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UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux
Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,392 Views)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

By T. Rees Shapiro December 5 at 1:01 PM

A lawyer for the University of Virginia fraternity whose members were accused of a brutal gang rape said Friday that the organization will release a statement rebutting the claims printed in a Rolling Stone article about the incident. Several of the woman’s close friends and campus sex assault awareness advocates expressed doubt about the published account, and the magazine’s editors also began backing away from the story.

Officials close to the fraternity said that the statement will indicate that Phi Kappa Psi did not host a party on Sept. 28, 2012, the night that a university student named Jackie alleges she was invited to a date party, lured into an upstairs room and was then ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.

The officials also said that no members of the fraternity were employed at the university’s Aquatic Fitness Center during that time frame — a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post — and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account.

The attorney, Ben Warthen, who has represented Phi Kappa Psi, said the statement would come out Friday afternoon. He declined to comment further.

Capt. Gary Pleasants of the Charlottesville police department said that detectives are looking into the allegations at the request of the university but declined to comment on the status of that investigation.

Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, also released a statement with new doubt. “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” he said in a statement.

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to Jackie but have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he did work at the Aquatic Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie’s name. He said, however, that he had never met Jackie in person and had never taken her on a date. He also confirmed that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

The Washington Post has interviewed Jackie several times during the past week and has worked to corroborate her version of events, contacting dozens of current and former members of the fraternity, the fraternity’s faculty adviser, Jackie’s friends and former roommates, and others on campus. Fraternity members said anonymously that the description of the assailant doesn’t match anyone they know and have been telling others on campus that they did not have a party the night of the alleged attack.

Speaking for the first time since the details of her alleged sexual assault were published in Rolling Stone, the 20 year-old U-Va. junior told the Post that she stands by her version of the events. In lengthy in-person interviews, Jackie recounted an attack very similar to the one she presented in the magazine: She had gone on a date with a member of the house, went to a party there and ended up in a room where she was brutally attacked – seven men raping her in succession with two others watching -- leaving her bloody, permanently injured and emotionally devastated.

“I never asked for this” attention, she said in an interview. “What bothers me is that so many people act like it didn’t happen. It’s my life. I have had to live with the fact that it happened every day for the last two years.”

A lawyer who is representing Jackie said Friday morning that she and her client are declining to comment beyond her interviews. The Post generally does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission, and the Post is identifying Jackie by her real nickname at her request.
The University of Virginia held a special meeting last week to discuss recent allegations of sexual assault that have rocked the campus. University President Teresa Sullivan said any systemic problems “must be rooted out.” (AP)

Alex Pinkleton, a close friend of Jackie’s who survived a rape and an attempted rape during her first two years on campus, said in an interview that she has had numerous conversations with Jackie in recent days and now feels misled.

“One of my biggest fears with these inconsistencies emerging is that people will be unwilling to believe survivors in the future,” Pinkleton said. “However, we need to remember that the majority of survivors who come forward are telling the truth.”

Pinkleton said that she is concerned that sexual assault awareness advocacy groups will suffer as a result of the conflicting details of the Rolling Stone allegations.

“While the details of this one case may have been misreported, this does not erase the somber truth this article brought to light: Rape is far more prevalent than we realize and it is often misunderstood and mishandled by peers, institutions, and society at large,” Pinkleton said. “We in the advocacy community at U-Va. will continue the work of making this issue accessible to our peers, guiding the conversation and our community into a place where sexual assaults are rare, where reporting processes are clear and adjudication is fair and compassionate.”

The fraternity’s statement will come two weeks after Rolling Stone ran a lengthy article about what it characterized as a culture of sex assault at the flagship state university, using Jackie’s story to illustrate how brazen such attacks can be and how indifferent the university is to them. The article, which said Jackie was raped repeatedly during the course of a three-hour attack in a Phi Kappa Psi bedroom that at one point involved a beer bottle, has received increasing scrutiny in recent days as major details have come into question.

The article published in the December issue of the pop culture magazine drew headlines around the world and rekindled discussion on college campuses about sexual assault, putting U-Va. at the epicenter and sending its administration scrambling to respond. The article spawned protests and vandalism, and the university quickly suspended all Greek system activities until the beginning of next semester and put out a call for zero tolerance of sex assault.

