A former Cornell University student who says seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity drugged her with ketamine and raped her for hours in October 2024 has sued the university, alleging it let some of the accused men soften their punishment by writing essays. The complaint identifies her as Jane Doe.

"What happened to me was horrific and deeply disturbing," she told The Cornell Daily Sun. "Almost two years later, I still carry the weight of its impact every day and night."

Jane Doe said in a statement that she went to Cornell "with great hope and promise for a good education". "What I experienced from those who raped me in the fraternity was the worst experience of my life. I was brutalized and it injured me physically but perhaps more importantly, emotionally," she said. "I want to recover from this trauma but it is extremely difficult. It affects every aspect of my life. It will haunt me and be part of me the rest of my life."

Thomas Giuffra, her lawyer, said: "She's not in college anymore because of this. She's barely hanging on for what these guys did to her."

Her complaint says she has suffered dissociation, depression and anxiety since the assault and needs continuing treatment.

No one has been arrested or charged. The Tompkins County District Attorney's Office said it conducted "a thorough review of the police investigation" and found "insufficient evidence to support criminal charges". Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney, reopened the case after the lawsuit was filed and said his office intends to present it to a grand jury "with Jane Doe's cooperation".

Giuffra said: "Not one of these guys was arrested. Not one. That I can tell you for a fact."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York, told about 1,200 people at a town hall in downtown Ithaca on 27 September: "She had to lose her education, and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward. Never again." Florence Pugh, the actor, wrote the same day that she was "enraged by schools protecting boys, in fear of their futures being wrecked".

Jane Doe's 101-page complaint, filed on 16 September in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, names Cornell, the seven men, the local and national Chi Phi organisations, the chapter's Alpha Beta House Corporation, Tri Delta sorority entities, Moonies Bar and Nightclub in Ithaca and a former chapter president. The complaint alleges that each owed her a duty of care and breached it.

Giuffra said: "There were so many people that could have prevented it and they didn't. I've never seen anything like it."

Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee and Gillio Lopes, members of the class of 2027, are four of the seven men named in the complaint. The others are Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, class of 2026, and Diego Sarabia, class of 2025. None of the seven has been arrested or charged with any crime, and the allegations against them have not been tested in any court. The district attorney's office declined to bring charges after its first review and reopened the case in September 2026. Kretzschmar denies the allegations through his lawyer, Jeremy Saland, who said: "Scott never sexually assaulted or even touched the plaintiff in any way. Period." Saland said that a hair follicle test showed Kretzschmar had no ketamine in his system, and that Jane Doe and her lawyer had the result before the suit was filed. Norris, who acknowledged sending a Snapchat message quoted in the complaint, said in a statement through his lawyer: "I did not participate in any sexual activity or drug use. I was not found responsible by Cornell for any of the accusations involving sexual activity and drug use for which others received serious consequences. I thoughtlessly engaged in Snapchat and briefly stopped in the room where misconduct happened but not when it happened." The other five have not commented publicly, and the Sun could not reach them.

Orazio Petito, the former chapter president, is also a defendant. The complaint does not accuse him of taking part in the assault, and he has not been charged with any crime. Petito did not respond to the Sun's request for comment.

Cornell held the hearings in Jane Doe's case in May 2025, three months after the Department of Education directed universities to apply the Title IX rule issued in 2020, which narrowed what universities must investigate. The hearings came in the months the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights lost roughly half its staff, and two and a half years after Cornell's own police had warned of druggings at fraternity-affiliated houses. Her lawsuit was filed 12 years after the columnist Jessica Valenti asked whether US fraternities should be banned.

The night of 19 October 2024

Jane Doe, then 20, drank at the Tri Delta sorority house and then went to an event at Moonies, where the complaint says she was served alcohol although she was under the legal drinking age. She had consumed about 10 standard drinks in three hours by the time she reached the Chi Phi house at about 11 p.m. to visit a friend who was a member, the complaint says.

Moonies disputes the underage-service claim. A representative told the Sun that its bartenders "only served guests who had wristbands on their hands" and called her account of being served there "completely inaccurate". A Tri Delta representative did not respond to the Sun's request for comment.

Her friend and another fraternity member gave her more alcohol and pressured her into snorting a substance they described as ketamine, along with marijuana and high-proof liquor, the complaint alleges. It says she was then sexually assaulted while "incapable of consent". She was propositioned for sex while too intoxicated to understand what was happening and was then made to snort more ketamine, the complaint says.

At 1:42 a.m. one of the men posted to a Snapchat group called "Chi Phi Actives" that there was "free p***y" upstairs, the complaint alleges. One reply called it "crazy work". Another said members could "walk in and whip it out". The complaint says the message "encouraged other XI CHAPTER members to join in on the gang rape of plaintiff", and a photograph of part of the chat is attached to the filing.

More men came upstairs after the message went out and pressured her into taking more ketamine, according to the filing. The complaint says she was assaulted in several rooms, lost consciousness during the assaults and was left unconscious at about 5:45 a.m.

On 20 October she found bruises on her body and began to remember parts of the night, according to the complaint.

The fraternity

The complaint describes what it calls a ketamine culture at the Chi Phi house and says police responded to a drug-related incident there about a week before the assault. It alleges that Cornell and Chi Phi knew or should have known of that risk, and that Cornell knew of wider concerns about drugging and sexual assault in Greek life before October 2024.

Tri Delta's house mother knew Jane Doe had been drinking and still went with her to Moonies, the complaint alleges, and the sorority's designated sober monitors did not intervene. The suit accuses Tri Delta's local and national organisations of failing to supervise her.

Chi Phi's national organisation said in a statement that sexual violence is "fundamentally incompatible with the fraternity's principles", that it "unequivocally condemns sexual violence" and that its members must "respect the safety and dignity of others". It called for a fair legal process and declined to discuss the specific claims, citing the pending lawsuit.

Chi Phi's national office suspended its University of North Carolina chapter from all activities on 2 December 2013 over alleged alcohol and hazing violations. David Shannon, a Chi Phi pledge at the university, had died in October 2012 after falling about 40 feet at a concrete plant with a blood alcohol level of 0.22, and Carrboro police investigated whether hazing played a part in his death.

Franklin & Marshall College suspended its Chi Phi chapter for five years in spring 2019 after finding it responsible for hazing, including forcing pledges to drink large quantities of alcohol, and for breaking the college's alcohol and drug policies. Chapter alumni ignored the college's cease-and-desist orders during the suspension. Nine new members were initiated in October 2023, and the chapter is barred from housing for at least three years.

