District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told ABC his office plans to bring the case before a grand jury. The original investigation into the alleged 2024 assault closed with no criminal charges filed.
Van Houten said the allegations laid out in the civil complaint were "dramatically different" from the statement the woman gave police two years ago, when she first reported the incident. That discrepancy is what pushed prosecutors to take another look.
The civil suit claims Cornell did not do enough to protect the woman from the alleged assault. For her, the reopened case offers a shot at criminal accountability that the first investigation didn't produce. Cornell now faces fresh scrutiny over how it handled reports of sexual violence on campus, as the lawsuit forces new questions about what the school knew and when.