How a ketamine-fuelled gang rape case divided America

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We begin tonight with the breaking news. ABC News obtaining recorded phone calls in the Cornell investigation. The former student known as Jane Doe recording calls with two former fraternity members who were both there that night. The calls just three weeks after the alleged attack. What she asks them on the phone, and you will hear what they tell her.

Emily Maitlis (0:23)

The case of the alleged gang rape at Cornell University two years ago has rocked the world.

Today, ABC News reveal that several of the men who've been accused of sexually assaulting that woman try to contain the allegations in the weeks following the event. We're going to play those messages to you in full.

Jon Sopel (0:46)

The gang rape allegations are dividing a polarizing opinion in America, and into that polarised world enters Donald Trump, with a very strong opinion of his own. Why has he got involved? Welcome to The News Agents.

The News Agents It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (1:12)

It's Maitlis.

Jon Sopel (1:13)

And when you hear things about frat houses and sororities, I kind of think of screwball comedies from the 1980s, the 1990s. It's all jolly fun. Everyone's getting drunk.

This is the much darker side of all of it, because, yeah, there is drink. Yeah, there are drugs. Yes, there are frat houses. But there's also a very serious allegation of a gang rape that took place where men on Snapchat are alerting others in the frat house, that there is a woman in one room who is available for sex. And it spins wildly out of control, according to her allegations, that paint a harrowing picture of college life, of campus life in the United States.

Emily Maitlis (2:03)

Yeah, this is a hugely complicated story because it happened two years ago, October of 2024

And in the weeks following that assault, that alleged assault, the woman didn't come forward until she was, in essence, much more sure of what had happened to her that night. She was drugged, she was on ketamine, she was intoxicated, she'd taken alcohol.

And there has been a very complicated reaction to this reopening of the case. She's just filed a civil lawsuit because a lot of the men are saying, well, we don't understand where this has come from now. You seemed fine immediately afterwards. And a lot of the women or at least a lot of those who are more sympathetic to her position have said, don't you understand what happens to victims of sexual assault? These things are traumatic. They take time to process. What she has gone through, not just in the first few weeks, but over the successive months and indeed years, was her understanding just what happened to her in that frat house room where she looked up and she says in her own words, that is like too many people. She was surrounded by men trying to or having sex with her. As you say, this has really ignited so many different issues under one umbrella. It's ignited the whole question of why the university didn't seem to be doing its job. It took a full report, but it treated it more like a disciplinary action rather than a crime.

It has raised questions about the laws in New York State themselves, which essentially have a very complicated understanding of consent, whereby if you drink yourself, you are not necessarily not consenting. In other words, you can't just blame mental incapacities. There are students saying the whole structure around the law is wrong. But I think more than anything, there is this cellular ache of a reminder of what life can be like for women on campus. Frankly, what life is like for so many women on campus, who just don't seem to get taken seriously, who just don't seem to be able to get their voice heard, that at the time when she went to the university, three weeks after the event, we actually know that the university had already been informed of five other cases of drugs at the frat houses and two other sexual assaults. That was just at the same time that she was making her case felt. And so there has naturally, in this polarised world, been a complete division between the people who say, why is this still happening? 10 years, 10 years after the Me Too movement, why is this still happening? And why is nobody taking it seriously? And between those supporting the men, like President Trump, who say, what's a guy got to do before he's allowed to have sex again with somebody who we think said yes?

Jon Sopel (5:24)

Yeah. And so this is where it is so layered with complication because there was an investigation by the college authorities and the district attorney and it didn't go anywhere. Two of the college students were expelled and two had a punishment. I mean, remember, these are college students at an Ivy League university, and their punishment is to write an essay.