Indiana University put its Chi Phi chapter under a voluntary agreement from 23 August to 17 December 2023 to resolve charges of alcohol violations, endangering others and non-compliance, suspended its recruitment over hazing from 19 August to 28 October 2025 and suspended the chapter on 19 December 2025. The university ordered it to cease all activities and disband.

Cornell's public hazing reports list no findings against its Chi Phi chapter in the four academic years reviewed for this article: 2016 to 2017, 2018 to 2019, 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025. The same reports record that Cornell suspended Delta Phi for five years after finding that, between 28 January and 6 March 2024, members gave alcohol to underage new members and sent them messages telling them to engage in sexual activity, record it and send a video. Theta Tau was suspended through spring 2027 after cocaine was provided to new and current members at an after-party in autumn 2023.

Cornell's warning in 2022

Cornell University Police issued crime alerts in early November 2022 describing at least four incidents between 24 September and 3 November in which students who had drunk little or no alcohol became incapacitated at parties at off-campus residences affiliated with registered fraternities. At least four students reported exposure to Rohypnol between 28 October and 3 November at 800 University Avenue. A sexual assault was reported at about 4:45 a.m. on 6 November on Thurston Avenue.

The Interfraternity Council's executive board and chapter presidents, governing more than 30 chapters, suspended all fraternity functions on 6 November 2022. Cornell extended the suspension to the end of the autumn semester, including formals.

Martha Pollack, then Cornell's president, and Ryan Lombardi, vice president for student and campus life, wrote to the campus on 7 November 2022: "All found responsible will be held accountable."

George Desdunes, a second-year student, died in February 2011 after a hazing incident linked to Cornell's Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter, and Antonio Tsialas, a first-year student, was found dead in Fall Creek Gorge in October 2019 after attending a Phi Kappa Psi party.

The Interfraternity Council lifted its ban on 2 February 2023 with new rules: sexual violence prevention training from Consent Ed, a peer accountability model with student leaders monitoring events, a coat room near each entrance and reinforced requirements on wristbands, guest lists and sober monitors. Jenny Krush, a student, told the Sun she doubted the measures would hold over time.

No finding, charge or disciplinary outcome from the 2022 investigations has been made public.

The university

Jane Doe reported the assault to Cornell University Police on 8 November 2024. Cornell placed the Xi chapter of Chi Phi and the seven men on temporary suspension the same day. The university's public alert gave the date of the assault as 25 October; her complaint gives 19 October.

Michael Kotlikoff, then interim president, wrote on 26 November 2024 that the behaviour described in the allegations was "abhorrent and cannot be tolerated within our community".

Cornell had issued the interim suspensions "to protect the immediate physical health and safety of all students", the Sun's editorial board wrote. The board wrote that the seven men were later allowed back on campus and that Cornell has never explained what changed.

Cornell's Office of Civil Rights and its Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards opened a Title IX investigation in January 2025, the month a federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden administration's Title IX rule nationwide. At least 12 hearings were held between 2 May and 29 May 2025, according to the complaint.

Marla Love, Cornell's dean of students, told the Sun in December 2025, more than a year after Jane Doe's report: "The investigation continues and still in process, and that's about all I can say."

Two of the seven men were expelled, according to the lawsuit. The others received lesser sanctions, including suspensions, workshops or written essays. Suspended students were offered the chance to mitigate their conduct "by submitting essays to Cornell", the complaint says. It says Cornell "failed to discipline or remove the student defendants".

Jane Doe was never told the outcome of the investigation into her own report, the Sun's editorial board wrote.

Kyle Kimball, Cornell's vice president for university relations, wrote in a statement on 21 September that the two offices "investigated and adjudicated the allegations consistent with university policies" and that the Xi chapter "remains barred from our campus". Federal privacy law prevents Cornell from disclosing "any other disciplinary response", he wrote.

Her complaint accuses Cornell of failing to discipline the men "all the while sheltering them from speaking to law enforcement, and silencing victims". It describes Cornell's conduct as "so outrageous" that it "exceeds the reasonable bounds of decency as measured by what the average member of the community would tolerate". The suit brings claims of negligence, breach of contract, sexual assault and battery and violations of New York's Human Rights Law. It seeks damages at a jury trial.

The Clery Act

Federal law requires universities to tell a student who reports sexual assault, in writing, the result of any disciplinary proceeding. Congress added the duty to the Clery Act through the campus provisions of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which Barack Obama signed on 7 March 2013. The Department of Education's 2015 guidance on the final regulations requires that "the accuser and the accused receive simultaneous notification, in writing, of the result of the proceeding and any available appeal procedures". The same guidance says compliance "does not constitute a violation" of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the student privacy law.

The Senate passed the 2013 reauthorization on 12 February 2013 by 78 votes to 22, and all 22 votes against came from Republicans. The House passed it on 28 February by 286 votes to 138. All 138 votes against were cast by Republicans, after the House rejected a narrower Republican version.

Betsy DeVos, Trump's education secretary, kept the notification duty in the Title IX regulation she issued on 6 May 2020. Section 106.45(b)(7)(iii) reads: "The recipient must provide the written determination to the parties simultaneously." The same regulation narrowed the conduct universities must investigate and limited it to their own programmes and activities in the United States.

DeVos's department rescinded its 265-page Clery Act handbook on 9 October 2020 and replaced it with a 13-page appendix, citing Trump's 2019 executive order on agency guidance documents. The appendix removed the handbook's explanations and examples for each crime category, dropped its guidance on the public property near campus that universities must count and narrowed which employees count as campus security authorities, the staff required to pass on reports of crime.

Republican attorneys general from Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia sued to block the Biden administration's 2024 Title IX rule, and a federal judge vacated it nationwide on 9 January 2025. The Trump administration directed universities back to the 2020 rule on 3 February 2025.

Trump signed an executive order on 20 March 2025 directing the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to close the Department of Education to the extent the law allows. The department is the agency that enforces the Clery Act, with fines of up to $71,545 per violation from 21 January 2025, and Congress has not abolished it.

The White House's budget for the 2026 fiscal year proposed cutting programme funding for the Justice Department's Office on Violence Against Women by 29 per cent, to $505.5m, and folding it into the Office of Justice Programs. The proposal deleted the legal requirement that the office be "a separate and distinct office". The office administers the federal grant programme for reducing sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence and stalking on campus.

The privacy law Kimball cited does not bar public disclosure in every case. The Department of Education's student privacy office says universities may disclose the final results of a disciplinary proceeding when they have found that a student violated rules concerning what the law calls "a crime of violence or a non-forcible sex offense", provided they do not identify the victim or witnesses without consent. The law permits that disclosure and does not require it.

Cornell has not said publicly whether Jane Doe received a written determination.

