Since last month, accusations of rape at Cornell University have caused widespread outrage, renewing a national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses and highlighting the difficulty in achieving justice in such cases.<\/p>\n
The accusations against seven male students were detailed in a bombshell lawsuit filed by an accuser known as Jane Doe, who was 20 at the time of the encounter.<\/p>\n
The men have not been charged, and they have denied wrongdoing. It is also unclear how long an investigation by the special prosecutor, Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, will take. Prosecuting sex crimes presents inherent challenges, and a potential prosecution of the Cornell students faces distinct and considerable hurdles, legal experts say.<\/p>\n
Shifts in the accuser\u2019s account in the days after the encounter \u2014 while typical for survivors of sexual assault, experts say \u2014 could damage her credibility in front of a potential jury. A report presented by the Cornell Police Department to the Tompkins County, N.Y., district attorney in 2024 left out her claim that she was raped<\/a>, providing another discrepancy for defense lawyers to seize on.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because a victim\u2019s narrative evolves or changes doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s untrue,\u201d said Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor. \u201cBut grand juries and trials can\u2019t stop at \u2018believe women.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The case is harder still because of New York\u2019s rape laws, which make it difficult for an intoxicated person to prove they did not consent to a sexual encounter. Supporters of sexual assault victims say that the arc of Jane Doe\u2019s case shows that the process for reporting such crimes is flawed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a game of broken telephone that often exists for victims,\u201d said Shulim Leifer, an advocate for sexual assault victims in New York. \u201cI think this could be used as a prime example to show where the gaps are in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n District attorneys sometimes decline to bring charges or abandon cases involving sexual assault, an issue that came to a head early in the #MeToo movement, highlighted by an initial decision not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein<\/a>. Sometimes, a victim is unwilling to testify, as occurred in the case involving Kobe Bryant, the former N.B.A. star who was accused of rape in 2003 before charges were dropped the following year.<\/p>\n In her lawsuit, Jane Doe says that she was plied with drugs and alcohol and raped by multiple men the night of Oct. 19, 2024, at the Chi Phi fraternity house near Cornell\u2019s campus. She reported the encounter to Cornell police on Nov. 14, 2024. Using a condensed version of her interviews \u2014 which omitted her claim that she was raped<\/a> \u2014 the district attorney declined to bring charges.<\/p>\n In the days after the encounter, Jane Doe messaged one of the men whom she would later accuse of rape \u2014 assuring him that \u201cnon of the sexual stuff was illegal\u201d \u2014 according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. In November 2024, Jane Doe told Cornell police officials that she was \u201cpretty OK\u201d with the two men she had begun the sexual encounter with, but that as more men showed up looking for sex, she came to understand the encounter as rape.<\/p>\n R. Timothy Jansen, a defense lawyer who represented the football player Jameis Winston, who was accused of rape at Florida State University, said that prosecutors would have a hard time proving Jane Doe\u2019s case to a jury. (Prosecutors declined to bring charges<\/a> against Mr. Winston.) The shifts in the accuser\u2019s accounts, as well as the gap between the time of the alleged assault and when the accuser made her report to Cornell police, would prove to be especially damaging, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cA criminal defense lawyer will destroy her on cross-examination,\u201d Mr. Jansen said. \u201cThe whole case is going to be her credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Jason Goldman, a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor in Brooklyn, said the messages Jane Doe sent after the encounter would \u201cbe difficult for a jury to square away.\u201d But Ms. Penza said that such inconsistencies were not uncommon for sexual assault victims.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the norm, not the exception, for a sex crime victim\u2019s initial account to leave out details, describe things non-linearly, and even minimize what happened,\u201d Ms. Penza said.<\/p>\n Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor who also served as the Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney from 2021 to 2024, said that a victim\u2019s statement may initially be contradictory or confusing for many reasons.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could be wandering and all over the place because they suffered a trauma, and they don\u2019t know or can\u2019t process or express it,\u201d Ms. Rocah said. She added that prosecutors cannot just sit down and say, \u201cAll right, tell me what happened.\u201d District attorney\u2019s offices must have the training and sensitivity to investigate sex crimes.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is like 101 of trauma-informed interviewing,\u201d Ms. Rocah said, \u201cand clearly here that did not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n