. This is a well-known phenomenon which is widely reported in medical and psychological literature.
‘Most rape survivors do not immediately identify what happened to them as rape.
‘In the immediate aftermath of a rape, the brain processes trauma through shock, dissociation, appeasing, or masking distress rather than immediately identifying it as rape.
‘When the perpetrator is a romantic partner or friend, victims frequently second-guess their own perception. This is exactly what Ms. Doe was doing here.’
Giuffra added that Jane Doe’s alleged experience involved alcohol and drugs, which can result in ‘confusion, memory-gaps or self-blame that obscures the emotional reality of non-consensual acts at first.’
Protests erupted on Cornell’s campus this week as Jane Doe’s case continues to spark controversy across the nation
‘Survivors are unable to identify an assault as rape until they process the event and engage with trusted friends who help them reach the point of acceptance,’ he said.
‘Once Ms. Doe was able to accept the fact that she was a survivor of sexual assault, she vigorously confronted the perpetrators and pursued her rights.’
‘Unfortunately, we live in a world of 5 second clips without the ability or desire to understand the mental processing of rape survivors and the anguish that they go through in processing their trauma.
‘We have tried to explain this in interviews previously. The desire for a simple answer to a complex question does a disservice to survivors.
‘Delayed recognition has been studied extensively in medical science.’