The task force

Kimball's statement says Cornell launched its Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault "shortly after this incident". The task force was created on 6 February 2025, three months after Jane Doe reported the assault. Its co-chairs were Love and Rachel Dunifon, dean of the College of Human Ecology.

Love told the Sun in December 2025, after the task force missed the summer 2025 date set for its report: "The charge was never for us to solve the problem." Dunifon told the paper the task force was taking a public health approach to "the climate and the culture here at Cornell" and was not charged with rewriting university policy.

Cornell received the task force's report in March 2026. The university says several recommendations are in place and others are in development under an implementation committee.

Cornell's Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct, released on 4 November 2025, found 35 per cent of undergraduate women reported what the survey terms "nonconsensual sexual contact", up from 23 per cent in 2023. The response rate fell to 15 per cent from 36 per cent, which limits comparison between the two years. Across all respondents, 49 per cent reported harassment and 15 per cent reported sexual contact without consent, figures that a Sun analysis found far exceed the incidents listed in the Annual Security Report that the Clery Act requires Cornell to publish.

Fraternity locations accounted for 20 per cent of assaults against undergraduate women in the survey, Caitlin Gallagher, a senior, wrote in a Sun column on 3 March 2026.

The students

Jane Doe told the Sun that the response of her fellow students deepened the harm. "What I experienced was already devastating, but that pain was compounded by being criticized and ostracized at a time when I needed compassion, support and care the most," she said.

Carlin Reyen, a student columnist, wrote in the Sun on 18 November 2024 that nobody enters the Title IX system "who is not serious about their assault". She called on Cornell to stop fearing the loss of alumni donors.

Activists calling themselves Riot Moon smashed windows and spray-painted the Chi Phi and Sigma Alpha Mu houses on 11 November 2024, three days after the university alert. A letter left by the group said: "We keep us safe by any means necessary."

Jon Yeung, then president of the Interfraternity Council, wrote that the council offered "our most sincere sympathies to the survivor(s)" and backed the university's decisions.

The Sun's editorial board, made up of students, wrote on 21 September: "Cornell has failed to protect its students." The board wrote that the public knew nothing of the case for 23 months, until the civil complaint was filed. "Only those who perpetrate sexual violence benefit from its concealment," it wrote. The board called on Cornell to publish the standard it uses to lift interim suspensions in sexual assault cases and to tell complainants the outcome of their investigations.

Reaction and Cornell's reply

Ocasio-Cortez told the Ithaca town hall, which More Perfect University hosted under the title "Students vs. Billionaires", that Jane Doe "lost her education because you can't stay in school when something like that happens to you". The audience booed when she described the sanctions Cornell imposed, the Sun reported.

Ocasio-Cortez said: "When I read what happened at Cornell, those men posted in a group chat. That means it was normal to them, that means it was acceptable to them." "This is a culture, this is norms, these are practices, and what we must do is understand that we cannot protect those spaces anymore." She said: "The culture of rape, sexual assault and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States, including Cornell University... it has got to stop."

Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X: "In 2024, 7 men drugged and gang raped a 20 year old woman. They lured her in to a fraternity house, drugged her with ketamine, posted to a group chat that she was incapacitated, and 7 men took turns gang raping her for 7 hours. This was reported to Cornell and they expelled 2 of them, and made the rest write essays. The culture of sexual assault is protected in elite institutions across the US. It has got to stop." The complaint says Jane Doe went to the house to visit a friend who was a member, and that the assault ended at about 5:45 a.m. None of the seven has been charged, and Cornell denies that essays were anyone's only sanction.

Pugh asked in her Instagram post on 27 September: "What about the life that those girls then have to endure, with the knowledge that his reputation is more precious than her truth?" She called Jane Doe "so unbelievably powerful" and wrote: "Know that women everywhere are here to hold you and help you on your healing journey."

Pugh wrote in the same post that "we need our men to be as horrified and as sickened as us". Hours later she wrote that she and some of her followers could not see it. "Am I being censored for talking about rape?" she wrote. "Instagram, at least we can see what side you're on. Don't protect rapists." Meta said it had applied a label that it uses on posts describing sexual violence, then removed it after deciding the post "qualified for a newsworthy allowance".

Toby Morton, a former South Park writer, set up a website naming the seven men and wrote that he would add photographs and "members of the Cornell Administration who failed miserably". He wrote that he now had photographs of the men and was "slowly finding out where you work". None of the seven has been charged with any crime. Van Houten said his office had received threats since the lawsuit was filed.

Kimball wrote in a second statement on 28 September: "Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false." A panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over several days and issued sanctions "including expulsions and suspensions", and "none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement", the statement said. "A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault," it said. The statement said the university supports the district attorney's decision "to provide an opportunity for the victim's story... to be heard by a criminal grand jury".

Cornell's second statement did not say how many students were expelled or suspended, why the interim suspensions were lifted or whether Jane Doe was given a written result of the proceeding.

The criminal file

Van Houten said that the allegations in the civil complaint are "dramatically different" from Jane Doe's first statement to police. "She never says that she was drugged without her knowledge. She admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge. She does not allege that she was forced to engage in any acts. She does not say that she was physically helpless or unconscious or incapacitated at any point during the time at the fraternity house," he said. His office's statement of 28 September said: "Jane Doe's statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual." The complaint alleges that two members pressured her into taking the drugs and that she was assaulted while "incapable of consent".

Van Houten said that his office relied on the Cornell University Police investigation and did not "independently investigate" the allegations, which he said is common practice in upstate New York counties. "We want to reexamine whether there's additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct," he said.

Van Houten said in a statement on 28 September that "the community outrage stemming from the incomplete news and social media coverage requires that I provide an answer to why the investigation resulted in a lack of criminal charges". "While the District Attorney's Office is often called upon to provide investigation support to police agencies, we do not conduct parallel independent investigations of cases alongside police investigations," he said. "The police investigate crimes. The District Attorney's Office prosecutes crimes." He said Jane Doe had not said in her first sworn statement that she was gang-raped or drugged, that her lawyer had never contacted him about reconsidering the decision and that his office had received calls, voicemails and emails since the lawsuit was filed, some of them threats. "Seeking justice sometimes requires us to reconsider or reopen cases when we are provided with additional evidence," he said.

Giuffra said that the police report was "not materially different" from the complaint. "It is challenging for me to understand how a thorough criminal investigation could have been conducted when she never spoke with anyone other than the officer who took her original complaint," he said. "Other than her initial contact with Cornell Police, she was not contacted by investigators from the Tompkins County District Attorney's Office or any investigators trained in interviewing rape survivors." He said "opportunities to fully investigate these crimes were lost".

