Jane Doe’s New Life After Alleged Cornell Assault: Timeline

Jane Doe never wanted to give up her place at Cornell University—even if remaining on campus meant seeing men she says sexually assaulted her.

In October 2024, she reported to campus police that she had endured an alleged hours-long sexual assault inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.

Yet Doe was determined to preserve the Ivy League education she had spent years pursuing after moving hundreds of miles away from her family.

‘She wanted to really stay the course, and this was her dream,’ her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview about the private toll the allegations took on her.

‘She didn’t want what these guys did to blow up her desires in life.’

But continuing at Cornell grew harder with each passing day.

Giuffra said campus gossip, hostile stares and unsettling messages wore Doe down. Encounters with some of the men she had accused also left her feeling vulnerable and unsafe.

‘She started to feel targeted,’ Giuffra said. ‘She was trying to hold on.’

Giuffra described Doe’s family as comfortable but not wealthy. Like many parents, her mother and father had spent years saving to provide their daughter with the strongest education possible.

Doe was a sophomore when, according to the civil complaint, she was supplied with alcohol and pressured to take ketamine before allegedly being sexually assaulted by several Chi Phi fraternity members over the course of the night on October 19, 2024.

In the aftermath, Doe struggled to reconstruct what had happened as rumors about the night circulated across campus.

According to records from Cornell’s internal investigation, she texted one of the men she would later accuse: ‘Bro, everyone knows.’ She described the episode as ‘RUINING my life temporarily,’ urged others to deny that anything had occurred and wrote that she could do nothing but ‘sleep and cry all day.’

As Doe questioned friends and some of the men who had been in the room, her account of the night evolved. During a secretly recorded call on November 7, she said the incident ‘would be classified as gang rape.’

The next day, after encouragement from friends, Doe reported the allegations to Cornell University Police. The school opened an investigation and temporarily suspended Chi Phi and the seven students later identified as defendants in her lawsuit.

Doe’s mother began making repeated trips from the family’s home in the southern United States to Ithaca, New York, as she spent more time supporting her daughter.

‘She wanted to go home. She couldn’t go home. It just got to be too much,’ Giuffra said.

‘You want to go to a place you feel safe, and she didn’t feel safe. She couldn’t do it anymore. It was every day. It’s re-traumatization.’

Doe eventually told her parents what she alleged had happened at Chi Phi and withdrew from Cornell in February 2025, stepping away from college life entirely. Court filings say she left campus battling anxiety and depression, while persistent sleeplessness further compounded her distress.

Her parents were ‘extremely, extremely supportive,’ Giuffra said.

Cornell’s internal investigation into Doe’s allegations stretched on for months. It ultimately resulted in punishments ranging from no-contact orders and educational sanctions to multi-year suspensions and the expulsion of two students. The fraternity was permanently closed and banned from campus.

A separate criminal investigation ended without charges after the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

For nearly two years, Doe lived a largely reclusive existence, according to Giuffra, struggling with the lasting fallout of the alleged assault.

Then, last month, she filed a lawsuit against seven current and former Cornell students and the university, thrusting the allegations into the national spotlight, engulfing Cornell in scandal and igniting a wider reckoning over how sexual assault allegations are investigated on American college campuses. 

More than 1,000 students have since marched through Cornell in her name, demanding change and accountability. Messages of support have poured in from around the country, while celebrities and prominent public figures, including singer Olivia Rodrigo and actress Florence Pugh, have spoken out about her case.

For Doe, Giuffra said the extraordinary outpouring has provided her with the sense that people are finally listening. 

‘She felt alone, she felt unsupported in the entire process by the police, by the prosecutor, by the university,’ Giuffra said.

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‘The fact that now you have her fellow Cornell students marching for change and marching in support of her, that lets her know that she finally is being supported for what happened to her.

‘It’s long overdue.’

But the sudden attention has been accompanied by a frightening new reality. 

Giuffra said people have tried to uncover Doe’s identity and contact her parents, while she has received dozens of hostile messages – some telling her she ‘should die’ or ‘should be killed.’ One threat contained three handgun emojis, he said.

‘It’s been a double-edged sword,’ Giuffra said. ‘It’s difficult to focus on the positive when you’re getting direct messages saying you should die and you should be killed.

‘They’re trying to shut her up, to retraumatize her, to abuse her, call her names, threaten her… It’s really disturbing.’ 

In a frightening escalation, Giuffra said Doe was recently targeted in a swatting incident that sent armed police to her home, with officers drawing their guns on members of her family and a friend.

Other threats have become chillingly specific. Messages obtained by the New York Post named Doe’s relatives, listed their addresses and warned they would be shot, while a caller allegedly threatened someone close to her.

The calls were so frightening Doe called the police, Giuffra told the outlet. 

Yet, for Doe, the sheer scale of support has helped outweigh the abuse.

‘If she didn’t have all this outpouring of support from all over the world, from people from all walks of life, people who’ve had similar experiences, it would be far, far worse,’ Giuffra said.

‘I think that has helped to give her strength and the courage to move on to get accountability.’

The allegations are now the subject of a renewed criminal investigation led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was appointed special prosecutor after Governor Kathy Hochul removed the Tompkins County district attorney from the case.

None of the seven men have been criminally charged. Scott Kretzschmar, Scott Norris and Gillio Lopes have publicly denied wrongdoing, while Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee and Diego Sarabia have not publicly responded to Doe’s lawsuit. All seven denied wrongdoing during Cornell’s internal investigation. 

Ingalls told Cornell investigators he was too intoxicated to consent and claimed Doe had sexually assaulted him, later emailing the Title IX investigator to accuse the university of failing to treat him as a survivor, according to records reviewed by ABC News. 

The original investigation has come under mounting scrutiny amid reports that Cornell Police gathered witness interviews, recorded calls, anonymous tips and other evidence that was not all reviewed by prosecutors before they declined to bring charges in 2024.

District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has defended that decision, maintaining the evidence presented to his office did not support charges and blaming Cornell Police for failing to provide the full picture.

Cornell has pushed back, defending its own handling of the case and maintaining that prosecutors declined an offer to review additional evidence gathered.

For Doe, however, neither the renewed investigation nor the widespread support can restore the life she claims she lost.

Giuffra said one of the hardest realities for her was watching some of the men she accused continue with the futures that Doe had once imagined for herself.

‘One of these guys got his Cornell diploma and he’s banned from campus for three years,’ he said. ‘He’s going to be able to walk through the world with his head held high with his Ivy League degree. Jane Doe is not going to have that.’

Today, he said, she is just ‘trying to hold it together.’

Doe remains in therapy and surrounded by loved ones, and Giuffra speaks with her daily as she navigates the extraordinary attention surrounding her case.

‘I’m trying my best to advocate for her because I want her to feel like she’s being heard,’ he said, calling this the ‘most important case’ of his 32-year career.

Whether Doe will eventually return to college remains uncertain.

‘I’d like to think that’s in the future for her because she’s very smart,’ Giuffra said.

For now, her focus is simply on ‘getting through this, feeling safe’ and hoping the case ultimately becomes about something bigger than what happened to her.

‘The hope is that this isn’t just about her,’ Giuffra said. ‘That something comes out of this to effectuate positive change for all women.’