For a time, Jane Doe resisted that advice. In advance of filing her lawsuit, she and her attorneys debated the decision to remain anonymous. “She didn’t want to be another one of these women who were hiding behind anonymity,” Giuffra said. “She wanted to make a stand.” He told me that he and his co-counsel, an attorney named Whitney Seals, cautioned her that using her name might create a “firestorm” that would forever be linked not just to her but to her family. “You want to fight this battle against these guys, but sometimes cooler heads have to prevail,” Giuffra said. Eventually, she agreed to take their advice. But, of course, a firestorm came anyway.
In a written affirmation attached to a court filing, Jane Doe asks, in her own words, to be referred to as “JANE DOE” in court records. “What happened to me was devastating and humiliating,” she writes. In the affirmation, she speaks of shame, fear, extreme anxiety, and depression. The thought of her identity being revealed, she says, has caused “many sleepless nights.” Of the seven men whom she names in her complaint, she adds, “Defendants have no regard for my health or safety.”
The events of October 19, 2024, were first documented in detail about four weeks after they took place, in November, when Jane Doe gave a lengthy interview to the Cornell University Police Department. She reportedly told police during that meeting, “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.” Her account was then summarized into a six-page “voluntary statement.”
In that document, she describes what begins as a typical Saturday evening on a college campus. An element of uncertainty, familiar to any twenty-year-old, is present from the beginning of the night: while at a Crunch Fitness in Ithaca—Jane Doe is a weight lifter—a thief takes the keys to her car and steals her wallet, later charging hundreds of dollars at a nearby Walmart. She cancels her credit and debit cards, leaving her to rely on Apple Pay for the remainder of the evening, and posts the news that she’s been robbed to her Snapchat story, but Jane Doe’s planned night out goes on regardless. Because of the robbery, however, she is late to festivities at her sorority house. She begins drinking Tito’s vodka, from the bottle, “to catch up to my Sorority Sisters.” Soon, she is at a local bar, for a “date night event,” drinking more, and vaping. Around 10:30 P.M., she walks to the Chi Phi fraternity house, feeling “numb from being cold and intoxicated.”
She goes on to recount wanting to see her friend, a student named Matthew Ingalls, whom she knew since freshman year, and whom she describes as someone she was interested in romantically. He asks her to have a threesome with one of his other fraternity brothers, and Jane Doe remembers feeling “excited,” reasoning that perhaps the men were gay, “which would have meant that they were part of my community as I am bisexual.” Jane Doe then describes a sexual encounter between herself, Ingalls, and another man, Jonathan Newell. At first, she says, she feels “pretty ok.” When one of the men begins to feel sick, she pats his back and tells him it’s fine if he needs to vomit. As the night goes on, however, the situation begins to turn. A third man enters the room. One of the men then begins groping her. A second threesome soon begins, and Jane Doe hears the men say something about “having a turn.” She begins to feel used. More men enter the room. The night becomes a blur. “I didn’t matter as a person to these men,” she tells police. She remembers feeling like her phone was out of reach, and knowing that she did not have her wallet. Certain memories return to her mid-evening. When someone asks her if she wants more ketamine, she realizes that she already took the drug earlier, on a couch. Later, she is told that she also smoked marijuana and consumed a high-proof rum that she describes as “Jamaican liquor.” Multiple times, she says, she swats away the hand of a man reaching for her vagina and tries to hide her naked body beneath the covers. At some point, she looks around and says, “I don’t know who any of these people are.” She describes feeling exhausted and “totally totally disgusted at the situation.” After she is led into a second, smaller room to engage in another threesome, one of the men enters and asks, “You all are still at it?” Jane Doe tells police that she replied, “ ‘Yeah,’ in a sad and unenthusiastic tone.”