Giuffra said: "An average University Police officer would not have these skills. It would be the role of a specially trained detective or district attorney." Van Houten said the fraternity group chat was never provided to his office. Giuffra said Cornell University Police had it in 2024: "My client went to the Cornell University Police because a crime was committed... they were given the group chat inviting the members of the fraternity to rape my client."

Giuffra said: "While I do not care for the attempt to blame Ms. Doe for these failures, we appreciate and support any efforts to prosecute the parties. If the District Attorney's office is now considering prosecution, I believe that it is a step in the right direction, albeit a late one."

Saland said that the district attorney's office "filed no charges against [him] because what she alleged did not happen". He said before the reopening that the criminal investigation had ended with no charges against his client, and told the Sun that he held documents including the plaintiff's own words, statements from other parties and scientific evidence that show the claims are false.

Saland said: "This is a situation where there was an ugly Snapchat." He said: "But that doesn't make my client a rapist."

Police arrested Wolfgang Ballinger, president of Cornell's Psi Upsilon chapter, in February 2016 on charges of first-degree attempted rape and first-degree criminal sexual act over an assault on a woman in a fraternity bedroom, and Van Houten's office prosecuted him. He pleaded guilty in February 2017 to a misdemeanour of forcible touching and was sentenced on 11 April 2017 to six years' probation, with no requirement to register as a sex offender. "Even a president of a top fraternity is not allowed to violate whoever they please without permission," the woman said in court. "I'm disappointed that Mr. Ballinger never expressed real remorse or made a statement of responsibility at any point," Van Houten said.

New York abolished the statute of limitations for first-degree rape in 2006, so a grand jury can hear the case more than two years after the assault.

Should we ban frats?

Jessica Valenti asked in a newspaper column on 24 September 2014 whether fraternities should be banned, and rested the case on three numbers. Fraternity men were three times more likely to rape. Sorority women were 74 per cent more likely to be raped. One in five women would be sexually assaulted during four years at college. One of those figures comes from a study that was not designed to measure fraternities, one carries no published source and the third has no current national equivalent because the survey behind it has not been repeated since 2019.

The 300 per cent

John Foubert wrote in an opinion piece on 9 October 2013 that "fraternity men were three times more likely to commit rape than other men on college campuses", and Valenti's column linked those words to that piece. The study behind the sentence is Foubert, Newberry and Tatum, "Behavior Differences Seven Months Later: Effects of a Rape Prevention Program", published in the NASPA Journal in 2007. It followed 565 first-year men at one unnamed public university in the southeastern United States and recorded fraternity membership as a secondary variable. Its purpose was to test a one-hour session called The Men's Program, which Foubert designed and which his nonprofit One in Four sold to institutions.

Eight per cent of the men who joined a fraternity reported committing a sexually coercive act during their first year, against 2.5 per cent of those who did not join. Rates before college were statistically indistinguishable between the two groups. Among fraternity joiners who saw the intervention the rate was 6 per cent, against 10 per cent among joiners who did not.

Mary Koss, author of the survey instrument most campus prevalence research still uses, has cautioned against extrapolating a single-institution finding into a case for abolition, and said peer support and alcohol use are the stronger predictors.

Foubert's 2020 paper in Violence Against Women found that repeat perpetrators accounted for more than 87 per cent of alcohol-involved assaults among 12,624 men at 49 institutions. It was a secondary analysis of the CORE Alcohol and Other Drug Survey, an instrument that asked about "taking advantage of someone sexually while under the influence of alcohol" and was never built to measure rape perpetration.

Valenti's column gives the 74 per cent figure with no hyperlink and no citation, unlike the fraternity figure beside it. The study usually credited for it, Minow and Einolf's "Sorority Participation and Sexual Assault Risk" in Violence Against Women in 2009, is paywalled, and the secondary accounts of it do not agree with each other or with the column: a University of Rhode Island white paper describes Greek-affiliated women as nearly six times more likely to be raped, and a Civic Research Institute chapter reports 29 per cent of sorority women assaulted against 7 per cent of non-members. None of the accessible sources gives a figure of 74 per cent.

Kingree and Thompson, following 718 first-year women, found sorority members reported more alcohol misuse, more sexual partners and higher rates of both moderate and severe victimisation, with number of partners mediating the association.

Murnen and Kohlman's meta-analysis of 29 studies and 57 effect sizes, published in Sex Roles in 2007, found fraternity membership moderately associated with rape-supportive attitudes and more weakly associated with self-reported sexually aggressive behaviour, with effect sizes varying by institution size and study quality.

Hoxmeier and Zapp analysed survey responses from 262,634 college men in a study published in Violence Against Women in 2022. They found fraternity status significantly associated with sexual assault perpetration both before and during college, and found both perpetration history and fraternity affiliation associated with lower willingness to intervene in violence.

One in five

The Campus Sexual Assault Study by Krebs and colleagues, funded by the National Institute of Justice and published in 2007, surveyed 5,446 undergraduate women at two large public universities with a 42 per cent response rate. It found 19.8 per cent of senior women reported completed or attempted sexual assault since entering college, a category that includes forced touching. Restricted to unwanted penetration the figure was 14.3 per cent, closer to one in seven than one in five.

The Association of American Universities conducted campus climate surveys in 2015 and 2019. The 2019 wave covered 33 institutions and 181,752 respondents out of 830,936 sampled. Across all students and genders, 13.0 per cent reported sexual contact by physical force or while unable to consent since enrolling. At the 21 schools that took part in both waves, the rate for undergraduate women was 26.4 per cent, three percentage points higher than in 2015.

The AAU has conducted no third wave, and the nearest successor is the Higher Education Sexual Misconduct and Awareness survey, administered by the contractor Westat at 10 of the original AAU institutions between February and May 2024, with 42,133 completed responses from a frame of 180,323 and a response rate of 23.4 per cent. It found 18.9 per cent of undergraduate women reported sexual contact by force or while unable to consent since enrolling, and 7.9 per cent within that school year alone. The 10 institutions are a smaller and more selective set than the 2019 sample, so the drop from 26.4 to 18.9 is not a trend.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new national prevalence figures in December 2025 from fieldwork conducted between September 2023 and September 2024: 45.1 per cent of women in the United States reported lifetime contact sexual violence and 21 per cent reported completed or attempted rape. The brief carries no age breakdown for women of college age, and the CDC states twice in its own documents that the wave cannot be compared with earlier ones because the survey moved from telephone dialling to address-based sampling and from interviewer administration to web self-completion.

