Cornell case mirrors Hockey Canada trial's troubling patterns on consent and institutional response

Two cases separated by geography and sport are telling the same story about power, institutional failure, and how little we understand what happens inside a traumatized body. The first unfolded in a London, Ontario courtroom last year: five elite hockey players, all acquitted of sexually assaulting a woman known as E.M. in a hotel room in June 2018. The second is happening now, in real time, at Cornell University, where a woman identified as Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit on September 16 alleging that seven fraternity members assaulted her at a Chi Phi house in October 2024—allegedly after one of them sent a Snapchat message to other brothers inviting them to join, describing what was available in crude terms.

Legal experts who have studied both cases see the parallels as too consistent to ignore. Karen Bellehumeur, the lawyer who represented E.M. in the Hockey Canada trial, looked at the Cornell allegations and recognized the pattern immediately: a vulnerable woman, a group of men, a message that treats her body as a shared resource, and afterward, an institution more concerned with protecting its own than with accountability. "It just seemed like yet another example of a group exploiting a vulnerable person," she told CBC News. "When a group is involved, it's particularly abhorrent."

The similarities run deeper than the surface facts. Both cases center on intoxication and consent—murky legal territory where the law itself can work against the person alleging harm. In the Hockey Canada case, the five players were acquitted despite evidence that E.M. had been drinking. In the Cornell case, Jane Doe's lawsuit alleges she consumed roughly ten alcoholic beverages before arriving at the fraternity house, where she was then pressured to use ketamine multiple times. Under New York law, there is a critical distinction: a victim who voluntarily became intoxicated is treated differently than one who was given drugs without knowledge or consent. Only the latter can be considered legally "mentally incapacitated" and therefore unable to consent. This distinction, legal experts say, makes Jane Doe's path to justice steeper than it should be.

But the legal architecture is only part of the problem. Both cases expose a widespread misunderstanding of how trauma actually works inside the human body and mind. When E.M. gave her initial statement to police, she described her participation as voluntary and consensual—a characterization that later shifted as she processed what had happened to her. The Hockey Canada defense seized on this inconsistency as evidence that she had consented. The same dynamic is already playing out in the Cornell case. When Jane Doe first spoke to campus police in 2024, she did not initially describe the encounter as a gang rape or mention being drugged. The Tompkins County district attorney cited this initial statement as a reason not to pursue charges. Jane Doe's lawyer has since disputed that characterization, but the damage to her credibility—in the court of law and in the court of public opinion—may already be done.

Melanie Randall, an associate professor of law at Western University who researches gender-based violence, explained what investigators and juries often fail to grasp: trauma responses are not what we imagine them to be. When a person is afraid, outnumbered, and losing control, the brain does not always trigger fight or flight. Sometimes it triggers freeze or fawn—a response where the victim complies, tries to placate the perpetrator, does whatever seems necessary to survive the moment. "You figure out what you need to do to survive and get through it," Randall said. A woman who does not physically resist, who may even appear to cooperate, is not necessarily consenting. She may be terrified. She may be incapacitated. She may simply be trying to get through it alive.

The institutional response in both cases reveals another pattern: elite organizations of men protecting their own. In the Cornell case, the lawsuit alleges that the accused fraternity members faced only temporary suspensions and were given the opportunity to write essays to mitigate their conduct—though Cornell has since disputed this, saying some students were expelled. In the Hockey Canada case, all five players were acquitted and subsequently reinstated by the NHL; one was recently signed by the Edmonton Oilers. Gillian Hnatiw, a Toronto lawyer specializing in gender-based violence, called this "a continuation of locker room culture." The fact that men in these communities felt comfortable not just speaking about women this way but actively inviting their peers to participate raises what she described as "serious cultural concerns."

The legal road ahead for Jane Doe is daunting. On Monday, after intense public pressure, the Tompkins County district attorney announced he was reopening the investigation. By Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she had lost confidence in that office and appointed a special prosecutor—the state attorney general—to take over. But even with renewed investigation, legal experts are not optimistic about the prospects of a criminal conviction. Hnatiw said bluntly: "I think it would be pretty close to doomed." Bellehumeur, who has lived through the Hockey Canada trial and its outcome, offered a more measured but equally sobering assessment: "I wish the best for her, but I know it won't be easy."

What both cases offer, if not legal precedent, is a sociological mirror. They show us what happens when institutions prioritize reputation over accountability, when the law treats voluntary and involuntary intoxication as morally equivalent, and when we mistake a trauma response for consent. They show us a pattern that repeats because the conditions that allow it to repeat have never been seriously disrupted. The question now is whether the renewed attention to the Cornell case will change anything, or whether Jane Doe will become another name in a long list of women whose cases were "pretty close to doomed" from the start.