The lawyer representing the unidentified victim in the alleged Cornell University gang rape believes key evidence might be missing.
“That’s the great concern, if this was a normal investigation that was done in New York City for example, they would have gotten search warrants [and] they would have grabbed every single one of these phones of these guys,” Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Guiffra, told CNN in a Sunday, October 4, interview. “[Investigators] would have downloaded this material, I’m confident.”
Giuffra went on to claim that there are likely “other photos” and videos from the alleged sexual assault that have since been hidden or destroyed.
“You know where I think those photos and videos are now? I think they’re at the bottom of Lake Cayuga,” the lawyer alleged, citing a lake in upstate New York. “Once [the accused rapists] knew there was a problem, they cleared everything out and they got rid of it. The fact is, the investigators let that happen.”
Doe alleged in a civil lawsuit filed in September that she was sexually assaulted at the Chi Phi fraternity house in 2024. She claimed that she was pressured to snort ketamine, smoke marijuana and drink alcohol before she was allegedly raped by at least seven fraternity members, though her lawyer now claims more alleged assailants are likely.
Doe reported the alleged incident weeks later, though none of the Chi Phi members faced criminal charges. Two of the accused were expelled from school, two were suspended and the rest were ordered to write essays and attend workshops following a campus investigation, per The New York Times. (Doe, meanwhile, dropped out of the university.)
After Doe filed her lawsuit, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten revealed that his office would reopen the case. Cornell, which claimed to have done its due diligence at the time, has publicly supported the motion.
Giuffra, for his part, further claimed that the initial investigation wasn’t handled properly during his Sunday interview with Jake Tapper.
“We don’t even know [if] the people we have, we definitively know,” Giuffra said, arguing that Doe had been “blacked out” at the time of the alleged assault. “We will never know because of such inadequate investigation that was done. It was not an investigation. I’m not a criminal lawyer, I’m a civil lawyer and I could have done a better investigation than this.
The president of Cornell, Michael Kotlikoff, recently issued a statement regarding the accusations.
“What happened to Jane Doe in 2024 is deeply disturbing and will weigh heavily on our community for years to come,” Kotlikoff, 74, said in a Saturday, October 3, statement. “My heart aches when I think of what she experienced. … You have my commitment that this will not be a moment that passes. We will continue taking every step necessary to make Cornell an institution that leads not just in what we say about these issues, but in the work we do to address them.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