Reports of what federal campus crime data calls "forcible sex offenses", a category covering rape and fondling, rose on US campuses from 2.2 per 10,000 full-time-equivalent students in 2011 to 7.5 in 2021, or 10,400 incidents, which was 44 per cent of all reported on-campus crime that year. The most recent edition of the National Center for Education Statistics compilation, published in 2024, gives 2021 as its latest data year, although institution-level Clery submissions have continued and the Department of Education was collecting 2024 and 2026 survey cycles.

Fraternity suspensions

Michael Topper matched incident-level university police crime logs to 44 temporary university-wide suspensions of fraternity activity involving alcohol at 37 universities between 2014 and 2019, in a paper published in the Journal of Human Resources in 2026. Alcohol offences fell 26 per cent while a suspension was in force. Weekend sexual assault reports fell 29 per cent, which Topper describes as suggestive evidence. He found no evidence of lasting change once a suspension was lifted.

No published study has examined the effect of a permanent ban, because in the 12 years since Valenti's column no US university has imposed one.

Protests in 2021

A 17-year-old reported on 25 August 2021 that she had been sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old member of Phi Gamma Delta at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Chancellor Ronnie Green suspended the chapter immediately and confirmed a police investigation. Students protested outside the house nightly. On 12 October 2021 the university suspended the chapter through 2026, on a finding of alcohol-related conduct violations that did not address the reported sexual assault, and the national fraternity pulled the charter. No arrest was made and no charge was filed. The university announced on 1 July 2025 that the chapter would return, with recruitment resuming that August and full reinstatement in 2026.

More than 300 students protested outside the Theta Chi house at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in September 2021 over allegations that women had been drugged and assaulted there, and the university withheld recognition pending investigation. No criminal charge or final disciplinary finding has been reported since.

Northwestern University suspended all Interfraternity Council social and recruitment activity in September 2021 and opened what it called a full investigation into drugging and assault reports at Alpha Epsilon Pi and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The criminal investigation concluded in November 2021. On 5 May 2022 Northwestern closed its own investigation without action on the drugging allegations, placing both chapters on group disciplinary probation for other violations and restricting alcohol at one.

The University of Southern California suspended Sigma Nu in October 2021 over reports of possible drug-facilitated sexual assaults, and protests spread to other chapters. By 24 October 2022 the university had completed 10 investigations across five council chapters, which produced no-violation findings, sanctions including expulsion and voluntary alternative resolutions. USC said it was not aware of any criminal charges arising from those cases.

Purdue cancelled fraternity events in autumn 2021 after a series of reported assaults at parties, and sororities cancelled joint events. A federal jury found on 23 September 2022 in Nancy Roe v. Purdue University that the university had discriminated against and retaliated against a student who reported an assault by a fraternity member, and that its conduct was malicious or in reckless disregard of her rights, awarding her $10,000.

About 1,000 people protested at the University of Iowa in late August 2021 after a rape allegation naming the Phi Gamma Delta chapter, and a petition drew more than 70,000 signatures. Carson Steffen was charged with first-degree harassment, an aggravated misdemeanour, for sharing a Snapchat photograph of the September 2020 incident. Steffen was not charged with sexual assault. The harassment charge was dismissed on 22 October 2024 at the request of the complainant, Makéna Solberg, while she pursued civil claims. Her suits against Jacob Meloan and Broc Hawkins were dismissed with prejudice in 2024, and she settled with Steffen in November 2024 for a sum that was not disclosed.

Thousands of students at the University of Western Ontario walked out in mid-September 2021 after multiple reports of assaults and druggings, including at the Medway-Sydenham Hall residence. London Police Service said on 1 October 2021 that after contacting more than 600 students it was unable to substantiate the residence reports. Arrests followed four separate formal complaints from Western students that same week, and the university released no names or case status. A woman taken to hospital after four or five drinks at a Zeta Psi party in January 2022 tested positive for an opioid she had not taken; police and the university both confirmed investigations in April 2022 and no charge or finding has been reported.

Court cases

Kyle Clampitt, a former Dartmouth lacrosse player, was convicted on 31 January 2025 on 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault over an attack on the roof of the Delta Theta Chi house on 23 and 24 April 2022, and acquitted on two strangulation-related counts. He was charged in August 2023, 16 months after the assault.

Connor Delp, a former Indiana University footballer charged with rape, sexual battery and battery over an alleged incident on 11 November 2022, had the charges dismissed on 13 June 2025 because he had not been tried within a year of arrest. A federal civil suit against Delp, the university and IU Health continued.

Noah Apgar was charged with five counts of rape, one of strangulation and one of criminal confinement after two women reported separate rapes to Indiana University police in September 2024. A judge dismissed six of the seven counts, leaving one felony rape count. That count ended in a hung jury and a mistrial on 24 August 2026 after eight hours of deliberation, and Monroe County prosecutors set a retrial for 14 September 2026. No verdict from a retrial had been reported by 27 September.

Jacob Walter Anderson, president of the Phi Delta Theta chapter at Baylor University, was indicted on four counts of sexual assault over a party in February 2016. He pleaded to a lesser charge in December 2018 and received deferred probation and a fine, with no jail and no place on the sex offender register.

Eastern Michigan University settled roughly two dozen Title IX claims over its handling of sexual assault reports for $6.85m, confirmed on 9 February 2024, under a confidentiality agreement that let officials decline to disclose the terms. The chapters Sigma Kappa, Theta Chi and Delta Tau Delta had settled separately in 2022.

Fraternity bans

Swarthmore College's two fraternities voted to disband permanently on 2 May 2019 after internal documents referring to a "rape attic" leaked, and the college has not recognised a Greek organisation since. Williams banned fraternities in 1962, Colby in 1984 and Middlebury in 1991, and Amherst closed the loophole for underground chapters in 2014.

Harvard imposed sanctions in 2016 barring members of single-gender social organisations from campus leadership positions, athletic captaincies and fellowship endorsements, a policy adopted partly because those clubs showed disproportionately high assault rates. President Lawrence Bacow rescinded the sanctions on 30 June 2020, citing the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County two weeks earlier. Judge Nathaniel Gorton had already found that Harvard's policy, though adopted to counter sex discrimination, was itself an instance of discrimination based on sex.

Duke delayed fraternity recruitment to sophomore year and restricted fraternity housing to juniors and seniors on 4 March 2021, and seven fraternities disaffiliated from the Interfraternity Council to avoid the new rules, leaving four affiliated chapters. Two Duke sororities had voted to disband in 2020 and their national organisations refused to let them.

Vanderbilt's Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic membership fell 54 and 57 per cent respectively between spring and autumn 2020, average sorority chapter size dropping from 138.9 to 59.9. American University went from 1,519 Greek members in spring 2020 to 582 in autumn 2021, and a spring 2022 referendum found 46 per cent of students opposed to social Greek life continuing, with no administrative action following. First-round sorority recruitment at Brown fell from 290 attendees in 2019 to 82 in 2022 and had rebounded across four chapters by spring 2024, with 16 Greek organisations active.

