Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and state Attorney General Letitia James provided an update Friday morning on the sexual assault allegations at Cornell University that have shocked the nation, hours after Hochul appointed James to investigate a 2024 report by a student who said she was raped at a fraternity house.

A new lawsuit by the student, identified as Jane Doe, has reignited a national conversation about the persistent issue of sexual assault on college campuses and plunged one of the country’s elite universities into crisis. Cornell’s campus newspaper, elected officials and celebrities have questioned how the case was initially handled by the district attorney in Tompkins County, New York, and by the university.

The interview Jane Doe gave to campus police included an unequivocal statement that she had been raped, which was missing in the condensed statement that was shared with the district attorney’s office.

“I am deeply disturbed by Cornell University’s police and how they handled this,” Hochul said, adding that she considers it a failure that the police sent a “partial record.”

“In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had literally been gang raped” and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney, Hochul said.

James said that in the coming months, her office will launch a comprehensive investigation and “review the facts, gather evidence, interview witnesses and, if warranted, pursue prosecutions.” She said she had not spoken to the district attorney, Matthew Van Houten.

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe, a 20-year-old sophomore at the time of the encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, said she had been plied with alcohol and drugs and then raped by several men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. She is suing the fraternity, seven men, the university and her sorority. The men denied wrongdoing.

Jane Doe said she had reported the incident to the Cornell University Police Department weeks later, but no criminal charges were filed.

Van Houten has defended his office’s decision not to pursue criminal charges then. But in recent days, as a backlash grew, he said his office would reopen the investigation.

Hochul said Van Houten did not interview Jane Doe after receiving information in the six-page report he was given by the police. She called the information about the initial investigation “very contradictory and conflicting.”

The New York Times obtained more than 1,000 pages from an internal university inquiry into the allegations and published a detailed account Thursday of how Jane Doe struggled for weeks before reporting the incident to the authorities. Later Thursday, Hochul criticized Van Houten.

“New information has raised serious questions about how this case was handled, and I’ve lost faith in the Tompkins County DA’s ability to fairly oversee it,” Hochul said on social media. James’ office had already begun a review of the way law enforcement officials had handled the matter.

Thomas Giuffra, Jane Doe’s lawyer, said he and his client were “thrilled” with the appointment of James.

“We had no faith in DA Van Houten’s ability or desire to actively investigate and prosecute this case,” Giuffra said.

The accounts of the men, detailed in the investigative files obtained by the Times, were disjointed and sometimes contradictory. They denied any wrongdoing.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Hurubie Meko/Hilary Swift
c. 2026 The New York Times Company