[Cornell. Photo Credit to Pixabay]

On September 16th, US district attorneys reopened the alleged gang-rape case involving 7 fraternity house members of Cornell university and a fellow female student with a civil lawsuit. 

The lawsuit targets the university, the fraternity house, and 7 individual members who were accused of the horrendous crime. 

The fraternity house was later identified as the Chi Phi, with 7 men accused of rape and sexual assault of an anonymous student, referred as Jane Doe currently. 

Doe’s attorneys stated that she was 20 years old at the time of the incident in October of 2024, and was drugged by the house members. 

They further allege that the 7 men sexually assaulted her for 7 hours at the fraternity house, and even invited their fellow house members to join the assault via Snapchat. 

The Snapchat conversation of this was later revealed, showing that the 7 men talked about the act together in the Chi Phi group chat, with 50 other fraternity members as well. 

The accused 7 men are Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. 

The messages from the group chat were recently revealed to the public, containing disturbing conversations between all of the accused, talking about how Doe was in the frat house unconscious, encouraging the other members to assault her as well.

The conversations included messages such as, “Is the shop still open?” and a response saying, “yea.” 

After Doe reported this to the university back in 2024, only two of the alleged perpetrators were expelled while the 5 rest received a temporary suspension and were told to write essays as a reflection. 

Many people online are criticizing this response from the supposedly highly prestigious institution in the United States. 

A TikTok commenter on the incident expressed outrage, stating, “there were fifty-seven people in the chat [yet none of them spoke up].”

Aside from this commenter, numerous other commenters support Doe for speaking up even though the initial report of the case was shut down for “not enough proof” two years back. 

One of her district attorneys, Thomas Giuffra, recently spoke in a CNN interview about the lawsuit, stating that Doe wants true “accountability” because “her life has been destroyed.”

He further mentioned that due to the severe trauma Doe experienced after finding out the heinous crime committed against her, she couldn’t go back to attend her classes at Cornell.

Consequently, her parents demanded a refund from the school, in which they rejected their request.

Cornell allegedly stated that Doe would need to return to her classes, even though the remaining 5 assaulters would stay on the same campus as her, with insufficient consequences. 

Following this, an official court hearing for the civil case is scheduled for October 23rd in Manhattan, where many people online supporting Doe demand justice for her.