ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) — A former Cornell University student who alleges she was gang raped at a fraternity in 2024 received a text-message apology from one of the brothers soon afterward. After initially saying she didn't see what happened as illegal, she became convinced within weeks that she had been violated, according to a newspaper report citing records from the university's private investigation.
The documents, as described by The New York Times, trace the woman's shift from seeing the alleged encounter as a dismaying embarrassment to seeing it as a sexual assault — one she then reported to campus police, discussed with the university's internal investigators and is pursuing in a lawsuit filed in September. The case has roiled the Ivy League campus and has raised questions about why no criminal case was brought.
According to the Times’ report of records and statements gathered during the inquiry:
The day after the Oct. 19, 2024, party at the Chi Phi fraternity house, the woman got back to her room and told her roommates she'd taken ketamine — a powerful anesthetic sometimes used as a party drug — and had sex with multiple men. The roommates said that at that point, the woman didn't describe the events as rape or assault, but one roommate noted: “I don’t really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred,” the newspaper reported.
The following day, the woman got a text message from one of the men she would later accuse in her sexual assault lawsuit. He texted that he “just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night” and regretted that he and a fellow fraternity brother — also now a defendant in the woman's lawsuit — had been too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”
The woman texted back that “at the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal” and that she had liked being with the two men.
But by Oct. 23, 2024, she was growing distraught that word of the episode had spread around campus. Soon, she saw a post in an online forum about campus Greek life that asserted that Chi Phi brothers had gang raped a sophomore and should be reported.
“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” she later told investigators.
Over the days after that post, her tone became more aggrieved — “how could you let this happen?” — as she kept communicating with the first Chi Phi brother who'd texted her after the party. Still, she planned to attend the fraternity's Halloween Party, until she was disinvited.
On Nov. 3, 2024, she texted the man: “let’s be clear that 90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” saying she'd been given a lot of ketamine. While her memories were patchy, they included a humiliating, drug-laced sexual act, she wrote.
“I know that i told u i felt uncomfortable and i didn’t know anyone in the room,” she added.
She went to Cornell campus police five days later and spoke to them again on Nov. 14 and 15, 2024, telling them: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” according to a report by CBS New York, which said it obtained a transcript of her police interview.
Cornell's student government planned a public forum Thursday on sexual violence to allow students to demand “institutional accountability" and talk about their own experiences on campus.
Cornell has said it suspended the Chi Phi fraternity indefinitely and disciplined or expelled some students, but the university has declined to provide specifics, citing student privacy rules.
The local district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, declined at the time to bring any criminal charges, but this week said he would reopen the investigation based on new information in the woman’s lawsuit, which identifies her only by the pseudonym Jane Doe.
He has maintained the woman’s first account to police didn’t include allegations that she was drugged against her will, incapacitated beyond the ability to consent, or forced into sex. After CBS News this week revealed details from the police interview transcript, he told the network he'd never seen her detailed account and had relied instead on a statement written by a campus police officer and signed by the accuser.
She's suing seven men who she said participated in the assault, as well as the university, the fraternity, and others.
Lawyers for two of the men she is suing have denied they participated in a sexual assault. One said his client hadn't touched the woman or engaged in any drug use. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach the other men or their representatives have been unsuccessful.
Under pressure from the public and politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, the private university agreed Wednesday to bring in outside lawyers to independently investigate how it handled the woman’s allegations.
Students walk across the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Students walk across the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Shown is the the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
U.S. President Donald Trump says it's “possible” he may ramp up bombing of Iran after the Nov. 3 midterm elections and that he rejected Iran's latest peace offer because it's not good enough.
Fighting between Houthi rebels and government forces overnight stirred fears that the Iran-backed rebels may be advancing toward Taiz City in southwestern Yemen.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Thursday. Full coverage is available here.
Three ships that together carry over 7,000 sailors and 2,000 Marines are heading to the Middle East, a U.S. official said.
That includes the recently deployed USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group. It could mean three carriers are in the region as early as the end of October, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.
That would be an unusually high U.S. naval presence of more than 20,000 sailors and Marines and hundreds of aircraft. It comes as the war with Iran stretches past seven months. The Navy previously had three carriers in the Middle East in April -- the first time since 2003.
The USS George H.W. Bush and the USS George Washington are there now, along with the USS Boxer amphibious readiness group. The Pacific-based Washington had moved to the Middle East to relieve the long-deployed USS Abraham Lincoln.