The Rolling Stone allegations shook the campus at a tumultuous moment, as the university was still mourning the death of U-Va. sophomore Hannah Graham, whose body was found five weeks after she went missing in Charlottesville. Jackie’s story empowered many women to speak publicly about their own attacks, but it also immediately raised questions about the decisions Jackie made that evening – not going to a hospital or reporting the alleged crime to police or the school – while some expressed doubt about her story altogether.

Jackie told the Post that she had not intended to share her story widely until the Rolling Stone writer contacted her.

“If she had not come to me I probably would not have gone public about my rape,” said Jackie, who added that she had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and that she is now on a regimen of anti-depressants.

Earlier this week, Jackie revealed to friends for the first time the full name of her alleged attacker, a name she had never disclosed to anyone. But after looking into that person’s background, the group that had been among her closest supporters quickly began to raise suspicions about her account. The friends determined that the student that Jackie had named was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi and that other details about his background did not match up with information Jackie had disclosed earlier about her perpetrator.

The Post determined that the student Jackie named is not a member of Phi Kappa Psi and had never met her in person.

Emily Renda was a U-Va. senior when she first met Jackie in the fall of 2013. In an interview, Renda said that she immediately connected with Jackie as they discussed the bond they shared as rape survivors. Renda said that she was raped her freshman year after attending a fraternity party.

Jackie told the Post that she bawled as she spoke about her own sexual assault to Renda.

Renda said on Thursday that Jackie initially told her that she was attacked by five students at Phi Kappa Psi on Sept. 28, 2012. Renda said that she learned months later that Jackie had changed the number of attackers from five to seven.

“An advocate is not supposed to be an investigator, a judge or an adjudicator,” said Renda, a 2014 graduate who works for the university as a sexual violence awareness specialist. But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”

“This feels like a betrayal of good advocacy if this is not true,” Renda said. “We teach people to believe the victims. We know there are false reports but those are extraordinarily low.”

Renda said that research shows between 2 to 8 percent of all rape allegations are fabricated or unfounded.

“The doubt cast on Jackie’s story has been feeding the myth that we have been combating for 40 years that women lie about rape and I feel that will put women at a disadvantage in coming forward,” Renda said.

“There’s definitely a lot of confusion and raising of a lot of questions that need answers,” Renda said.”I have faith and hope that Jackie will answer those in time.”

In July, Renda introduced Jackie to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone writer who was on assignment to write about sexual violence on college campuses. Overwhelmed from sitting through interviews with the writer, Jackie said she asked Erdely to be taken out of the article. She said Erdely refused and Jackie was told that the article would go forward regardless.

Jackie said she finally relented and agreed to participate on the condition that she be able to fact-check her parts in the story, which she said Erdely accepted. Erdely said in an e-mail message that she was not immediately available to comment Friday morning.

“I didn’t want the world to read about the worst three hours of my life, the thing I have nightmares about every night,” Jackie said.

Jackie told The Post that she felt validated that the article encouraged other female students to come forward saying that they, too, had been sexually assaulted in fraternity houses.

“Haven’t enough people come forward at this point?” she said. “How many people do you need to come forward saying they’ve been raped at a fraternity to make it real to you? They need to acknowledge it’s a problem they need to address instead of pointing fingers to take the blame off themselves.”

As classes resumed this week after Thanksgiving break, Jackie, whose family lives in northern Virginia, went back to the campus where her story is still a daily topic of conversation. Although anonymous for now, she said she remains afraid that fellow students and fraternity members will somehow recognize her as the victim from the Rolling Stone article.

Jackie said that she never wanted to go to U-Va. Graduating near the top of her high school senior class of 700, she had planned to attend Brown University. She dreamed of pursuing a career in medicine like her childhood hero, Patch Adams.

“I wanted to help people,” Jackie said.

She said she was disappointed when her family told her that they could not afford the Ivy League tuition. She enrolled at U-Va. without ever visiting the school.

She said that she performed well in course work that included rigorous pre-med classes in psychology, chemistry and religious anthropology. She said soon found a job as a lifeguard at a campus pool, where she said she met a charming junior who had dimples, blue eyes and dark curly hair.

Jackie told the Post that the same student later took her out for an extravagant dinner at the Boar’s Head Inn before they attended a date function on Sept. 28, 2012 at his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi. Jackie said that her date appeared to have orchestrated the sexual assault by attempting to ply her with alcohol before escorting her into a darkened room on the second floor of the fraternity house. Jackie said she did not actually drink alcohol that night because she said she was on a migraine medication and said that she remembered the events that night clearly.

