| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,476 Views) | |
| abb | Dec 15 2014, 02:53 PM Post #406 |
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/15/rolling-stone-uva-students-article_n_6327446.html?utm_hp_ref=media Michael Calderone Become a fan michael.calderone@huffingtonpost.com Rolling Stone Writer Contacting UVA Students As Magazine Reviews Disputed Article Posted: 12/15/2014 12:01 pm EST Updated: 1 hour ago NEW YORK -- Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of a now-disputed Rolling Stone story on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, hasn’t spoken publicly as her explosive story has unraveled over the past two weeks. While Erdely has ignored interview requests, including from The Huffington Post, she has reportedly been contacting students she quoted in the story -- some of whom she never approached before publishing the piece in November. On Dec. 5, Rolling Stone issued an editor’s note acknowledging discrepancies in the story featuring UVA student Jackie’s description of a horrific gang rape at a fraternity house. While apologizing, Rolling Stone did not fully retract the article and has said it is reviewing what happened. Erdely relied primarily on the account of a woman she referred to as Jackie, and apparently did little to corroborate information provided to her by Jackie. Erdely and Sean Woods, her editor, initially said Erdely tried reaching the alleged attackers for comment before publication, but was unable to. However, Rolling Stone has since acknowledged she didn’t try. In the 9,000-word article, Erdely also said three friends of Jackie -- identified as “Randall,” “Andy” and “Cindy” -- discouraged Jackie from reporting the crime. The students have recently disputed Erdely's description of events and have said she never contacted them before publication. In the article, Erdely wrote that “Randall” declined to comment out of loyalty to his frat. Ryan Duffin, a 20-year-old student identified in the story as “Randall,” told The Associated Press on Sunday that he “couldn't help but notice that everything that the article said about me was incorrect.” Duffin told the AP that he started dialing the police on the night of the alleged attack, but Jackie begged him not to. Duffin, Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock -- the latter two previously identified as “Cindy” and “Andy,” respectively -- said that Erdely “told them she is re-reporting the story," according to the AP. Hendley also said that Erdely apologized to her. Rolling Stone's top editors have gone silent over the past 10 days, as other news organizations continue to poke holes in its story. Founder and editor Jann Wenner, managing editor Will Dana, and Woods, the magazine’s deputy managing editor, have not any given interviews in that time. Melissa Bruno, a spokeswoman for the magazine, told The Huffington Post that the magazine "is conducting a thorough internal review of the reporting, editing, and fact-checking" of Erdely's story. Bruno did not comment specifically as to whether Rubin herself is re-reporting the story, or if that task is being left to others at the magazine. Typically, news organizations assign reporters and editors not involved in a disputed or discredited story to re-report it in an effort to figure out what went wrong. The New York Times, for instance, assigned several reporters to investigate the work of plagiarist Jayson Blair. Last year, CBS News tapped Al Ortiz, an executive overseeing executive standards and practices, to conduct the review of a discredited "60 Minutes" report on the 2012 Benghazi attacks. While it’s unclear if Erdely is independently contacting students now or is officially part of the magazine’s attempt to re-report the story, she’s not the only reporter from Rolling Stone looking into it. Stock told The Washington Post that another Rolling Stone reporter had contacted him, too. Alex Pinkleton, a student and rape survivor who spoke to Erdely for the article, said Sunday on CNN's "Reliable Sources" that she believes something traumatic happened to Jackie, but faulted the reporter for not adequately vetting the account. She said Erdely’s “intentions were good” in writing on sexual assault on campus, but that the “job was done poorly.” “I am upset with that aspect of it, but I also know that she was trying to come from a point of advocacy,” Pinkleton said. “But as a reporter, you can't be like an advocate and support a story and listen to it and think everything is true and then report on it without trying to figure out if it's true. My job as an advocate was never to question Jackie's story or question the details, because I didn't need to. But the role that she's in as a reporter, she needed to do that." Pinkleton said Erdely recently emailed her, but she did not respond to the writer. WATCH SUNDAY'S "RELIABLE SOURCES" SEGMENT" BELOW. |
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| Baldo | Dec 15 2014, 03:30 PM Post #407 |
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I did a little PR course way back when and one thing I remember is being told reporters come to an interview with the story already written. |
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| abb | Dec 16 2014, 05:18 AM Post #408 |
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http://www.fredericksburg.com/opinion/columns/amrhine-maintaining-perspective-on-campus-sex-assaults/article_456d994a-a7d9-5ba6-b569-282c012f2bb2.html AMRHINE: Maintaining perspective on campus sex assaults BY RICHARD AMRHINE/THE FREE LANCE-STAR | Posted: Sunday, December 14, 2014 12:00 am Maintaining perspective on campus sex assaults In the now-questioned Rolling Stone story, a U.Va. student said she was raped at this Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. I figured that by the time it came to write this month’s column, pretty much all that could be said about the alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia reported by Rolling Stone would have been said. But in light of the “discrepancies” that have turned up in the story, there is indeed plenty to say—about the impact of the story journalistically and on sexual assault advocacy. I first learned of the story when my son shared a link to it on Facebook the day it was posted by