Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) stood before a town hall crowd in Ithaca on Sunday and described a Cornell case in these exact words: "Seven men drugged and gang raped a 20-year-old woman." She said they lured her into a fraternity house, drugged her with ketamine, posted to a group chat that she was incapacitated, then "took turns gang raping her for seven hours." She added that Cornell's response was to expel two of them and have the rest "write essays as their form of punishment," and called it evidence that "the culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected" at elite institutions nationwide.

Here's what Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten says about the same case, on the record, this week: his office reviewed the alleged victim's original sworn statement back in November 2024 and determined the facts in it did not support criminal charges under New York law. Her own statement at the time, according to Van Houten, "did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped." It described the drug use and sexual conduct as "voluntary, conscious, and consensual."

Those two accounts cannot both be the full story.

A civil complaint filed last month by the woman, now identified in court filings as Jane Doe, does........

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