According to her account in Rolling Stone and in interviews, Jackie said she was thrown to a rug, breaking a low glass table in the process. She said that she did receive cuts to the back of her arm as a result but noted that her attack happened on a thick rug.

Jackie told the Post that the men pinned her down and then raped her, the trauma leaving her bleeding from between her legs.

“One of them said ‘Grab its [expletive] leg,’” she said, ler lip quivering and tears streaming down her face. “Its. I’ll never forget that. I felt like nothing, like I wasn’t even human.”

Jackie’s former roommate, Rachel Soltis, said that she noticed emotional and physical changes to her friend during the fall semester of 2012, when the two shared a suite on campus.

“She was withdrawn, depressed and couldn’t wake up in the mornings,” said Soltis, who told the Post that she was convinced that Jackie was sexually assaulted. Soltis said that Jackie did not tell her about the alleged sexual assault until January 2013. Soltis said that she did not notice any apparent wounds on Jackie’s body at the time that might have indicated a brutal attack.

The Post asked Jackie on multiple occasions for her to reveal the full name of the two attackers she said she recognized. She declined, saying that she didn’t want the perpetrator “to come back in my life.”

Jackie said numerous times that she didn’t expect that an investigation the Charlottesville Police department opened after the article’s publication to result in any charges. She said she knew there was little if any forensic evidence that could prove the allegations two years after they occurred.

“I didn’t want a trial,” Jackie said. “I can’t imagine getting up on a defense stand having them tear me apart.”

Jackie said early in the week that she felt manipulated by Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, saying that she “felt completely out of control over my own story.” In an in-person interview Thursday, Jackie said that Rolling Stone account of her attack was truthful but also acknowledged that some details in the article might not be accurate.

Jackie contradicted an earlier interview, saying on Thursday that she did not know if her main attacker actually was a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

“He never said he was in Phi Psi,” she said, while noting that she was positive that the date function and attack occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on Sept. 28, 2012. “I know it was Phi Psi because a year afterward my friend pointed out the building to me and said that’s where it happened.”

Tommy Reid, president of the Inter-Fraternity Council, said that all Greek organizations must register parties with the IFC. He said that the council’s records did not date back to the fall of 2012.

Jennifer Jenkins and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

T. Rees Shapiro is an education reporter.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/12/05/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-story/19954293/

Rolling Stone retracts UVA rape story
Roger Yu, USA TODAY 1:38 p.m. EST December 5, 2014

Rolling Stone magazine retracted Friday its controversial story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia after it discovered new information that discredited the information in the piece, a shocking retreat coming merely days after author Sabrina Rubin Erdely defended the reporting.

On Nov. 19, the magazine ran a story of "Jackie," an unidentified UVA. student who says she was gang-raped at a party at the house of Phi Kappa Psi in the fall of 2012. Her shocking story, with vivid details from the night of the incident, and its charges that sexual assaults at UVA. often go unreported embarrassed the university and launched an investigation by school officials and local police. All Greek life activities were also suspended in the wake of the story.

"In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced," wrote Will Dana, the magazine's managing editor said on its website.

"We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account," the post said. "We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story."

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Quasimodo

Will the President of UVA now apologize to the frat;

reinstate fraternities;

and sue the accuser for defamation of the school?

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abb
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The president of UVA needs to be fired. Today.
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Quasimodo


btw, at least the Rolling Stone apologized.

How about the HS and the N&O?

Any apologies forthcoming?

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http://jezebel.com/rolling-stone-partially-retracts-uva-story-over-discrep-1667329573

Rolling Stone Partially Retracts UVA Story Over 'Discrepancies'

AnnaMerlan

Rolling Stone Partially Retracts UVA Story Over 'Discrepancies'Expand

Rolling Stone's managing editor Will Dana has issued a statement announcing that they have found "discrepancies" in the account of Jackie, the UVA student who was allegedly gang-raped at a frat party two years ago. Dana adds: "We have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced." At the same time, the Washington Post reports that the fraternity in question, Phi Kappa Psi, are planning to release a statement rebutting key parts of Jackie's account.

The Rolling Stone statement, which you can read in full here, defends how reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely went about the story, including her decision not to contact Jackie's alleged attackers at her request. But "new information," they say, has caused them to question her account:

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

The Washington Post reports that Phi Kappa Psi will say in their statement they didn't hold a party on the night of September 28, 2012, and that several other key details in Jackie's account of her attackers aren't true:

The officials also said that no members of the fraternity were employed at the university's Aquatic Fitness Center during that time frame — a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post — and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account.