Rolling Stone. He’s a student and a fraternity member at William & Mary and was clearly appalled by the details of the incident, as well as the overall atrocious behavior depicted in the story. That night, he called his sister, a high school senior who has long had U.Va. on her short list for next year, and got into a long telephone conversation. I heard only parts of one side of the discussion, but he apparently wondered if she still thought U.Va. is such a good idea. With the Rolling Stone story still so fresh and numbing, as a dad I appreciated his concern for his sister’s well-being. The same goes for my wife, who is a U.Va. graduate. But we also wondered how many other families were having the same discussion, and what exactly the lasting impact on the university would be. Would U.Va. be unfairly judged by the actions of a few bad apples? Would people, particularly potential applicants and their parents, think twice now? Deep down, don’t we really understand that this sort of thing shouldn’t soil or compromise U.Va.’s reputation as one of the finest universities in the country? No matter how it dealt with such situations in the past, the university’s soul searching now would not only make the campus a better place, its commitment to do better would help lead the way on what is a national issue. It also seemed that fate was being incredibly unfair to Virginia’s flagship state university. After all, it had just experienced the unspeakable tragedy of losing a student to a violent crime of opportunity. Parents everywhere, especially those with daughters in or approaching college, instantly became Hannah Graham’s parents. But no matter how much we hurt, we can’t honestly “blame” U.Va. or the wonderful city of Charlottesville because we know deep down that these things can happen anywhere. What we do is have candid conversations with our daughters about being careful and avoiding dangerous places and situations. I felt the same way about the events described in Rolling Stone. The fault in both cases lies solely with the perpetrator. The key is to avoid becoming a victim. And we should have equally blunt conversations with our sons as well, to be certain that we’re on the same page about right and wrong. Now that questions are being raised about the Rolling Stone story, we don’t know what to believe. Something probably did happen to “Jackie,” the U.Va. student who spoke out in the story. We just don’t know who she’s accusing, where it happened or exactly what took place. That’s Rolling Stone’s fault, and the magazine looks even worse when it cites “misplaced trust” in its source rather than taking responsibility for a story it should have more thoroughly investigated. What’s worse, flaws in such a high-profile story instill broad public doubt in media credibility—beyond where it is deserved. You don’t simply take the word of your source, especially with something so explosive. The Rolling Stone staffers aren’t the first team of journalists to suffer from tunnel vision after realizing they had a highly compelling story to tell based on what they considered a reliable source. Corroboration is never optional. Nor is finding out what the accused has to say. Young journalists are taught from the beginning to be careful with stories that will generate alarm because it’s impossible to “un-ring the bell.” I’m sure journalists everywhere sat back after reading the long story and wondered about the young men who were allegedly involved. These are guys who were top high school students who came highly recommended—success stories waiting to happen. And now they are taking turns in this barbaric ritual? Due to the peer pressure of members of an organization of which they wanted to become a part? Not that it couldn’t happen, but it seems so unthinkable. Though the magazine insists that it was protecting its source by not identifying and pursuing interviews with her alleged attackers, it did identify the ringleader as a fraternity brother who worked at the campus aquatic center. Between his job and his fraternity affiliation, that narrows things down quite a bit. Only now it turns out that whoever he is, he didn’t work at the pool and wasn’t a member of Phi Kappa Psi. And that’s a problem. Was there even a party at the house on the night in question? That point would have been good to establish. The fraternity says there wasn’t. I recall that when the Duke University lacrosse rape story broke, the emotions were similarly raw. I have a sister and sisters-in-law who are Duke alumnae and were horrified by the 2006 account of a woman from another school who claimed three players raped her. Turns out her allegations were fabricated, and a prosecutor resigned and was disbarred for his actions in the case. One only hopes that people remember the exonerating outcome and not merely the accusations. The understandable fear is that when stories such as these end up putting the accuser’s credibility in doubt, people can lose sight of the ugly realities of sexual abuse on college campuses or anywhere else. Some people like to say, “No publicity is bad publicity.” Perhaps victims of sexual assault and their advocates will one day look back and realize that the Rolling Stone story might not have gotten it entirely right, but it sure did draw plenty of attention to an issue that can’t get enough of it. Whether U.Va. and Phi Kappa Psi ever forgive Rolling Stone is another question altogether. Richard Amrhine is a writer and editor with The Free Lance–Star. |
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| abb | Dec 16 2014, 05:30 AM Post #409 |