Wesleyan's requirement that residential fraternities admit women, the measure Valenti wrote about, went to court. The alumni body behind Delta Kappa Epsilon won a jury award of $386,000 in June 2017 under Connecticut's unfair trade practices statute. The Connecticut Supreme Court reversed that verdict unanimously on 5 March 2021 and remanded for a possible new trial. The house remained closed to undergraduates.

The National Panhellenic Conference reported 375,592 active undergraduate members across 26 organisations in its 2024 to 2025 annual survey, with 134,872 new members initiated. The North-American Interfraternity Conference has published no total membership figure since roughly 350,000 across 56 fraternities and about 4,000 chapters in December 2021.

The Title IX rule

The Title IX regulation issued on 6 May 2020 and effective from 14 August 2020 narrowed actionable sexual harassment to conduct that is severe, pervasive and objectively offensive, all three at once. It limited an institution's obligation to conduct within its own education programme or activity in the United States, which excludes most off-campus and study-abroad conduct. It required universities to hold live hearings at which each party's adviser cross-examines the other party.

The replacement rule finalised on 19 April 2024 broadened the definition, removed the mandatory live hearing and extended jurisdiction. Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky vacated it nationwide on 9 January 2025 in State of Tennessee v. Cardona. Craig Trainor, the Department of Education's acting civil rights head, wrote to institutions on 3 February 2025 directing that open investigations be reoriented to the 2020 rule. The 2020 rule is the operative regulation in September 2026, and no new rule on how universities must handle sexual harassment and sexual assault complaints has been proposed or finalised.

Maddie Kowalski was told by University of Florida administrators that they could not act against students unless police filed charges, and the university dropped its Title IX investigation after about a month on the basis that the video of her rape had been filmed off campus, even though Gainesville Police Department's sworn complaint placed two of the accounts that published it on university addresses. The Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life, written to in December 2025, referred her to the Office of Student Conduct on the grounds that it did not oversee conduct processes. Phi Delta Theta, the chapter associated with the house where one clip was filmed, carries a suspension to 2030 for abusing its recruits and no finding about what was filmed there.

The Office for Civil Rights lost roughly half its staff in mid-March 2025, and seven of its 12 regional offices closed, leaving five. Caseload per investigator, already at a record 42, was projected in a Senate report to reach 86. More than 12,000 cases were open when the administration changed, including more than 3,000 at higher education institutions, and the public case tracker had not been updated since 14 January 2025. Between 11 March and 27 June 2025 the office received 4,833 complaints and dismissed 3,424 of them, about 71 per cent. The department began recalling laid-off civil rights attorneys in December 2025 to work through the backlog.

Congress and the fraternity lobby

The Safe Campus Act of 2015, introduced by three Republicans, Matt Salmon of Arizona and Pete Sessions and Kay Granger of Texas, would have barred any institutional disciplinary process, including interim measures such as the suspensions Cornell imposed on 8 November 2024, where a complainant declined a police referral. The North-American Interfraternity Conference endorsed it the day it was introduced, seven sororities withdrew support within three days and the conference withdrew its own on 13 November 2015.

The Freedom of Association in Higher Education Act, introduced on 1 April 2025 by Erin Houchin, an Indiana Republican, with 46 cosponsors from both parties, would bar institutions receiving federal aid from penalising students over membership of single-sex organisations or restricting their recruitment without a written agreement. The House Education and the Workforce Committee ordered it reported on 25 June 2026 by 18 votes to 15, and formally reported it to the House on 27 August 2026 as the Freedom of Association in Higher Education Act of 2026, House Report 119-781. No floor vote had been held by 27 September.

The Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee has given $45,500 to Virginia Foxx, the committee's former chair, and $22,000 to Bobby Scott, its ranking member.

Rape case attrition

Police clear 26 per cent of reported rapes, on FBI incident-based data covering January 2021 to December 2025. Just under 20 per cent of reported rapes and sexual assaults are criminally charged and 8 per cent end in conviction, on a systematic review by Hoffman, Patton and Greeson of case attrition from 2000 to 2020, published in 2025.

The FBI counts a case as cleared by exceptional means, with no arrest, when police say they have identified a suspect and could charge him but cannot, including when a prosecutor declines or a victim stops cooperating.

Austin, Texas reported clearing 51 per cent of its rape cases in 2016 while arresting in 17 per cent, which meant about 34 percentage points of its clearance rate rested on exceptional means. The national rape clearance rate that year was 36.5 per cent. A state-ordered audit of 95 Austin cases from January, November and December 2017 found 30 of them, about a third, did not meet the FBI's criteria for the classification they had been given. Elizabeth Donegan, who supervised Austin's rape and sexual assault investigators and had refused to reclassify cases, was moved off the unit, and the department's clearance rate rose after she left. Austin retrained 296 detectives.

Rape was recorded as unfounded at 8 per cent, against 2 per cent for all other crimes combined, in 1996, the last year the FBI published the comparison. A meta-analysis in Violence Against Women in 2010, covering more than 20 studies, put false reports, a narrower category, at between 2 and 10 per cent.

Victims reported 24 per cent of rape and sexual assault victimisations to police in 2024, against 46 per cent in 2023, on Bureau of Justice Statistics survey data. The 2024 estimate rests on a small subsample with wide standard errors.

Justice Department police investigations

The Justice Department's findings report on Louisville Metro Police, published on 8 March 2023, found that "LMPD does not adequately investigate officers accused of sexual misconduct and domestic violence", that it "does not adequately respond to or investigate sexual assault or domestic violence in the community", and that these deficiencies "raise serious concerns about whether LMPD engages in gender bias in providing policing services to women". Louisville had paid more than $40m to settle claims against its officers in the preceding six years.

Phoenix Police Department's findings report of 13 June 2024, more than 100 pages long, covers force, stops, discrimination against homeless and disabled people and First Amendment violations, and contains no analysis of the department's rape and sexual assault investigations. Memphis Police Department's report of 4 December 2024 covers force, unlawful stops, racial discrimination and disability discrimination, and contains no findings on sexual assault investigation or the city's backlog of about 12,000 untested rape kits dating from 1985 to 2014. The department's own public explainer of pattern-or-practice investigations does not list gender-based crime among the issues that may be examined.

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced on 21 May 2025 that the Civil Rights Division was dismissing the Louisville and Minneapolis consent decrees and retracting the findings of constitutional violations behind them. The division also closed its investigations into Phoenix, Trenton, Memphis, Mount Vernon, Oklahoma City and the Louisiana State Police. "Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs," Dhillon said, "turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda." The division had ordered all open civil rights investigations halted in January 2025.

