“I don’t think it was ever consensual,” Jane Doe’s attorney says
“I don’t think it was ever consensual,” Jane Doe’s attorney says
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Jane Doe’s attorney says he believes she did not consent to any of the sexual encounters that are the focus of her allegations that she was drugged and gang raped at a Cornell University fraternity house in 2024.
“I don’t think it was ever consensual,” Giuffra told CNN said when asked about encounters to which Doe testified in documents.
“She showed up at the Chi Phi house, heavily intoxicated. There was testimony not just from the people involved in the assault, but there was a lot of testimony from people who were around that time, saw her that day. And by all accounts, she was completely, completely intoxicated. She couldn’t consent to anything,” Giuffra said.
“So I don’t think she ever consented and was incapable of consenting because of the level of intoxication, and the fact that she was plied with drugs. She couldn’t consent to anything,” he said.
Key context: In a 2024 statement to Cornell police, obtained by CNN from a source familiar with the investigation, Doe said she was asked to participate in a threesome while at Chi Phi on October 19. She told police she was “pretty ok” with aspects of an initial encounter, but that later in the night she did not consent to other sexual activities, according to the statement. She said she “was unable to make any decisions because of how intoxicated I was”; described being “horrified” as more men entered the room; and said she “finally gave in” to one later encounter after she was asked “to have sex so many times,” describing it as “coercion,” according to the statement.
But a separate document — a transcript of a November 2024 interview with campus police, according to WCBS — shows Doe made a more explicit accusation. “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” Doe said in the transcript, according to WCBS. This transcript was not initially given to prosecutors, according to the local district attorney and the governor.
Giuffra on Friday also referred to a Cornell document that summarizes key evidence included in a university disciplinary panel’s decision. In a hearing months after the alleged assault, she told Cornell investigators she “felt like bait” and “felt like lions around me” at the house, according to a heavily redacted version of the 99-page document obtained by CNN.
“I mean, that’s being trapped. That’s physically helpless,” Giuffra told CNN.