Actress Florence Pugh decried the alleged fraternity party gang rape of a former Cornell University student who is suing the school as the district attorney announced it was reopening the investigation.
On Monday Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said his office would look for “additional evidence” in the wake of the civil lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court on Sept. 16 by a “Jane Doe.” The woman, who was 20 at the time, said she had been drugged and sexually assaulted for hours by seven members of Chi Phi fraternity in 2024. While two were expelled after an investigation, the other five were either suspended, assigned essays, or attended workshops, her attorney Thomas Giuffra told CBS News. None were arrested.
Pugh decried what she saw as a lack of concern for the woman’s well-being and urged men to get more active in combating anti-female violence.
“After reading about the young woman who was gang raped at her college by her friend and school peers, I’m feeling uneasy and sick and anxious,” Pugh wrote on Instagram. “I’m processing quietly and watching everything and everyone and every man.”
During the attack, one of the men allegedly sent a Snapchat message to a group called “Chi Phi Actives” advertising “free p—,” according to WBNG-TV.
“This is really the moment where we need our men to be as horrified and as sickened as us,” the “Oppenheimer” actress wrote. “You need to be leading conversations about how we change the allowance and complicity of this behaviour as much as we are. How can you expect us to trust that it’s ‘not all men’ when in moments like this, many of you stay quiet?”
After the Jane Doe reported the incident to Cornell University Police about three weeks later, the school shut down its Chi Phi chapter and investigated the incident. The DA’s office at the time said there was “insufficient evidence to support criminal charges,” CBS News reported. On Monday Van Houten told ABC News it would present the case to a grand jury, with Doe’s cooperation, to check for anything new that might “change our assessment of the case” and point to potential criminal conduct.
Cornell convened a task force that issued a report on the incident in March 2026 and acknowledged the lawsuit last week.
Culpability extends beyond the alleged attackers, Pugh wrote.
“Every single person who knew or heard about this happening, should be looked at with serious concern,” she wrote. “They are as evil as those planning it. To know that a torture as violent as rape is about to happen ‘upstairs’ and not do ANYTHING ABOUT IT, is sick, cowardly and cold.”
She also called out educational institutions that protect boys “in fear of their futures being wrecked” and send men the message “time and time again that they can do extreme harm and that they won’t be harmed in return,” especially when that does not come with an equal concern over the impact of such actions on a woman’s life.
“There is no equality until you respect our bodies,” Pugh concluded. “There is no equality until you stop damaging our souls. There is no equality until you let us live. There is no equality until we can say we feel safe. We are the life force of this earth, start ****ing protecting us. Be angry for us. Please.”