Untested rape kits

Joyful Heart Foundation data put the number of known untested rape kits nationally at 49,248 in June 2025. A Congressional Research Service estimate in 2022 put the number at between 90,000 and 400,000. The counts are not comparable: they cover different years, different definitions of untested against unsubmitted and different numbers of states.

Kit tracking systems have been established or committed to in 37 states and the District of Columbia. No system exists in 11 states, so their kits are in no count. Texas and Georgia do not track the number. Maryland held the largest backlog in law enforcement custody at 3,599 unsubmitted kits and North Carolina the largest in a crime lab at 9,045, on data from 2018 to 2022 covering 30 states and the District of Columbia. Colorado reported 1,324 backlogged kits as of 31 May 2025 with an average processing time of 18 months.

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative has awarded nearly $400m to 96 grantees across 44 states since 2015, and testing it funded has produced at least 1,538 convictions. The Office of Management and Budget froze its funding in January 2025 and reversed the freeze after it was challenged in court. The FY2026 budget proposal keeps it at $51.5m. Grant cuts in April 2025 hit domestic violence shelters, trauma counselling, legal assistance and hospital advocacy.

Police officers accused of sexual assault

The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database at Bowling Green State University holds more than 24,000 criminal arrest cases from 2005 to 2024 involving more than 19,610 sworn non-federal officers. Its national study of officers arrested for rape, sexual assault and related crimes, published in Criminal Justice Policy Review in 2014, covered 548 arrest cases involving 398 officers from 328 agencies in 43 states and the District of Columbia, and found the victims were typically under 18. No national study of its kind has been published since; its data covered 2005 to 2007.

A 2024 review of more than 300 complaints of sexual assault and harassment against Chicago officers identified at least 14 officers accused more than once over the preceding decade, most of whom were not convicted.

Alexus Byrd-Maxey reported unwanted touching by a fellow Chicago police recruit, Eric Tabb, on 17 March 2023. She was fired two and a half weeks later and Tabb was sworn in. Five women from his 17-person academy class later accused him of sexual assault, and he has pleaded not guilty to felony charges including aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

Corey Deanes, a Chicago officer, was suspended for seven days for harassment in 2011, drew three further allegations in 2017 and 2018, was arrested in May 2019 and pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanour in 2020. The city paid his victim $100,000. Chicago's police department wrote its first policy dedicated to sexual assault and harassment by officers in June 2023, six years after a Justice Department investigation found it frequently minimised the seriousness of officers' wrongdoing and closed cases without full investigations.

About 450 officers were rehired or reinstated after termination across the 55 largest US police departments since 2006, out of more than 1,881 dismissed for serious wrongdoing, a newspaper investigation found. Larry Hall was terminated by the Flossmoor, Illinois department after beginning a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old he met as a school resource officer, and was later hired as police chief in Robbins, Illinois. Around 200 officers in Wisconsin who resigned or were terminated during internal investigations were still working in policing in the state as of August 2021.

The FBI and Larry Nassar

The FBI's Indianapolis field office received allegations against Larry Nassar from USA Gymnastics on 28 July 2015 and interviewed a gymnast on 2 September 2015 without opening a formal investigation. The summary of that interview was not written until February 2017, 17 months later, and the Justice Department's Inspector General found it contained materially false statements. No meaningful federal action followed until Michigan State University police opened their own case and searched Nassar's home in September 2016. At least 70 further athletes were abused in the interval.

The supervisory special agent who wrote the false summary lied twice more to the Inspector General. W. Jay Abbott, the special agent in charge, made materially false statements to minimise the office's errors and twice falsely denied applying for a job with the United States Olympic Committee while overseeing the case. The Inspector General published on 14 July 2021.

Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and Maggie Nichols testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on 15 September 2021. Maroney said the FBI had made "entirely false claims about what I said", and Christopher Wray, the FBI director, apologised.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute the agents three times, most recently on 26 May 2022, saying the decision "does not in any way reflect a view that the investigation was handled as it should have been". USA Gymnastics, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and their insurers settled with more than 500 survivors for $380m on 13 December 2021. The department itself paid $138.7m to more than 100 victims in April 2024, the largest settlement of its kind it has made.

SafeSport

The United States Center for SafeSport, created in 2017 to take abuse cases out of the hands of sporting bodies, received 32,238 reports from 2017 to the end of 2024 and reached a decision on whether a violation occurred in 11.7 per cent of them. Of the 24,636 cases with a recorded outcome, it declined jurisdiction in 30.9 per cent, found no jurisdiction in 19.2 per cent, placed 23.2 per cent on administrative hold and administratively closed 10.5 per cent. Violations were found in 10.8 per cent. Reports rose from 5,687 in 2022 to 8,098 in 2024 and 9,683 in 2025, of which 1,414 fell under the centre's "sexual misconduct" category.

Jason Krasley, a former Allentown, Pennsylvania police officer, joined the centre as an investigator in 2021. An incident allegedly involving him occurred in June 2023 while he was employed there, and the centre fired him in November 2023 after arrest reports surfaced. He was charged with harassment in December 2023 and with rape and trafficking, the latter charged as "sex trafficking", in January 2024. He was arrested again in February 2025 on further charges including rape, trafficking, soliciting prostitution, theft and property damage.

Senator Chuck Grassley opened an inquiry on 10 February 2025, asking Ju'Riese Colón, the centre's chief executive, 13 questions about why Krasley had not been suspended when the June 2023 allegations became known. The centre fired Colón on 22 April 2025. Benita Fitzgerald Mosley took over on 1 February 2026 and said three weeks later that she was in a discovery phase. The centre announced reforms in April 2024 and kept its funding from the Olympic committee and the sporting bodies whose cases it judges.

The NCAA attestation

The NCAA's campus sexual violence policy requires incoming, continuing and transferring athletes and athletics staff to complete an annual attestation disclosing findings of, or discipline for, sexual, interpersonal and other violence. The association does not investigate, does not verify and does not require a school to act on what it learns. The stricter Tracy Rule, which bars participation outright for anyone convicted of or found responsible for sexual, dating or domestic violence, has been publicly adopted by two institutions, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Virginia's College at Wise.

Husch Blackwell reported to Louisiana State University on 5 March 2021 that its athletics department had normalised sex discrimination and diverted complaints of sexual violence away from the Title IX office. Derrius Guice, an LSU football player, was accused at least three times while at the university without university discipline. A 2013 allegation against the head coach Les Miles was found not to have been handled in accordance with university policy. Two employees were suspended without pay.