The Post also says they've been unable to corroborate Jackie's account, and that even some of her supporters on campus have begun to doubt her version of events, although they maintain she is clearly traumatized by something:

A group of Jackie's close friends, who are sex assault advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to Jackie but have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

This is really, really bad. It means, of course, that when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave's doubts about the story and called them "idiots" for picking apart Jackie's account, I was dead f*cking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize. It means that my conviction that Sabrina Rubin Erdely had fact-checked her story in ways that were not visible to the public was also wrong. It's bad, bad, bad all around. (And, frankly, it could have been avoided, had Erdely been clearer in her disclosures about what she'd done to reach Jackie's alleged attackers and what her agreement with the girl had been. This announcement wouldn't be producing nearly the same shockwaves if those things had been clearly outlined.)


Saddest of all, this is bad in ways that have far-reaching social consequences: we've just begun, as a society, to not immediately and harshly question a woman who says she was raped. We've just begun to talk about campus sexual assault — which is, to be clear, still a very real problem at UVA and across the country.

I have contacted Rubin Erdely and her editor for further comment and will update if I hear back.
Edited by abb, Dec 5 2014, 01:57 PM.
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Quasimodo


Still, however, we must continue to believe that women never lie about rape...


Quote:
 
It means, of course, that when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave's doubts about the story and called them "idiots" for picking apart Jackie's account, I was dead f*cking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize


Right move.

And better than anything we heard from the N&O or HS...


Edited by Quasimodo, Dec 5 2014, 02:00 PM.
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Quasimodo
Dec 5 2014, 01:57 PM

Still, however, we must continue to believe that women never lie about rape...




Yes. The "metanarrative."
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MikeZPU

I feel vindicated :)

Once again, the public pressure to accept the narrative or else be
labeled as someone who thinks raping women is just fine, I did
feel a little queazy about starting a post here at this blog questioning
Jackie's story.

Seriously, when I read that Rolling Stone article, it immediately
conjured up images of Mangum and her fantastic lies.

Sociopathic liars like this Jackie & Mangum add details that they
believe make their story more credible BUT in the end, these
details also tend to do them in, because some can be readily disproved.

Egg on Rolling Stone's face -- they deserve it!



Edited by MikeZPU, Dec 5 2014, 02:08 PM.
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Quasimodo

REPRISE:


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http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/uva-suspends-fraternities-following-rolling-stone-campus-rape-investigation-20141122


UVA Suspends Fraternities Following Rolling Stone Campus Rape Investigation


By Rolling Stone | November 22, 2014

Following Rolling Stone publishing Sabrina Rubin Erdely's harrowing report "A Rape on Campus," which detailed a pattern of sexual assault among the fraternities at the University of Virginia, many women who attended UVA emailed Rolling Stone sharing their own similar stories. After "A Rape on Campus" went viral, the school itself acknowledged the Rolling Stone article by promising to make changes to their student sexual misconduct policy. Now, the University is taking even more stern action.

President Teresa A. Sullivan announced in a letter to students and alumni that the school's fraternities have been suspended effective immediately. The suspension will last until January 9, 2015, which marks the beginning of the spring semester. In that time, "we will assemble groups of students, faculty, alumni, and other concerned parties to discuss our next steps in preventing sexual assault and sexual violence on Grounds," Sullivan writes.

"The wrongs described in Rolling Stone are appalling and have caused all of us to reexamine our responsibility to this community. Rape is an abhorrent crime that has no place in the world, let alone on the campuses and grounds of our nation’s colleges and universities," Sullivan continues.

"As you are aware, I have asked the Charlottesville Police Department to investigate the 2012 assault that is described in Rolling Stone. There are individuals in our community who know what happened that night, and I am calling on them to come forward to the police to report the facts. Only you can shed light on the truth, and it is your responsibility to do so."

[shades of Brodhead...]

Read the entirety of Sullivan's letter below:



Dear members of the University Community,

Over the past week many of you have reached out to me directly to offer your opinions, reactions, and suggestions related to combatting sexual violence on Grounds. I want you to know that I have heard you, and that your words have enkindled this message.