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/1215/Rolling-Stone-s-UVA-rape-story-Here-s-what-we-know-so-far-video Rolling Stone's UVA rape story: Here's what we know so far (+video) As the national conversation continues about how best to address the problem of sexual assault, both on campus and off, here is what is currently known about the particular incident at the center of the Rolling Stone story. By Amanda Paulson, Staff writer December 15, 2014 It's been more than a week since Rolling Stone first acknowledged that there were problems with its cover story about a shocking gang rape at a fraternity on a University of Virginia campus, after other publications questioned aspects of the central account. Over the weekend, even more doubts were aired, as the three friends of "Jackie," as the assault survivor in the story was identified, came forward publicly to give their versions of the night. In the time since the story was published, it sparked a decision by the university's president to temporarily suspend all campus fraternities, ignited new conversation about the issue of campus sexual assault and institutions' lack of response, and then, as the article and the account it detailed came into question, launched a new conversation about both journalistic ethics and what lasting effect the debacle might have on peoples' willingness to believe rape victims or rape victims' willingness to come forward. The bigger questions of how the Rolling Stone story, and the magazine's handling of it, might affect the sexual-assault debate are still being determined, and many activists are working hard to ensure that the severity of the problem isn't being forgotten amid questions about one person's account. At the same time, a new report from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics released last week called into question some of the oft-cited statistics about the prevalence of campus rape and sexual assault, and also showed that about 80 percent of such attacks – significantly more than for the general population – go unreported. As the national conversation continues about how best to address the problem of sexual assault, both on campus and off, and encourage women who have been victims to come forward, here is what is currently known about the particular incident at the center of the Rolling Stone story: The three friends of Jackie, who Sabrina Rubin Erdely referred to in her article as "Andy," "Cindy," and "Randall," and who Ms. Erdely described as discouraging Jackie from going to the police when she met them after her rape, have now come forward and spoken publicly with The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and several TV stations. "We realized it was something we could do without too much risk to ourselves to get the message out there, because people really want to know what happened to Jackie,” Alex Stock, the student previously identified as Andy, told The Washington Post. In Erdely's article, she said that Jackie met her three friends when she called them minutes after leaving the fraternity, beaten up and with blood on her dress, after suffering a brutal gang rape by seven men. When one of her friends suggested taking Jackie to the hospital, Erdely wrote, the other two discouraged it, debating "the social price of reporting Jackie's rape," with Cindy – now identified as Kathryn Hendley, arguing that "she's going to be the girl who cried 'rape' " and none of them would be allowed into frat parties. It was a shocking detail in a shocking story and, according to the three friends, not remotely true. "I couldn't help but notice that everything that the article said about me was incorrect," Ryan Duffin, identified as Randall in the story, told the AP. The three friends, none of whom were contacted by Erdely before the article was published, agree that they met Jackie about 20 minutes away from the frat house, and that she seemed distraught. Far from saying the awful quote attributed to her in the Rolling Stone article, Ms. Hendley says, she actually wasn't part of the conversation, at Jackie's request; she watched from a distance while Jackie talked to the other two. Mr. Duffin and Mr. Stock both say that Jackie then told them that she had been forced to perform oral sex on five men at the fraternity party. Duffin said he then tried to convince her to go to the police, and actually started dialing 911 on his phone, before Jackie stopped him. Stock corroborated his account. Duffin told the AP that he no longer knows what he believes happened that night – but he also is worried that too much focus on Jackie's alleged story, or the misreporting, will take away from attention to the broader issue. "If anything, the takeaway from all this is that I still don't really care if what's presented in this article is true or not because I think it's far more important that people focus on the issue of sexual assault as a whole," Duffin said. Other aspects of Jackie's story also have been called into question, with the Phi Psi fraternity emphasizing that it had no social function on the weekend in question, that it doesn't conduct rush in the fall (the rape in the story was purported to be part of a hazing ritual), and that none of its members had worked at the UVA aquatic center where Jackie said they both worked that fall. Rolling Stone has said that Jackie is now uncertain whether the man, "Drew," who lured her into the room where she said the rape occurred was actually a Phi Psi member. And the three friends of Jackie who have gone public all have said that Erdely has now reached out to them and told them she is re-reporting the story. Meanwhile, on Sunday another UVA student and rape survivor who was interviewed by Erdely went on CNN to discuss her experience with the reporter. Alex Pinkleton, a friend of Jackie's who told CNN she "definitely believe(s) something traumatic happened to [Jackie] that night" said she thought Erdely "had an agenda," and blamed what she considers the reporter's unwillingness to fact check with the debacle that emerged subsequent to publication. When she interviewed Ms. Pinkleton about her own rape experience, Pinkleton said, Erdely kept looking for the most sensational story. "When she asked about my own assault, she kept asking, 'Did he feed you the drinks? Was he keeping tabs of the drinks that night?' " Pinkleton told CNN. "And he wasn't and that's something that I had to keep saying over and over again, and I think – I felt like she wasn't satisfied with my perpetrator as someone who wasn't clearly monstrous." "I think she had her heart in the right place," Pinkleton said of Erdely, but went on to say that her insistence on having a shocking enough story had a poor outcome with regards to attention to the bigger issue. "I think that she should have fact checked and I'm really upset and angry like a lot of people are that that didn't happen and now we're in a very difficult situation." [/s] Edited by Quasimodo, Dec 16 2014, 07:30 AM.
