Records give insight into how one Cornell student responded to rape accusation
The Chi Phi fraternity house near the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, N.Y.Heather Ainsworth for NY Times / ReduxShareAdd NBC News to GoogleOct. 1, 2026, 7:23 PM EDTBy Shayna Jacobs and Pilar MelendezOne of the seven Cornell University fraternity brothers named in a lawsuit alleging a gang rape in 2024 said he did not see the accuser in distress during his brief time in the room where she says she was sexually assaulted while she was under the influence of several substances.
Scott Kretzschmar, now 22, said that after he saw a fraternity Snapchat post advertising “free p----y” upstairs, he went in the room already filled with several of his fraternity brothers — but that he never saw the woman naked, touched her or used ketamine.
Kretzschmar’s accounting of the evening was laid out in court documents he filed anonymously in Tompkins County, New York, Supreme Court in March in a last-ditch effort to annul Cornell’s decision to find him responsible for attempted sexual exploitation after its Title IX investigation. In the failed petition, Kretzschmar argued that the school improperly found him responsible for an offense that was not on his original list of violations — and then denied his appeal earlier this year.
Add to GoogleText messages shed light on Jane Doe’s alleged sexual assault02:49The court records, together with text messages separately obtained by NBC News between Jane Doe and another Chi Phi fraternity member she later accused of assault, provide further context for the October 2024 incident and its immediate aftermath. The incident has reignited a national conversation about sexual assault and consent.
“My reputation is destroyed and i’m utterly ashamed,” Jane Doe texted another fraternity member, four days after she alleges she was raped while she was under the influence of ketamine, marijuana and alcohol. “I’m f------g pissed cause this many people shouldn’t know and i feel like i know who some of the rats in the room were,” she wrote. “if i ever find out i swear to god its in sight.”
During the dayslong text exchange, Jane Doe fluctuated between anger over being the subject of campus gossip and sending friendly messages before she ultimately cut off communication the day before she reported her allegations to campus police.
The report spurred a university investigation of seven Chi Phi members that culminated with a 12-day internal federal civil rights proceeding known as Title IX in May 2025, at which more than 30 witnesses testified following 50 investigative interviews, according to filings in Kretzschmar’s appeal. The investigation found that the night of the alleged assault, a photo of Jane Doe was shared among active Chi Phi members in a Snapchat group, the documents revealed. The nature of the photo is not made clear in the court documents.
“Are you guys at least naked?” a Snapchat message from an unknown user said after the photo was posted.
The Snapchat message thread, which was provided to campus investigators anonymously, “became a key exhibit in the resulting student conduct matter,” attorneys for the university argued in a July 17 memo filed in Kretzschmar’s case. Jane Doe’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, told NBC News she learned of the Snapchat messages only when they were leaked to her by another fraternity member who was outraged by what his fraternity brothers were said to have done to her.
Ultimately, the seven received differing penalties, ranging from writing a “reflection paper” to expulsion. The case went to the local district attorney’s office, which ultimately declined to bring criminal charges.
Cornell University police declined to comment on whether they had the photo when they conducted the November 2024 investigation into Jane Doe’s claims. The university did not respond to a request for comment on the photo and other details reported in this article.
Jane Doe told investigators that she did not specifically remember Kretzschmar’s directly taking part in her abuse. He was not expelled from Cornell and he graduated last year, but he faced several sanctions — including writing a “reflection paper” — at the conclusion of the Title IX process and was found responsible for attempted sexual exploitation.
Add to GoogleCornell agrees to independent investigation into handling of rape allegations02:44Asked for comment on Kretzschmar’s state litigation, Giuffra simply called it “ridiculous.” On Thursday, Giuffra also revealed that Jane Doe completed a rape kit collection weeks after the incident.
Kretzschmar’s attorney, Jeremy Saland, stressed to NBC News on Thursday that his client was not involved in any criminal conduct alleged in the case.
“Rape allegations must be taken seriously, and the young woman at the center of this case is entitled to be heard. Nothing in our response is meant to diminish that or her,” Saland said in a statement. “However, Scott is not accused of rape and never has been. If Scott had seen Doe in duress, he would have taken action but he was not present when her alleged victimization occurred.”
Saland added that his client “participated in a group chat whose content was ugly and reprehensible, and he regrets it.” The crude comments are “not the same as taking part in a rape,” and drug use allegations against Kretzschmar are also false, he said.
Last month, Jane Doe sued the university, Kretzschmar and six other current or former students, alleging that what began as a consensual encounter escalated into hours of nonconsensual sexual activity. She alleges that even after she reported the incident and endured the Title IX investigation, the school and other institutions failed to do enough to protect her. (Title IX is a federal civil rights law that prohibits gender-based discrimination in educational settings that involve federal funding. As a result, U.S. colleges and universities are required to have internal processes for adjudicating claims of Title IX violations brought by their students.)
The Title IX process is usually not public, but records from the investigation were made public through Kretzschmar’s Article 78 proceeding, a lawsuit he initiated in state court after he exhausted his options at Cornell.
Lawyers for two of the accused men have denied wrongdoing, while the others have yet to release statements to NBC News. The Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus as a result of the allegations.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten defended his decision not to charge anyone this week, saying Jane Doe’s statement “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
Kretzschmar’s Article 78 proceeding, text messages and Jane Doe’s own statements show a more complicated reality.
Doe, then 20, alleges in a six-page statement to Cornell police that she arrived at Chi Phi after drinking heavily and initially entered an upstairs bedroom with two men she considered friends before things escalated. She told police she consumed ketamine for the first time that night and became increasingly impaired, drifting in and out of awareness as fraternity members filtered in and out of the room.
