Jane Doe in Cornell case said she realized she'd been raped after rumors spread, investigation transcript says

Newly obtained records are shedding more light on the Cornell University rape allegations case.

CBS News New York's Mahsa Saeidi obtained from a source a 565-page appendix to the school's Title IX investigation that took place in 2024. The documents include interviews with the alleged victim, identified as Jane Doe, six of the seven men named in the lawsuit, and 20 witnesses, including Jane Doe's sorority sister and roommates.

According to the records, Jane Doe's roommate said Doe came home the morning after the alleged assault, still wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the night before. The roommate said Jane Doe recounted what happened and was laughing at times.

"It was really shocking," the roommate said, according to the transcript. 

The roommate described Doe as "frenzied" and said she was "not really understanding the gravity of what she was saying."

The records say Doe did not initially call it rape and allegedly told another roommate, "If anybody asks you about this, say it didn't happen. It did not happen."

Jane Doe's sorority sister said rumors started immediately, describing them as "[a] lot to do against her and slut shaming." According to that witness, an online post joked that the Chi Phi brothers were "gang banging."  

Doe later told investigators, "That's kind of when I came to the realization that I had been gang raped."

According to the records, she also told investigators she felt "like bait. I felt like lions around me."

The lawsuit names seven men and makes different allegations against them. Four are specifically accused of rape.

In the records, one of the men described how the story was recounted inside the frat house.

"Some people thought it was hilarious," the man said. "Other people were very much like, 'You're disgusting. You should be ashamed.'"

A second man described fearing his name would be publicly released after Cornell sent out a campus crime alert.

"People were calling me a rapist," he told investigators. He said he spent nights "praying that when I woke up, my name would not come out."

According to the records, one of the accused men told investigators, "I was sorry that maybe, if it wasn't consensual and she was victimized, I was sorry for not stopping it."  

One of the accused, Scott Kretzschmar, said he was in the room for "tops, five minutes," did not see Jane Doe naked and did not do drugs. Kretzschmar told a Title IX investigator he asked Jane Doe if she was OK.

He says she responded, "I'm good," and says "she didn't seem inebriated at all."

Jane Doe alleged Kretzschmar snorted ketamine off her body, which his attorney Jeremy Saland denies. Saland says a drug test didn't show ketamine. CBS News New York has not independently reviewed that test.  

"The process that Cornell had was absolutely biased, in my personal experience. It was biased in favor of her, not these young boys," Saland said.

Cornell says its Title IX process lasted months and resulted in sanctions, which included suspensions and expulsions. The records do not show how the panel weighed the accounts from Jane Doe, the men and witnesses.