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| abb | Dec 16 2014, 05:31 AM Post #410 |
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http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/15/rolling-stones-bumbling-uva-rape-detective-and-the-vexing-case-of-the-dead-flamingos/ Rolling Stone’s Bumbling UVA Rape Detective And The Vexing Case Of The Dead Flamingos Posted By Eric Owens On 10:46 PM 12/15/2014 In | No Comments Tweet Most everyone in the United States has at some point encountered Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. One short story, “Silver Blaze,” involves a dog that didn’t bark. Spoiler alert: Detective Sherlock Holmes solves the case by realizing a dog didn’t bark because the dog recognized the murderer. Holmes’s legwork is profoundly applicable to disgraced journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s whopper of a Rolling Stone story claiming at least five members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia gang-raped — and punched in celebration — a freshman named Jackie at a party at their frat house on Sept. 28, 2012. Erdely has asserted the frat members abandoned Jackie at the frat house in a bloodstained dress after this horrific ordeal ended. Jackie then ostensibly left via a conveniently vacant side staircase. And not a soul barked. Erdely’s story has now fallen apart nearly completely. The Washington Post suggests Jackie fabricated huge swathes of her gory rape tale, and that the imaginative reporter abrogated her duty to properly investigate it. (RELATED: UVA Gang-Rape Accuser’s Friend Shares New Details In Interview) As other astute observers have already pointed out, much barking would certainly have happened that night if a rape occurred. Jackie said neither she nor her friends contacted police out of concern for their social standing. That’s absurd, but what about other partygoers — particularly women? They must have been there. A frat party without women around is a mortifying sausage fest. Yet not one single woman at the party spotted Jackie — bloodstained as Erdely claims she was — and reported the odd sight to any authority. Those points are good ones, but here’s an even better one: How is it remotely conceivable that none of the alleged rape participants came forward? How could they possibly have assuaged their guilt-wracked consciences for two years? For Erdely’s and Jackie’s pulp fiction to be true, the men involved would all have to be psychopaths capable of terrifying barbarism and conspiring to keep quiet about it. Those are rare criminal qualities. Further, all these odious men would need to meet in the first place. First, they would need to manage to gain admittance to the prestigious University of Virginia (no small feat for anyone, let alone a handful of hardened deviants). Then, these villainous thugs would be required to join the same fraternity coincidentally in order to conspire to rape Jackie as part of what Erdely suggests may possibly be a routine frat ritual. All the while, none of these men, and none of their frat brothers and no one to whom they might have bragged could have reported this shocking crime to the Charlottesville police. (Nor could any of these sadistic, psychopathic criminals have gotten arrested for any other crime over two years and attempted to cop a lesser charge by selling out their frat brothers.) While every bit of Erdely’s account is painfully, mind-bogglingly absurd on its face, imagine for a moment it is true. Let’s set the stage. First, we have the organizer of the rape event. Erdely says he is a junior named “Drew” who belongs to Phi Psi. “Drew” supposedly took Jackie back to his fraternity house after calmly going on a date with her. Meanwhile, half a dozen other men were waiting quietly and patiently in a dark room, like rape ninjas, to consummate a gang-rape initiation ritual. This sort of event would take immense planning. “Listen up, brothers,” Drew would have needed to announce at the rape logistics meeting. “I have arranged to have a woman arrive at the house on Friday for our big gang rape. Taylor, Jared, Connor, Biff and Cody: You will all be committing this felony that could ruin your lives if you get busted. You’ll wait silently until I usher the victim into a pre-selected room.” And that particular wait would have been hell, right? How did these guys pass the time? Did they chat about rapes of yore? Did they mutely play with their mobile phones in the pitch-black room until the moment of raping arrived? Who went first? Was the guy who had to go fifth in some kind of trouble? In any event, Erdely maintains that, when the spectacular rape moment at last arrived, a group of Phi Psi members raped Jackie on a glass table. One rapist used a bottle, she said. “Drew” and another man watched for a very long time and enthusiastically provided helpful rape instruction. Finally, recall Erdely’s suggestion that the rape was an initiation, which suggests this kind of thing is institutionalized among the members of Phi Kappa Psi — a group of men whose founding creed speaks of “a brotherhood of honorable men,” “moral and spiritual excellence” and a duty of each member “to strengthen my character and deepen my integrity.” Could anyone who swears such an oath plausibly commit such a crime? How about seven of them? Would they really expect to avoid prosecution until Erdely came along with her wildly implausible, 9,000-word, agenda-driven excuse for journalism? Erdely would have readers believe as much. And, she would have us believe, not one Phi Psi member barked. Not one frat guy felt so bad about what he had done that he reported the crime to the police — even in some anonymous way. Among the heinous assumptions here is that gang rape is a thing normal males will participate in. Quite obviously, this assumption is wrong. Rapists are rare. Even many people who are rapists would likely frown at a brutal gang rape. Everyone has limits. The subset of American men who would participate in a brutal gang rape is infinitesimally small. And even of that miniscule subset, some percentage of them would certainly end up feeling so torn up morally they’d conclude they had no moral choice but to report the crime. Yet Erdely suggests the gang rape was just another ho-hum day at the Phi Psi house. In a roundabout way, another — actually true — fraternity-related story out of Hattiesburg, Miss. is instructive. That story, from October of this year, involves the Pi Kappa Alpha (PIKE) chapter at the University of Southern Mississippi and a couple of dead flamingos. PIKE pledge Devin Nottis stole a Chilean flamingo from the Hattiesburg Zoo. He apparently got in an altercation with a second flamingo in the midst of the theft. He rapped about the theft in a video and then posted his flamingo-theft-rapping video on the Internet. (RELATED: Don’t Rap On Snapchat About Stealing $2000 Flamingos To Impress Frat Dudes) Nottis, 19, was participating in a late-night PIKE scavenger hunt when the incident occurred. His one-in-the-morning, scavenger-hunt mission was to snap a picture with himself and a flamingo at