—
By Konstantin Toropin
Trump said in a Time magazine interview published Thursday that he won't now accept proposals from Iran that “he wouldn't have approved a year ago.”
He left open the possibility of resuming bombing Iran after the Nov. 3 election. He refused to offer details, telling journalists, "I can’t tell you that because look, you know, you’re asking, where are you going to bomb?”
The U.S. president told Time magazine that he only heard about those reports on the same day that the Sept. 28 interview was conducted with Time reporters, adding “I can't imagine this.”
Trump said had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu been forewarned, “he would have done something about it" or "would have had people at least alert.”
An Israeli newspaper reported that Netanyahu was directly warned by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive just days before the militant group attacked on Oct. 7, 2023.
Netanyahu strongly rejected the report.
In the same Time magazine interview, Trump repeatedly avoided answering directly whether Netanyahu should be reelected in elections later this month.
Trump said that he's “not involved in politics anymore” and touted his own record on Israel.
But he said Netanyahu shouldn't be underestimated even if "people have written off Bibi many, many times, just like they’ve written off me many, many times.”
Of Netanyahu’s opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, Trump said: “I don’t hear bad things about him.”
The Trump administration on Thursday announced sanctions on Iran's automotive and rail industries in attempts to get the country to capitulate, citing entities based in Indonesia, the UAE and Germany, among other countries.
Two of Iran’s largest auto manufacturers, Iran Khodro Co. and SAIPA Iranian Automobile Manufacturing Co., were sanctioned alongside several foreign companies that provide auto parts and raw materials.
The actions by the U.S. Treasury come as Trump officials highlight how Iran's currency has fallen to new record lows. The administration credits the continued erosion of the Iranian economy to its months-long economic campaign and has no plans to cease the financial penalties anytime soon even as negotiations between the two countries have restarted.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels clashed with government forces overnight into Thursday in residential neighborhoods in eastern Taiz, located about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Mokha, which the Houthis seized last month.
A main road linking Taiz and Aden was cut off due to the latest clashes.
Al-Thawra Hospital, located a few kilometers from the clashes, received six bodies and 35 wounded people Thursday, according to hospital manager Abdelrahman al-Sabry.
The official told The Associated Press by phone Thursday the number of dead and wounded was similar to those in early September, when fighting was intense before clashes de-escalated.
Renewed violence in Yemen has killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands. The Houthis captured the strategic city of Mokha and a number of Red Sea islands last month, extending their reach to the key maritime waterway of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
It was the Houthis’ biggest land grab in years and ended a 2022 ceasefire that largely stopped major fighting in Yemen’s 12-year civil war.
Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis said Thursday the rebels targeted a power distribution station in the area of Medina two days earlier. The strike shut down a transformer, but didn't affect the power grid. The Houthis have yet to respond to the claim.
By Marzouk al-Jaberi and Fatma Khaled
Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Britain’s ambassador in Tehran on Thursday to “strongly protest” allegations by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham linking Iran to a sabotage plot at RAF Fairford, Iranian state television reported.
The ministry dismissed allegations that Iran was connected to the alleged plot as “baseless” and called on the British government to provide an official explanation and change its approach toward Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had also posted on X that the U.K. was "barking up the wrong tree.”
Netanyahu told Fox News Thursday that the suspect in the FlyDubai incident was an Omani national who got through a loophole in Israeli constraints barring pilots from countries like Oman that don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.
He said both countries are “interested in making sure this doesn’t happen again" and warned that “it might be attempted again because we have indications that Iran and its proxies are trying to conduct attacks against Israel and Israelis right now in this election season.”
This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
Passengers who experienced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, during a flight on FlyDubai plane, arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Tarek al-Salami, 7, who was displaced from the city of Mokha and is showing symptoms of malnutrition, sits on a bed while receiving treatment at a therapeutic feeding center in Buraiqa, on the western outskirts of Aden, Yemen, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik)
Israeli passengers who had been aboard a FlyDubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia are welcomed at the arrivals gate at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli passenger Haim Lazarovich, who experienced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, during a flight on FlyDubai plane, arrives at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayoun, with blood stains on his shirt, who was aboard a Flydubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, is welcomed at the arrivals gate at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Tomer Appelbaum)
