A court filing signed by Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, on Tuesday effectively removed Orazio Petito from the suit.
By Catholics for Catholics
In a new twist in the high-profile case of the “Cornell 7, a man named in the civil lawsuit has been dropped.
“A defendant has been dropped from Jane Doe’s civil lawsuit with prejudice,” Los Angeles Magazine’s Lauren Conlin reported Tuesday. “Orazio Petito, identified in the original complaint as president of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity at the time of the alleged October 2024 assault, has been dismissed from the case.”
According to a story by the Daily Wire, accuser “Jane Doe,” named Petito in the suit, but Petito’s attorney previously said he was not serving as fraternity president at the time of the alleged incident. The suit accused Petito of failing Doe by not shutting down the alleged decadent behavior within the fraternity.
A court filing signed by Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, on Tuesday effectively removed Petito from the suit.
Eric Bernstein, Petito’s attorney, told ABC News the change was the “right outcome.”
“My client deserved to be released from this case,” he said. “They had the wrong … guy and justice was served as far as Mr. Petito was concerned.”
In a case that has become a media scandal, Doe has accused seven male students of being involved in her alleged sexual assault in 2024, but Matthew Van Houten, Tompkins County District Attorney refused to bring charges at the time, saying there was insufficient evidence. Her newly filed civil lawsuit brought a renewed attention to the case, and Van Houten said its allegations differed sharply from her original account.
Still, all of the seven men who have been accused have rejected the accusations and uphold their innocence. By contrast, at least three of the accused men say it was Doe who was the invader and that she did not obtain their go-ahead.
One of the men, Matthew Ingalls, says Doe sexually assaulted him, but the university did nothing about his allegations.