the zoo. He and some accomplices seem to have decided it’d be way cooler to steal a real flamingo instead. So, Nottis scaled a 10-foot fence and swiped one of the $2,000 birds. At some perhaps less drunken point later, the PIKE brothers decided it was a terrible idea to have a stolen flamingo running around the frat house. Thus, in a manner of speaking, a dog very much did bark at the Southern Miss PIKE house — in the form of frat guys realizing they could be in big trouble. Imagine how that conversation must have gone down. “Dude,” an older frat brother must have told Nottis. “You gotta get rid of this flamingo. Like, right now.” So, fairly idiotically, Nottis delivered the bird to a bicycle trail far away from the PIKE house. He left it there, still alive. It had a broken leg. Zoo officials ultimately decided they had no choice but to euthanize the abandoned animal. (The flamingo Nottis fought died on its own.) Compare now the flamingo-related actions of the Southern Miss PIKEs to the alleged actions of the Phi Psi members at the University of Virginia. According to Erdely, the men of Phi Psi, who, she says, had brutally gang-raped another human being, didn’t even bother to transport the rape victim away from the frat house. They just nonchalantly let Jackie leave, somehow assured that she’d never be seen or report the wicked crime to the police, ruining their lives and sending them all to prison. There is simply no way Erdely’s tale of a frat house gang-rape happened. Frat guys — with their resplendent honor codes — are not hardened criminals who participate in gang rapes. Moreover, rapes of any kind are simply not any kind of norm on America’s college campuses. In fact, fresh Department of Justice data indicates collegiate women are less likely to be assaulted than their non-student peers. (RELATED: DOJ: 0.61 Percent Of Students Are Sexually Assaulted) It is shameful that anyone believed Erdely’s story. At the same time, it’s no mystery it proved fleetingly believable. The narrative Erdely hoped to promote with her fabulist yarn is based squarely on the erroneous assumption that throngs of college males are routinely raping college women. In turn, this erroneous assumption has been made possible through the work of a group of vocal, fringe feminists which has for decades impressively and persistently cultivated a belief that men on college campuses (particularly the ones who join frats) are regularly raping their female peers. These fringe feminists cite an amazing, false statistic that one in five college women suffers some sexual assault. They repeat this false statistic over and over again like a mantra, despite the fact that it is an absurdly far cry from the Department of Justice’s reality-based statistic of 0.61 percent, which is 6 in 1,000. University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan was ready and willing to believe Erdely’s laughably unbelievable tale of fraternity gang rape because she had adopted this ludicrous feminist dogma. After Rolling Stone published the story, Sullivan readily shut down all Greek-life activity on campus. The Greek life shutdown at UVA still remains in force. Follow Eric on Twitter and on Facebook, and send story tips to erico@dailycaller.com. |
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| abb | Dec 16 2014, 05:34 AM Post #411 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/15/u-va-rape-survivor-rolling-stone-reporter-had-an-agenda/ U-Va. rape survivor: Rolling Stone reporter had ‘an agenda’ By Erik Wemple December 15 at 10:54 AM More evidence that bias drove Rolling Stone’s awful story on rape at the University of Virginia: In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter, Alex Pinkleton, a rape survivor and U-Va. student, said of Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote “A Rape on Campus“: “I think she had her heart in the right place. She wanted to bring light to this issue and it is a prevalent issue at U-Va. and on campuses across the nation,” said Pinkleton when asked to comment on Erdely. “However, she did have an agenda and part of that agenda was showing how monstrous fraternities themselves as an institution are and blaming the administration for a lot of these sexual assaults.” In the interview with Stelter, Pinkleton described the circumstances of her own sexual assault, in which she “had drank a lot of alcohol that night, was unconscious and came to with him on top of me,” said Pinkleton, referring to the perpetrator of her assault. As she discussed the incident with Erdely before the publication of “A Rape on Campus,” Pinkleton noticed a certain tendency in the reporter: “When she asked about my own assault, she kept asking, you know, ‘Did he feed you the drinks, was he keeping tabs of the drinks that night?’ ” Pinkleton told Stelter. “And he wasn’t and that’s something that I had to keep saying over and over again. And I felt that she wasn’t satisfied with my perpetrator as someone who wasn’t clearly monstrous.” That very reportorial attitude popped up in Erdely’s own interviews about the story, before it collapsed under the scrutiny of the Metro section of The Washington Post. In comments to a Slate podcast, Erdely was asked about the alleged perpetrators of a September 2012 seven-man gang rape of a then-freshman named Jackie at the Phi Kappa Psi house. She responded, “I don’t want to say much about them as individuals but I’ll just say that this particular fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi — it’s really emblematic in a lot of ways of sort of like elitist fraternity culture.” Fraternities were important to Erdely, as Pinkleton, a friend of Jackie’s, told Stelter: “I didn’t like that it seemed like she was looking for a story that had to be at a fraternity,” she said. As “A Rape on Campus” noted, fraternity men are three times more likely to rape than non-fraternity men, according to studies. Even so, Pinkleton said, “As a reporter, you can’t be like an advocate and support a story and listen to it and think everything is true and then report on it without trying to figure out if it’s true. My job as an advocate [for sexual assault survivors] was never to question Jackie’s story or question the details, because I didn’t need to. But the role that she’s in as a reporter, she needed to do that.” |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 16 2014, 07:37 AM Post #412 |
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So where is her apology? |
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| cks | Dec 16 2014, 10:15 AM Post #413 |
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Sullivan is following the Brodhead playbook. The interesting question is will the UVA BOT use the Duke BOT playbook as well? |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 16 2014, 10:24 AM Post #414 |
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Obviously the media has learned nothing... |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 16 2014, 10:53 AM Post #415 |
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Edited by Quasimodo, Dec 16 2014, 10:54 AM.