At UVa we speak in idealistic terms: honor and tradition inform our thinking, and balance our daily actions. And it is easy here, where success is demanded as much as it is sought, to let our idealism outweigh our reality. Jefferson, as he always does, provides a compelling backdrop:

It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it.

The wrongs described in Rolling Stone are appalling and have caused all of us to reexamine our responsibility to this community. Rape is an abhorrent crime that has no place in the world,

[Brodhead template...?]

let alone on the campuses and grounds of our nation’s colleges and universities. We know, and have felt very powerfully this week, that we are better than we have been described, and that we have a responsibility to live our tradition of honor every day, and as importantly every night.

As you are aware, I have asked the Charlottesville Police Department to investigate the 2012 assault that is described in Rolling Stone. There are individuals in our community who know what happened that night, and I am calling on them to come forward to the police to report the facts. [emphasized in bold in the original message]

[Brodhead template?]


Only you can shed light on the truth, and it is your responsibility to do so. Alongside this investigation, we as a community must also do a systematic evaluation of our culture to ensure that one of our founding principles– the pursuit of truth – remains a pillar on which we can stand. There is no greater threat to honor than secrecy and indifference.

I write you today in solidarity. I write you in great sorrow, great rage,

[Brodhead template? Judge them guilty on the basis of an accusation?]


but most importantly, with great determination. Meaningful change is necessary, and we can lead that change for all universities. We can demand that incidents like those described in Rolling Stone never happen and that if they do, the responsible are held accountable to the law. This will require institutional change, cultural change, and legislative change, and it will not be easy. We are making those changes.

This morning the Inter-Fraternity Council announced that all University fraternities have voluntarily suspended social activities this weekend. This is an important first step, but our challenges will extend beyond this weekend. Beginning immediately, I am suspending all fraternal organizations and associated social activities until January 9th, ahead of the beginning of our spring semester. In the intervening period we will assemble groups of students, faculty, alumni, and other concerned parties to discuss our next steps in preventing sexual assault and sexual violence on Grounds.


[Brodhead--let's form a committee...]


On Tuesday, the Board of Visitors will meet to discuss the University’s policies and procedures regarding sexual assault as well as the specific, recent allegations.

In the words of one student who wrote to me this week, "Policy is needed, but people make change." We need the collective strength of the members of our community to ensure that we have the best policies. So as you prepare for what I hope is a restful Thanksgiving holiday, I hope that you will take time to review and respond to the recently posted Student Sexual Misconduct Policy, which is currently open for public comment. You may find that policy at this link. Providing candid feedback to this policy is a practical step that you can take to help and I hope that you will.

To our fourth-year students: as you prepare to celebrate your last home football game today, I hope that you will embrace your role as leaders and demonstrate a renewed sense of responsibility to our community, and a renewed commitment to make that community better. It starts today.

Finally, I want to express my grief at hearing the news of the death of second-year student Peter D'Agostino, whose passing adds overwhelming emotion to what has been a difficult semester for all of us.

We are united in our compassion, resolve, and determination: Compassion for survivors of assault; resolve to make our community better; determination to begin to solve this problem here and now. I hope that you will join me.

Teresa A. Sullivan
President

Edited by Quasimodo, Dec 5 2014, 02:18 PM.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/rolling-stone-apologizes-uva-frat-gang-rape-story-article-1.2034982

Rolling Stone apologizes, admits ‘discrepancies’ in University of Virginia frat gang rape story

The pop culture mag said it 'misplaced' its trust in Jackie, who gave her anonymous account of being gang raped by seven Phi Kappa Psi members at a frat party two years ago. The explosive story made waves internationally and prompted an uproar in the Charlottesville, Va., community.

BY Sasha Goldstein
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, December 5, 2014, 1:58 PM


Rolling Stone is rolling back its explosive story on campus rape.

The esteemed music mag apologized Friday, saying they have found holes in the account published last month of University of Virginia student Jackie, who told the magazine she was gang raped by several frat boys during a September 2012 party.

But the account was immediately hammered by critics, who attacked reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely for failing to contact the alleged attackers, members of the university’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter.

“In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” Managing Editor Will Dana wrote in a letter posted Friday to the Rolling Stone website. “We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.”

The Washington Post had interviewed Jackie, who asked for anonymity to protect her identity in speaking out, for a potential story. During those meetings, according to the newspaper, Jackie stood by her account given to Rolling Stone.

She told the magazine the sickening attack took place just four weeks into her freshman year at a “date-function” thrown by the frat.

