Last month, a woman, using the pseudonym Jane Doe, sued seven Cornell University students she alleged raped her in 2024. Last week, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten made public assertions about “discrepancies” between the allegations in Jane Doe’s 2026 civil lawsuit and her original statements to the Cornell police in 2024. In a September 28 statement (and multiple press interviews), Van Houten stated that her lawsuit was based on a “different narrative” and “different set of facts.” But he was operating under a false premise when he made these incredibly damaging statements. He mistakenly believed that he knew all of her 2024 allegations to police. In fact, as he has now admitted, he did not have and was not aware of everything Jane Doe alleged in 2024.
Van Houten eventually said he would stop speaking publicly. But the damage was done. Time after time, citing his public statements, people across media platforms and news outlets have echoed that she “changed her story” from her “sworn statement” in 2024. Because of the DA’s statements (among other reasons), I called on him to step aside and recuse himself from the investigation he said he was reopening. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul subsequently appointed New York State Attorney General Tish James as special counsel. But some effects are hard to undo. Van Houten discredited Jane Doe before a full and fair assessment of the actual facts, and his assessment made its way into common discourse. So let me be clear: No one knows if her factual account has changed in material ways or not.
Van Houten (according to his nine-page statement and multiple media interviews) made his determination to not submit this case to a grand jury in 2024 solely based on a six-page written statement given to Cornell campus police, signed and sworn to by Jane Doe. There is confusion with finger pointing between Cornell police and Van Houten about what materials the DA’s Office received from Cornell and what it did not. But this much is clear: No one from the DA’s office appears to have interviewed Jane Doe, no one appears to have listened to any part of her hours-long recorded statement that resulted in a 120-page transcript (or seemed to know of its existence), and no one appears to have reviewed or followed up on the Snapchat messages among the fraternity brothers, which showed in real time some of them inviting others to come get “free pussy” and “whip it out” accompanying a photo of her, and another asking “shop still open?” Nor does it appear that anyone from Van Houten’s office reviewed text and snap chats messages from the days following the events or any other forensic evidence, such as photographs that may have been on anyone’s phone. This factual scenario required a detailed, thorough analysis by trained criminal prosecutors and investigators with an understanding of trauma and a willingness to tenaciously find and follow the evidence. That absolutely did not happen here.
When Van Houten announced in his nine-page statement on September 28 that he was reopening the investigation, he did something shockingly damaging to the possibility of a fair process. Acting as if knew everything Jane Doe said to the Cornell Police in 2024, he characterized her as having alleged a different set of facts in what he called her “original statement” to Cornell police from those alleged in the lawsuit; “I reached out to Jane Doe’s attorneys after the lawsuit was filed to understand the discrepancy between the original statement and the lawsuit’s allegations and the proper path forward in light of the lawsuit’s allegations” (emphasis added). He also said, “The [original] statement … provides a different narrative and set of facts of the events of October 19, 2024 than those alleged in the lawsuit.” He even claimed that “Jane Doe’s [original] statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
The problem with these characterizations is that the written statement was not the totality of the “original” statement she gave to Cornell police. Van Houten simply did not (it seems) know that there was a much longer, more detailed interview of her by campus police.
In the initial lengthy recorded interview with the Cornell police, she described facts extremely relevant to the issue of force and consent. For example, according to the transcript of her interview (which was obtained, reviewed and reported on by CBS News) — her actual initial report to the university police — she said she didn’t remember the end of the night “where I was raped” and didn’t know how many people had sex with her. She referred to being intoxicated multiple times: saying she “was super drunk when [she] got there and was “completely and totally incapacitated. She also stated that she felt the “[fraternity brothers] should have known how intoxicated I was based on how I was slurring my words.” Sharing details of the assault, Jane Doe added, “And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard.”
Jane Doe also told the police things that directly contradict his assertion that she said it was “voluntary, conscious and consensual.” For example, also according to the CBS review of the transcript, she explicitly stated, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” that she “finally gave in” after she was asked “to have sex so many times,” and “to [her], that felt like coercion.” With her phone across the room, “there was really no escape.” She also told the officer: “I will never know who all touched me. I will not know.”
In short, Van Houten’s inappropriate public assertions over the course of several days beginning on September 28 about what Jane Doe supposedly did not tell investigators in her so called “original statement” conveyed an erroneous impression that Jane Doe’s allegations in her lawsuit were fabricated because they were not facts alleged in 2024. But that was — simply put — wrong.
Also — as any investigator of any crime, especially sexual assault, knows — a victims’ recollection of events should never be reduced to one single statement (or, as in this case, a summary of a statement). Her recollection of what happened that night must be drawn from a whole host of sources — her recorded statements in the interview with campus police, the written statement, what she told campus health on October 22 when she sought treatment, including that she had contracted a UTI through “traumatic” circumstances, and what she told Cornell investigators during the Title IX investigation. And, of course, the larger picture of whether a crime should be charged should never be based on her statements alone but on a whole host of evidence including the larger Title IX investigation, which involved at least 12 hearings and 50 interviews with 32 witnesses, including the young men involved, digital forensic evidence, and much more.
Did her initial allegations vary in material ways from the allegations in the lawsuit? Maybe, maybe not. Only certain news outlets have reviewed the transcript of the full interview and reported certain parts. So I don’t know anyone qualified to say precisely what Jane Doe did or did not tell Cornell police in that interview.
Of course, even if her statements did vary internally or over time, there are legitimate explanations that do not render her claims invalid, including how trauma impacts recollection and how victims process assaults. Jane Manning, director of Women’s Equal Justice and former prosecutor and long-time advocate for sex-crime survivors, told me, “It’s common and normal for a survivor of a sexual assault by someone she knows, especially when drugs or alcohol are involved, to process and re-interpret her experience. But that doesn’t mean she is making up new facts that are different from the facts she originally recounted. It may just mean that she views and judges those same facts differently as she thinks them over.”
I am not opining here (or anywhere) as to whether a crime should or should not have been charged against individuals in 2024 or should or should not be charged now. I am skeptical of anyone who says that the conduct alleged definitely “was rape” or that it definitely “was not rape” under New York’s criminal laws because no one to my knowledge has yet pieced together all of the potentially admissible evidence in the excruciating detail required to evaluate a set of facts as a criminal matter beyond a reasonable doubt (the required standard in a court of law).
The bottom line is this: no one knows whether the essential facts alleged by Jane Doe changed. Investigators deciding whether to charge a crime have to make their own assessments with full knowledge of all reported evidence. Jane Doe’s 2024 report never received that caliber of care. That process has only belatedly begun to happen now. We owe it to her, and the accused, to let that process play out.
Mimi Rocah was the district attorney of Westchester County, New York, from 2021 to 2024 and was a federal prosecutor from 2001 to 2017. Research and other assistance provided by Fiona Doyle, 2026 Harvard Law School graduate, and 2023 Rutgers University graduate.
Van Houten, being a district attorney was either reckless or incompetent for not checking to be sure there wasn’t other evidence or reports from Jane Doe before speaking publicly. He has really muddied the water.