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| MikeZPU | Dec 16 2014, 11:00 AM Post #416 |
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in one of the stories posted by abb (thanks!) it indicates that Rolling Stone is letting Erdely "re-report" the story, actually investigating Jackie's story this time around. That is egregiously ridiculous! They should put a pair of fresh eyes on the story! She has lost credibility! Erdely is going to push the "something happened" to Jackie that night narrative! |
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| abb | Dec 16 2014, 12:04 PM Post #417 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/15/rolling-stones-u-va-story-what-about-the-other-two-alleged-gang-rapes/ Rolling Stone’s U-Va. story: What about the other two alleged gang rapes? By Erik Wemple December 15 at 4:20 PM In this Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, file photo, University of Virginia students walk to campus past the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va. Rolling Stone is casting doubt on the account it published of a young woman who says she was gang-raped at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party at the school, saying there now appear to be discrepancies in the student’s account. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File) Rolling Stone magazine had every reason to believe that its story alleging that a freshman named Jackie was gang-raped on Sept. 28, 2012, by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia would stir a furor. Indeed it did, followed closely by a debunking, as The Washington Post has published inconsistencies with the story presented by the magazine about that night. The controversy around the alleged gang rape has overshadowed other claims in the story by writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely. In addition to describing Jackie’s alleged assault, the Rolling Stone piece follows her through interactions with rape survivors and with the university administration. Thanks to her “ever expanding network,” writes Erdely, “Jackie had come across something deeply disturbing: two other young women who, she says, confided that they, too, had recently been Phi Kappa Psi gang-rape victims.” In May 2014, the story notes, Jackie apprised Associate Dean of Students Nicole P. Eramo of these gang-rape allegations. Erdely breaks down the cases: “One, she says, is a 2013 graduate, who’d told Jackie that she’d been gang-raped as a freshman at the Phi Psi house. The other was a first-year whose worried friends had called Jackie after the girl had come home wearing no pants. Jackie said the girl told her she’d been assaulted by four men in a Phi Psi bathroom while a fifth watched,” writes Erdely in the story. What has come of these claims? Lt. Stephen Upman, public information officer for the Charlottesville police department, says the police are not commenting further on any aspect of the Rolling Stone story until an investigation has “reached its logical conclusion.” At that point, says Upman, the department will issue a media release on the matter. The national fraternity organization has attempted to track down the allegations, to no avail thus far. “We haven’t been able to find any information regarding those” allegations, says Shawn Collinsworth, executive director of Phi Kappa Psi. Reports of the additional two gang rapes, Collinsworth’s group was told by the university, came exclusively from Jackie, says the executive director in a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog. If these allegations followed the same pattern as those regarding the seven-man rape, Rolling Stone needed no corroboration beyond Jackie’s statements. For evidence that the magazine didn’t fully corroborate the other claims, here’s how it represents the reporting about the two other alleged victims: “(Neither woman was willing to talk to RS.)” In this story, Rolling Stone has vested such disclosures with vast possibilities. Many readers might suppose that “neither woman was willing to talk to RS” means that Erdely called and e-mailed them, but they refused to be interviewed. We know from other parts of the story, however, that such conclusions may be wrong. For instance, “A Rape on Campus” notes that one of Jackie’s friends — the pseudonymous “Randall” — “declined to be interviewed.” The Post later reported that “Randall” “was never contacted by Rolling Stone and would have agreed to an interview.” Also, Rolling Stone has conceded that it didn’t contact Jackie’s alleged assailants in deference to her wishes. So: How does Rolling Stone know that these other alleged victims of gang rape at Phi Kappa Psi were unwilling to talk? We’ve asked the magazine about that, and they haven’t gotten back to us about it. Further context regarding Phi Kappa Psi and gang rape: Though the Rolling Stone story said that Jackie’s trauma had taken place at this particular house, the friends that came to her aid on that night claim she didn’t “specifically identify” a fraternity that night. A request for comment from an attorney for Jackie went unreturned. University of Virginia spokesman Anthony P. de Bruyn e-mailed the following statement: “The Charlottesville Police Department is investigating the alleged incident described in the article, and they have asked us not to publicly comment on the matter. Furthermore, an independent counsel has also been engaged by the state Attorney General and the University to review our policies, practices and procedures regarding sexual assault. Given the criminal investigation and the independent review, the University will have no further comment.” Erik Wemple writes the Erik Wemple blog, where he reports and opines on media organizations of all sorts. |
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| abb | Dec 16 2014, 12:47 PM Post #418 |
