Former fraternity members at Cornell University allegedly held meetings to discuss how they would cover up an alleged gang rape in 2024.
The former members of the Ivy League’s now-defunct Chi Phi fraternity have been accused of plying a female student with alcohol and drugs at a party in October 2024 and raping her.
In the aftermath, the school’s police department received a report from an anonymous caller saying that the Chi Phi fraternity’s leadership had asked potential witnesses to stay quiet because ‘the reputation of all involved and the frat would be ruined’ if details of the alleged incident spread across campus, according to records obtained by ABC News.
‘The whole fraternity had meetings to try to cover this up and to be part of the conspiracy of silence,’ Jane Doe’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, told CNN 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.’
When investigators then asked witnesses about a potential coverup by the fraternity brother, a female student told them: ‘Chi Phi held a meeting essentially to get all of the men on the same page about what happened.
‘I know for a fact there are GroupMe messages about the situation,’ she claimed.
The student then told campus police how the fraternity brothers described the incident as a ‘consensual orgy’ but expressed their concern it ‘would be bad for [their] image.’
Cornell police also interviewed at least two fraternity members about the incident and what communications they have had inside the frat house about the alleged assault.
One of the brothers then reportedly said the incident came up informally during their weekly meeting when leadership was discussing their ‘brother of the week and idiots of the week.’
Members of the now-defunct Chi Phi chapter at Cornell University reportedly held meetings to discuss how they would cover up an alleged gang rape in October 2024
Cornell police interviewed at least two fraternity members about the incident and what communications they have had inside the frat house about the alleged assault. Students are pictured walking past Cornell Police headquarters last week
‘We didn’t have a meeting about it specifically,’ he said. ‘It was our weekly chapter meeting. We got through a bunch of stuff.’
But text messages obtained by the outlet also showed how fraternity members were trying to contain the fallout after Cornell officials suspended the chapter from campus.
‘When was the last time you spoke to [Jane Doe]?’ the fraternity’s president wrote in a message to Matthew Ingalls, who had invited the accuser to the fraternity house on October 19, 2024.
‘Yesterday… what’s the plan of action?’ he then replied, according to the records.
‘Should I call [her]? I don’t think she would have reported this.’
The message came days after he insisted that the alleged victim told him she was sober in a phone call.
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 rape,’ she told him in one message.
The accuser’s lawsuit included alleged messages on Snapchat of Chi Phi fraternity members apparently discussing the incident and advertising ‘free p***y’
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.
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.’
Matthew Ingalls, who had invited Jane Doe to the party on October 19, 2024, had claimed he was the one who was sexually assaulted
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 p***y’ 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.
