A group of men cheered as a 21-year-old woman was sexually assaulted in the bathroom of a University of Chicago frat house this past weekend while her two friends frantically tried to pick the lock to rescue her, according to reports.
The woman, 21, reported that she was sexually assaulted by a man at the Alpha Epsilon Pi house at 5625 S. University Ave., around 2 a.m. Sunday, the Chicago Police Department confirmed to The Independent.
Two of her friends told police that a group tried to stop them from entering the bathroom after the men were seen “cheering and appearing to encourage the activity inside,” according to a police report obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
University of Chicago, one of the U.S.’s top colleges, told The Independent that “a person of interest has been identified.” No arrests have been reported, and the individual has not been publicly identified.
There has been a nationwide reckoning over sexual assault on college campuses after a civil lawsuit was filed last month by a Jane Doe alleging that she had been gang-raped by seven fraternity members at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in October 2024.
According to the new Chicago police report, the woman and two friends attended a party at Alpha Epsilon Pi after seeing the event advertised on Instagram, the New York Times reported.
The three women were dancing in the frat’s basement when the alleged victim began kissing a man. One of the friends, who spoke with the Times, lost track of them briefly but then found a small group of men cheering outside a locked bathroom in the basement.
“They were saying things like, ‘When’s it my turn?’ and ‘I want to go in there,’” she said. According to the police report, the group told her it wasn’t her friend inside.
However, when she forced her way in by picking the door lock, she found her friend partially undressed and slumped on the floor. The man had his hands on the alleged victim’s wrists, and she began to say “make it stop” and “get me out of here,” the friend told the newspaper.
The police report said that when one of the women’s friend told the man to get off her, he “responded that everything was ‘cool,’ as though nothing had occurred.”
The woman and her friends later confronted the man outside the frat house and he said they “had identified the wrong person.” He pointed them in another direction and ran off, per the report.
One of the friends tried to chase him, but ran into a police officer and reported the alleged assault, according to the report. The 21-year-old was then hospitalized, police confirmed to The Independent.
The woman is not a student at the University of Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. She did not return the newspaper’s request for comment, but one of her friends told the paper she was “obviously shaken up” and worried about her name getting out.
The Chicago Maroon, the university’s student newspaper, published an article Tuesday describing a video shared to TikTok that appears to show the alleged perpetrator.
“He f****** assaulted my friend in the bathroom of the f****** frat party. You record all the s*** you want,” an individual who refers to themselves as the alleged victim’s friend, says in the video, which has been shared online. “I walked in there, you f****** took her clothes off.”
On the video, the man can be heard responding, “she wanted to."
Police said the man is 5 feet 7 inches tall with curly hair. He was wearing a black, short-sleeve shirt with black pants at the time of the alleged assault, according to the police report.
An alert from the University of Chicago said the suspect is not affiliated with the school. He was not named in the alert because he has not been charged with a crime.
“This identification has been corroborated by key witness statements and video evidence from University cameras and license plate readers, all of which has been shared with [the Chicago Police Department] by the Department of Safety & Security,” the university alert said.
The university’s chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi said in a statement on Instagram that no one affiliated with the fraternity was “involved or complicit with this incident.” The chapter says it is working with authorities.
The fraternity’s national chapter told The Independent in a statement, “There is no evidence at all that any AEPi members participated in this asault or were aware of it while it was transpiring.”
The spokesperson noted that they do not believe the men “cheering on” the attack were part of the fraternity. They said the fraternity members are fully cooperating with authorities.
Cornell’s Jane Doe lawsuit alleges she was drugged and gang-raped by seven members of the now-defunct Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, New York, in October 2024. None of the men have been criminally charged. All have denied wrongdoing.
Cornell announced this week that it has banned fraternity parties for the rest of the year.
Earlier this month, the Ivy League school appointed former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to lead an independent investigation into how the school handles sexual assault cases. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has also assigned state Attorney General Letita James to the case as special prosecutor in a criminal investigation.
After Doe reported the alleged rape in 2024, Cornell began an investigation, which involved multiple hearings and resulted in the suspensions and expulsions of some of the students involved. The Chi Phi fraternity was also shut down.
“Any suggestion that the University did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” the university said in a previous statement. “A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault.”