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http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2014/12/jackies-story-and-uvas-stalinist-rules/ Jackie’s Story and UVA’s Stalinist Rules KC Johnson December 16, 2014 Leave a comment The collapse of the Rolling Stone rape story had an important byproduct—it showed the stunning unfairness of UVA’s proposed new sexual assault policies. UVA’s proposed guidelines, like those of many colleges, are heavily pitched toward accusers, minimize due process and all but ensure that key evidence will not come before the university, especially if that evidence might contradict the accuser’s version of events. By now, thanks to excellent reporting from the Washington Post and Slate, we know that Jackie has told three (mutually contradictory) versions of the alleged assault. As a result, few people beyond the most doctrinaire ideologues could believe that Jackie’s case should have ended with UVA vindicating her. But what if, instead of speaking to Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Erdely, Jackie had bided her time, and filed a complaint under the proposed new procedures? Would this non-credible accuser have been able to persuade the university to brand one or more of its students a rapist? The preponderance of evidence says yes. In this respect, Jackie’s case offers a terrifying perspective on UVA’s new procedures. Filing a Complaint While Jackie told her friends very different versions about what allegedly occurred a night in September 2012, publicly—in conversations with Erdely, the Washington Post, and UVA employee Emily Renda—she has stood by one story: she was the victim of a brutal gang rape at Phi Kappa Psi, involving five or seven male students, seemingly as part of a fraternity initiation scheme. Of this number, Jackie could identify two—Drew, the ringleader and a fellow lifeguard; and a student from her Anthropology seminar (call him A.S.). Jackie’s success (or failure) in presenting this version of events to UVA would have depended on her ability to keep key evidence, especially from her friend/desired boyfriend “Randall,” from the disciplinary investigator—a task at which she succeeded with Rolling Stone. UVA’s proposed new procedures would have enormously assisted her in this effort. Upon filing a complaint, Jackie would have been immediately eligible for “remedial measures,” which are triggered for a variety of reasons, including “the severity or pervasiveness of the allegations.” Jackie almost certainly would have received no-contact orders for Drew and A.S., and in the case of A.S., a reconfiguration of their anthropology seminar. (It’s not clear under the policy whether Jackie would have transferred to a new section or whether A.S. would have been forced to do so.) The guidelines explain that “if the victim wishes to pursue a University complaint, [the dean’s office] will meet with him or her in order to explain the University’s investigation and resolution procedures and to help facilitate the filing of a Sexual Misconduct complaint under this Policy.” Note the wording here: the filing of a complaint in and of itself would have made Jackie a “victim” in the eyes of the University of Virginia. The filing likely would have led to an “hold” placed on Drew’s and A.S.’s transcripts, a move that is discretionary for the Dean but would have seemed near-certain given the severity of Jackie’s allegations. Investigation At this point, Jackie’s complaint would have been referred to an investigator for what the university describes as a “prompt, thorough, fair, impartial and reliable investigation.” The proposed new procedures give almost total power to this investigator; a hearing occurs only at the punishment stage. Based on reporting from the Washington Post and Slate, five pieces of evidence—in descending order of importance—would have been critical for Drew and A.S. to prove their innocence: (1) The text messages between Randall and Jackie, showing that Jackie’s “date” on the night in question was not Drew but instead an Imaginary Boyfriend. The discovery of the Imaginary Boyfriend and his alleged role in the night in question would almost certainly have been fatal to Jackie’s claims. (2) An ability to interview Randall (and also Jackie’s two other friends the night of the alleged incident). The three friends have claimed that Jackie told them a radically different version of a gang rape than what she told Rolling Stone, one in which A.S. played no role. (Drew was present in both versions, though aspects of his personal background differed.) (3) The ability to subpoena Jackie’s e-mail and text messages from the time of the incident—which, unless Drew and A.S. could have independently discovered the existence of Jackie’s three friends, would have provided the only evidence of the other two versions of events that Jackie told. (4) An ability to cross-examine Jackie, who given her multiple, mutually contradictory, stories, would seem to be very vulnerable to such a cross-examination. (5) An ability to examine Jackie’s contemporaneous medical records, especially given the fact that the three friends say that she showed no signs of bloody injuries or bruising, as she claimed to Rolling Stone. If the medical records confirmed the friends’ account, this would seem to be problematic for Jackie’s credibility. In a legal proceeding, defense attorneys for Drew and A.S. would have access to all five pieces of this exculpatory evidence. Under UVA’s so-called “through” inquiry, however, most and perhaps all of this critical information never would have come before the Investigator. “Justice” at UVA Under UVA’s proposed new procedures, Drew and A.S. certainly would not have had access to items (3), (4), and (5). Nor, of course, would their attorneys, whose role in the process would have been “limited to providing support, guidance and/or advice to the parties,” not questioning witnesses or arguing to the investigator. Under the proposed new procedures, the university (as well as charged students) lacks subpoena power, so only those e-mail exchanges that Jackie chose to share with the Investigator would have been entered into evidence. A similar restraint applies to medical records: only “subject to the consent of the applicable party” would these records enter the process. And since (based on what we now know) those records would have undermined Jackie’s case, it’s hard to imagine her consenting to their admission. Nor would Drew or A.S. (or their attorneys) have had an opportunity to cross-examine Jackie—or even watch her being questioned, to independently verify her credibility. Under UVA’s proposed new guidelines, the Investigator would “interview the Complainant and the Respondent separately.” The fate of Drew and A.S., then, would have come down to whether they could prove they weren’t in Charlottesville that night—or whether Jackie’s three friends (especially Randall) would have testified and