The View’s Sunny Hostin is speaking out once again after several Cornell University fraternity members were accused of gang raping a fellow student in 2024.
“Cornell University has now agreed to let outside investigators conduct an independent review of how they handled a former student’s allegations of gang rape as disturbing new details emerge,” Hostin, 57, explained on the Thursday, October 1, episode of ABC’s hit daytime talk show. “This is now an active investigation, and I think we’re all learning more and more about this case.”
While speaking with her cohosts, Hostin explained that she looks at these cases as a former sex crimes prosecutor.
Although she previously defended Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten for not bringing charges to the group of fraternity brothers, Hostin explained on Thursday’s show that things may be different if the alleged crime had occurred in other states.
“In D.C., this case would have gone to trial. I would have prosecuted this case like I prosecuted a lot of sex crimes,” Hostin claimed. “The problem is the New York law.”
The former federal prosecutor continued, “This is a morally repugnant case. It is grotesque when you read the details. I feel terrible about how this happened. Why do these kids have ketamine? Why is there no upstander? You want the young man to go upstairs and say, ‘Shut this down. What is going on?’ You want more people to do that.”
Jane Doe, a former student at the Ivy League school, recently sued Cornell and seven male fraternity members, alleging that she was drugged and sexually assaulted for at least seven hours in October 2024 at the Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, New York.
No arrests have been made in connection with the case, but the local district attorney has said he is reopening it in light of the civil suit.
Attorneys representing the named fraternity members have vigorously denied the claims in the lawsuit.
During the Tuesday, September 29, episode of The View, Hostin expressed her belief that “under New York law, voluntary intoxication or drug use that merely impairs judgment does not legally constitute an inability to consent to sexual activity.”
On Thursday’s show, she reiterated her belief that New York “makes it incredibly impossible to prosecute a case like this.”
“You’d have to be unconscious or involuntarily drugged — slipped a drug — in order to charge this case,” she claimed to cohosts Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sherri Shepherd and Alyssa Farah Griffin. “There are 19 other states that have this same law.”
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If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