A junior who invited the victim to the shindig led her upstairs to a pitch-black room. Once inside the room, the woman detected movement, the article says.

In a flash, she was tripped, sending her crashing through a glass table. Then, she was pinned down and raped by a gang of some seven drunken, pot-smoking frat boys, the article says.
Rolling Stone apologized Friday "to anyone who was affected by the story" detailing a University of Virginia campus rape. Ryan M. Kelly/AP Rolling Stone apologized Friday "to anyone who was affected by the story" detailing a University of Virginia campus rape.

One of them even violated her with a beer bottle as the sweaty mob egged him on.

The victim eventually reported the rape to school administrators, the article says. But they took no action — even after she reported allegations from two other women who claimed to have been assaulted the same way by members of the same fraternity.

“I never asked for this” attention, she told the Washington Post in an interview. “What bothers me is that so many people act like it didn’t happen. It’s my life. I have had to live with the fact that it happened every day for the last two years.”

But the fraternity chapter plans to issue a rebuttal to the article Friday after determining no party was held the night in question and because no frat member matches the descriptions provided.

Even close friends of Jackie have come to doubt her account after getting inconsistent stories, agreeing the woman likely suffered a traumatic experience - but not the one described.

“One of my biggest fears with these inconsistencies emerging is that people will be unwilling to believe survivors in the future,” Jackie’s friend, Alex Pinkleton, a rape survivor herself, told the Washington Post. “However, we need to remember that the majority of survivors who come forward are telling the truth.”

Jackie’s story prompted the frat to suspend activities, an investigation by the Charlottesville, Va., police and condemnation from University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan.

sgoldstein@nydailynews.com
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LTC8K6
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Assistant to The Devil Himself
I have actually been following this on another board, though I don't think I have commented here yet.

You could see the story going "BOOM!" as you read it.

It was just never very believable in several ways.

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http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/05/uva-rape-story-retracted


Rolling Stone Retracts Key Part of UVA Rape Story

Robby Soave|Dec. 5, 2014 2:15 pm

Email

UVAWikimedia CommonsVirtually all details of the horrific gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity detailed in an engrossing Rolling Stone article last month are now either disputed our outright debunked. A terrific Washington Post investigation—which includes an interview with Jackie, the accuser—casts serious doubt on the narrative Jackie told to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the original Rolling Stone piece.

In light of these developments, Rolling Stone is no longer standing by its story. In a statement to readers, Managing Editor Will Dana wrote:

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

The "affected" parties include many at the University of Virginia. The college administration, which had assumed the allegations were true, responded to the story by suspending all fraternity activities and promising more vigorous policing of the campus's party scene.

But according to The Washington Post, Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity that Jackie insisted hosted the party where she was raped on September 28th, 2012, will assert that no such event took place and that none of its members worked at the university's swimming pool that semester—a detail important to the story, since Jackie had claimed that her date to the party, a key perpetrator in the assault, was a co-lifeguard.

According to WaPost, Jackie's friends no longer believe that she was truthful about what happened to her:

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to Jackie but have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he did work at the Aquatic Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie’s name. He said, however, that he had never met Jackie in person and had never taken her on a date. He also confirmed that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Emily Renda, a friend of Jackie's and survivor of sexual assault who was quoted in the initial story, now tells WaPost that she feels misled:

Renda said on Thursday that Jackie initially told her that she was attacked by five students at Phi Kappa Psi on Sept. 28, 2012. Renda said that she learned months later that Jackie had changed the number of attackers from five to seven.

“An advocate is not supposed to be an investigator, a judge or an adjudicator,” said Renda,a 2014 graduate who works for the university as a sexual violence awareness specialist. But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”

“This feels like a betrayal of good advocacy if this is not true,” Renda said. “We teach people to believe the victims. We know there are false reports but those are extraordinarily low.”

There is much more of this in the full Post story.

In light of all this new information, it's impossible to say what exactly happened to Jackie. But it's clear that her story, as told to Erdely, is false. Not slightly false, or partly false, but false. And if Rolling Stone had done its job, the magazine might well have determined that before such a journalistic catastrophe unfolded.

Read my previous report on the UVA situation—one of the earliest stories to express skepticism of Rolling Stone—here.
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LTC8K6
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In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor
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abb
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The comment thread at the WaPo is crackling hot. 500 comments already, and the story's only 1 1/2 hours old.
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