whether Randall’s critical text messages (which revealed the Imaginary Boyfriend) would have been entered into evidence. But assuming Jackie’s decision not to go to the press, Randall’s existence would have depended on Jackie’s willingness to recommend that the Investigator interview him. (According to the new guidelines, “The Investigator will make a good faith effort to contact and interview any witness that either party suggests may have information or evidence relevant to the complaint,” or any witness who might seem relevant from documents.) Based on what we’ve seen from Rolling Stone’s treatment of Jackie, Jackie would not have volunteered Randall as a witness. (Recall the odd clause in Rolling Stone’s apology that the magazine was “told” that Randall wouldn’t speak with them.) Nor is it likely that the investigator would have learned of Randall from contemporaneous documents, since it’s hard to imagine Jackie turning over her text messages with Randall discussing the Imaginary Boyfriend. Instead of suggesting the three friends as witnesses to the investigator, Jackie could have corroborated her frame of mind with people who had encountered her at the time but who had no first-hand knowledge of events on the night in question—such as her former suitemate, or a friend who has said, “The first thing as a friend we must say is, ‘I believe you and I am here to listen.” Perhaps the Investigator would have discovered Randall through other avenues. Perhaps—somehow—Drew and A.S. would have done so. But neither outcome seems likely. Credibility If the Investigator or the accused students didn’t locate Randall or gain access to his text messages, the case would have come down to whether the Investigator found Drew and A.S. more credible, especially in their assertion that no frat party occurred on the night in question, or whether he was at least 50.01 percent sure Jackie was telling the truth. It might seem that any investigator would see through Jackie’s mutually contradictory stories, but there are at least two reasons to be skeptical. First, the investigator—designated by the University’s Office of Equal Opportunity Programs—would be paid by the Sullivan administration, whose tendency to presume guilt on the basis of allegations alone was on full display throughout this affair. Any investigator who wanted to keep his job would know not to be too skeptical of an accuser’s story. Second, Jackie appears to be very persuasive, at least in one-on-one interviews. Erdely might be a journalistic hack, but there’s little reason to believe that she thought Jackie was lying; Erdely’s goal of producing an article to upend the alleged “patriarchy” at UVA wouldn’t have been served by highlighting a phony protagonist. Then there’s Jackie’s former friend (who, it seems, she also wanted to date) Randall. He told the Washington Post, “I had never seen anybody acting like she was on that night before, and I really hope I never have to again. . . . If she was acting on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, then she deserves an Oscar.” Randall said this even though he knew that the alleged rape occurred after a “date” between Jackie and an imaginary boyfriend that appeared designed to make him jealous. Further Proceedings If the Investigator upheld Jackie’s claim, Drew and A.S. would have had an opportunity to respond in writing. Then, a Standing Review Committee would review the documentation to determine whether “there is a rational basis, applying a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard, for the Investigator’s recommended finding(s).” Only a flagrantly biased investigator would fail to clear this highly deferential standard. At that point, a hearing would commence, whose “sole purpose . . . is to determine the sanction(s) for Prohibited Conduct as to which there has already been a finding of responsibility,” not to “re-visit the finding(s) of responsibility.” Drew and A.S., like all other students charged under the new guidelines, never would receive a hearing to contest the allegations. If the committee recommended suspension or expulsion, this notice would go on the students’ permanent transcripts. If, on the other hand, the investigator had concluded that it was more likely than not that Jackie was not telling the truth, no notice would have gone on her transcript. Accused students lack a right to appeal under the proposed guidelines. Instead, “The decision of the Standing Review Committee is final, without further recourse or appeal by either party.” Nor would Drew or A.S. have had the right to appeal the penalty. As Jackie’s story has imploded, anti-due process activists on campus (who previously has cited the Rolling Stone article as proof of a “rape culture”) have distanced herself from her, claiming that her allegations are unusual. They’re right: in most campus rape cases, documentary evidence that wholly undermines the accuser’s story—such as the Jackie-Randall text messages revealing the imaginary boyfriend—doesn’t exist. But that’s what makes the juxtaposition between UVA’s proposed new procedures and Jackie’s case so troubling: if the students accused by Jackie weren’t assured of exoneration, given the holes in her story, what chance will accused students have in less clear-cut cases? Despite a Department of Justice report showing that not one in five but 6 in 1000 college women will be victims of sexual assault—and, far more important, the rates of sexual assault are lower for students than for non-students—we’ve seen a crusade to weaken due process protections on campus. The new UVA procedures are a perfect example of this pattern. A system whose result, and perhaps intention, is to exclude critical evidence is a lawsuit waiting to happen. |
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| LTC8K6 | Dec 16 2014, 01:43 PM Post #419 |
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Assistant to The Devil Himself
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Did anyone even check into anything Jackie said or did, at all? http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/friends-uva-rape-accuser-begin-doubt-story/
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| kbp | Dec 16 2014, 02:28 PM Post #420 |
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Is the Rolling Stone hoping to clarify what was written? |
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