Michigan State suspended its head football coach, Mel Tucker, without pay on 10 September 2023 after Brenda Tracy, a survivor and advocate the university had hired to speak to its players, alleged he had masturbated during a phone call with her without her consent. The university fired him on 27 September 2023, saying he had brought contempt and ridicule on the institution. Tucker sued the university for the roughly $75m left on his contract, and that suit was continuing in January 2026.

Tracy sued Tucker in state court, and an Ingham County judge dismissed her nine-count suit on 28 January 2026. A federal judge dismissed her suit against Michigan State on 17 April 2026, finding the university's trustees immune and that she had failed "to connect the dots from her factual allegations to the necessary elements of her legal claims". A separate suit Tracy brought against Tucker was before the Michigan Court of Appeals in January 2026.

University doctors

The University of Southern California has paid about $1.1bn over the gynaecologist George Tyndall, $215m in a federal class action in 2018 and $852m to more than 700 women in state court on 25 March 2021. Michigan State agreed $500m over Nassar on 16 May 2018. The University of Michigan agreed $490m over the team doctor Robert Anderson on 19 January 2022, finalised in court that September, covering more than 1,000 claimants. The University of California, Los Angeles has paid close to $700m over the gynaecologist James Heaps, including $374.4m agreed on 24 May 2022.

The Sixth Circuit reinstated dismissed Richard Strauss claims against Ohio State University in 2022 and denied the university an en banc rehearing in December 2022, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on 26 June 2023, allowing more than 230 men to proceed. Trustees approved a further $100m settlement on 4 June 2026, agreed by 279 of the 280 remaining plaintiffs, bringing the total to about $161m, with a four-case bellwether trial still listed for October 2026.

San Jose State University agreed a $1.6m Title IX enforcement settlement with the Justice Department on 22 September 2021 over an athletic trainer's abuse of student athletes.

Hockey Canada

Members of Canada's 2018 World Junior team were alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman in London, Ontario on 18 and 19 June 2018, the night of a Hockey Canada gala. London Police opened an investigation on 20 June 2018 and closed it without charges in February 2019. Hockey Canada settled the woman's civil claim for $3.55m in May 2022 without telling its own membership.

Documents made public on 19 July 2022 showed that Hockey Canada held a National Equity Fund, in use since at least 1989 and financed from player registration fees at $13.65 of every $23.80 collected, which had paid $7.6m towards nine sexual assault claims. The organisation said the next day it would stop using the fund for that purpose.

Federal funding was frozen on 22 June 2022, London Police reopened the case on 22 July 2022 and the board chair resigned on 6 August 2022. Tim Hortons, Scotiabank and Nike suspended sponsorships in the first week of October 2022, and the chief executive and the entire board resigned on 11 October 2022.

Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote were charged with sexual assault in late January 2024, McLeod additionally as a party to the offence. Justice Maria Carroccia acquitted all five on all charges in London on 24 July 2025, finding the Crown had not proved absence of consent beyond reasonable doubt. The National Hockey League declared the five ineligible the same day, saying the behaviour at issue "was unacceptable" even if not found criminal, and the players' association disputed that the league could do so. The league then allowed them to return from 1 December 2025 with suspensions extended for four of the five. McLeod signed for Avangard Omsk in Russia.

Professional sport and celebrity cases

Deshaun Watson, the quarterback, faced civil suits from 24 women in 2021 and 2022 alleging sexual assault or harassment during massage sessions, and 20 had settled by 21 June 2022. Grand juries in Harris County and Brazoria County declined to indict him. The National Football League and Watson settled on an 11-game suspension and a $5m fine, after an independent disciplinary officer had recommended six games.

Major League Baseball suspended the pitcher Trevor Bauer for 194 games on 29 April 2022 under its domestic violence and sexual assault policy, after the Los Angeles County district attorney declined to charge him. An arbitrator cut the suspension in December 2022 and reinstated him immediately.

Harvey Weinstein's 2020 New York conviction was overturned in April 2024. A retrial jury convicted him on 11 June 2025 of forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley in 2006, charged as a first-degree criminal sexual act, acquitted him on a second count and deadlocked on a rape charge brought by Jessica Mann. A third trial on Mann's count ended in a hung jury in May 2026, and prosecutors dropped it on 25 June 2026 after Mann said she could not endure a fourth. Justice Curtis Farber sentenced Weinstein to 15 years on 23 September 2026. "It's a life sentence for me," Haley told the court.

Sean Combs was acquitted on 2 July 2025 of racketeering conspiracy and of trafficking, which the indictment charged as "sex trafficking". He was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and sentenced on 3 October 2025 to 50 months. Danny Masterson was convicted of two counts of rape on 31 May 2023 and sentenced on 7 September 2023 to 30 years to life, and his appeal is pending.

New York's Adult Survivors Act

New York's Adult Survivors Act opened a one-year window on 24 November 2022 for civil claims otherwise out of time. More than 450 cases had been filed by the time it closed on 24 November 2023. Columbia University was sued by 301 survivors in a single filing in September 2023 over its handling of the gynaecologist Robert Hadden, convicted in January 2023, whose identified victims number in the thousands. About 1,500 claims were filed against New York State by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women over abuse in state prisons.

Findings

Suspending fraternity social activity reduces alcohol offences by 26 per cent and, on suggestive evidence, weekend sexual assault reports by 29 per cent, for as long as the suspension lasts.

No study exists of a permanent ban, because no US university has imposed one since 2014.

One national survey of campus prevalence has been conducted since 2019, at 10 selective institutions, commissioned from a contractor.

The federal government's national count of rapes and fondling reported on campuses stops at 2021.

Untested rape kits go uncounted in 11 states, and Texas and Georgia do not track the number.

Bowling Green State University's 2014 study, using data from 2005 to 2007, is the most recent national study of sexual violence by serving US police officers.

The Justice Department's pattern-or-practice reports on Phoenix and Memphis contained no findings on sexual assault investigation, and in May 2025 the department closed both investigations.

The Center for SafeSport has reached a decision on the merits in 11.7 per cent of the 32,238 reports it has received, and is still funded by the sporting organisations whose cases it judges.

Cornell's president wrote in November 2022 that "all found responsible will be held accountable" for the fraternity druggings reported that autumn, and no charge or finding from those reports has been made public.

Jane Doe reported being drugged and raped at Cornell's Chi Phi house on 8 November 2024. No one has been charged, and the Tompkins County district attorney reopened the case in September 2026 after her lawsuit was filed. Two of the seven men named in her complaint were expelled, according to the lawsuit, and some of the others were offered the chance to write essays.

Federal law required Cornell to give Jane Doe a written result of its disciplinary proceeding, and the Sun's student editors wrote that she was never told the outcome.