“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin backed an upstate New York district attorney’s 2024 decision to not bring charges against several Cornell University fraternity brothers accused of gang raping a fellow student in an explosive new lawsuit.
Hostin claimed on the show Tuesday that there was “no way” Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten could have brought charges based on a statement the fraternity brothers’ accuser gave campus police after the alleged 2024 assault.
“She allowed other boys and consented to other boys snorting ketamine off of her body,” said Hostin, a former federal prosecutor. “Under New York law, voluntary intoxication or drug use that merely impairs judgment does not legally constitute an inability to consent to sexual activity.”
“If you voluntarily ingest drugs, voluntarily take alcohol, you can agree to have threesomes. Which, in her statement, she agreed to have two separate threesomes,” she said. “There is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would’ve brought forth a case.”
Hostin was referring to portions of the accuser’s original 2024 report to campus police — which Van Houten released Monday to justify his original decision not to bring charges — where she described in lurid detail a night of drunken and drug-fueled sex with numerous brothers from Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity.
Despite explaining she was severely inebriated, the accuser never claimed any of the alcohol or ketamine she took that night had been forced on her or that the repeated bouts of sex with a revolving door of fraternity brothers were non-consensual, the DA reported.
On the contrary, the accuser said several times that in her intoxicated state she consented to the sexual encounters with various brothers — in addition to saying yes to the drinks and drugs, according to the DA’s retelling.
And Hostin — whose daughter currently attends Cornell — pointed out that under New York law, all of that meant she was actively consenting.
“What I’m saying is if the law were different in New York, it would be a different case,” she said. “But, according to what she said in 2024, she says she found one of the guys hot, and she agreed to a threesome when she first got there.”
Despite that stance — which Van Houten put forward while releasing excerpts of the police report — the accuser recently filed a damning 101-page lawsuit against seven members of the fraternity, who she accused of either overtly raping her or participating in the assault.
Included in the suit was a damning text thread between the fraternity brothers, in which one notified the group about “free p–sy” in a house bedroom, while others leered back about being able to “walk in and whip it out.”
The accuser — who was 20 at the time — reported the incident to Cornell campus police a week after it happened. They then took it to the DA, who declined to charge anybody.
It remains unclear exactly what happened to the brothers accused from there. The lawsuit claimed Cornell merely gave them the option to “mitigate their conduct by submitting essays,” which the school later disputed. Some of the brothers were expelled, the university said.
Despite the DA insisting no crime was alleged during the accuser’s report, it remains unclear why she would have made a police report if she didn’t think she’d been the victim of a rape — which “The View” co-hosts wondered during their discussion.
“I wonder why she’d even report this if she didn’t believe there was some criminality involved,” host Lisa Ling said.
“How can the law protect and argue that somebody who we know, when she arrived, had 10 drinks?” she added. “This is the law, Sunny is absolutely right on this. How could you possibly consent? How could you be in a decision-making state?”
Van Houten has since announced that his office was looking back into the case to consider charges in light of the allegations described in the civil suit.
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