“You look like an operating human being. [...Y]ou don’t look dead or asleep necessarily. So lights are on, but nobody’s home. Your brain is not functioning at its proper level,” Doe said at a Title IX hearing in May, detailed in Kretzschmar’s court case.
Kretzschmar, however, described a far different scene when he briefly entered the room, saying in interviews with Title IX investigators that he saw nothing to suggest Jane Doe was incapacitated or in distress.
He “consistently stated in his interviews, documentary submissions, and at the hearing that he did not observe [Jane Doe] naked at any time nor partake in any drug use while in the alumni room” that night, according to the Title IX panel’s report.
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Cornell officials, in deciding to sanction Kretzschmar, noted in one filing that he“admitted he talked to someone about what was happening in the room and understood the person to say sexual activity was going on.”
Kretzschmar testified that he went into the room in part to “go down and check” because he heard from one of his brothers that the “free p----y” text was real and he wanted to see what was happening. He said he was also concerned about what may have been happening because of the odd announcement.
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“I shouldn’t have said it. And it is immature and a stupid text message for sure,” he said at the hearing, according to his court filings.
Doe, however, told campus police her experience was far more daunting. She told police she realized at some point that she had taken ketamine earlier and then did so again because she thought that “if I do Ketamine again maybe I will pass out. My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with Rape.”
The next morning, after one of the defendants dropped her home and she slept for a few hours, she learned that her night had become campus gossip, according to the six-page statement she gave to campus police.
In the days after her assault, Jane Doe continued to text at least one of the men, initially expressing distress over the way the encounter was being discussed on campus, according to messages NBC News obtained separately.
The Chi Phi member responded with reassurances and a spin on the situation, including around Nov. 7, when Jane Doe began to doubt that he and his fraternity friends were not the source of the gossip.
“I understand the regret, but personally I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of,” the Chi Phi member told her. “The only shameful thing is how this spread and how people won’t shut up about it-which just reflects poorly on them tbh.”
Jane Doe told the brother that she agreed “it’ll get better” and that “everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex and s--t is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common.”
Jane Doe’s attorney previously told NBC News that his client’s messages with the accused men show that she was “traumatized after the assaults and was trying to process what had occurred and get information about what happened to her and who was involved.”
“She was numb and in shock at the time,” he added. “She was struggling to accept that somebody that she believed was her friend would violate and dehumanize her. It is common that survivors initially cannot accept what happened to them.”
The texts also seem to show Jane Doe’s demeanor shift as she realizes something was wrong. In one message, she tells the fraternity member: “yall aren’t my friends. yall are covering your asses.”
Days later, the fraternity member asks Jane Doe whether she had anything to do with his “being labeled as an assaulter in the public eye,” which she denies, saying, “i do know people are changing the narrative because like in any sexual scenario w one woman and many men the woman was probably victim” and “i know there are rumors i was gang banged.”
The next day, Nov. 8, Jane Doe reported her allegations to campus police, saying in a final message to the man: “i think i’m done talking to you. i know you lied.”
Kretzschmar’s own testimony in the Title IX investigation showed that, even as he denied having participated in the incident, he later questioned whether he should have recognized that something might be wrong.
“I was sorry that maybe if it wasn’t consensual and she was victimized, I was sorry for not stopping it,” Kretzschmar said at a Title IX hearing in May. “And that I’m sorry I couldn’t tell if she was under the influence… just sorry that I felt like if something actually bad happened, I didn’t stop it.”
Ultimately, however, the Title IX investigative panel found that Kretzschmar understood that the Snapchat message he sent “indicated some kind of sexual situation involving a female” when he chose to enter the room and that the record supported its finding that he was responsible for attempted sexual exploitation.
The panel, however, did not find sufficient evidence that Kretzschmar took ketamine after it reviewed a November 2024 follicle drug test he provided independently. His punishments were focused on learning from the experience, according to documents filed in his subsequent lawsuit.
Kretzschmar had to write a reflection paper on “the specific circumstances for which he was found responsible,” along with “a detailed proposal for future University educational materials to train undergraduate students around the intersection of social media use and sexual harassment, as well as bystander intervention.”
He was ordered not to speak to Jane Doe for the duration of his time at Cornell and required to participate in a study at the Office of Civil Rights related to social media use, sexual harassment and bystander intervention. He was also required to help create educational programming for others about those issues.
Kretzschmar and his lawyers, however, argued in state court in Tompkins County that the process was fundamentally unfair, including because he was found responsible for an offense that was not listed in his initial set of administrative charges.
Among the arguments was that one of the panel members was in her car and driving during live testimony and distracted by other unrelated tasks throughout the testimony.
The judge who considered the challenge found it did not matter because the underlying theory was the same. In criminal court, state Supreme Court Justice Mark Masler wrote, lesser included charges are common.
“If a criminal defendant, whose liberty interests are at stake, maybe convicted of a lesser included offense with which he or she was not specifically indicted — including an attempt to commit the greater count — then the finding that petitioner was responsible for Attempted Sexual Exploitation cannot be considered to have been arbitrary and capricious,” Masler found.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. The hotline, run by the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN), can put you in contact with your local rape crisis center. You can also access RAINN’s online chat service at rainn.org/get-help.
Shayna Jacobs is a national reporter for NBC News digital.
Pilar Melendez is a news editor for NBC News Digital who has spent the last decade covering crime, justice, and national news.
