| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,420 Views) | |
| abb | Dec 29 2015, 09:49 AM Post #1246 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rolling-stone-wants-lawsuit-over-debunked-gang-rape-article-dismissed/article/2579174?custom_click=rss Rolling Stone wants lawsuit over debunked gang-rape article dismissed By Ashe Schow • 12/29/15 12:11 AM Rolling Stone Magazine's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by three former members of the fraternity maligned by the publication in a now-retracted article alleging a gang rape. The three former members of the University of Virginia chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity claim in their lawsuit that they were easily identified as potential rapists in Rolling Stone's expose. The students claim their names and hometowns were listed online following the article, and that their "names will forever be associated with the alleged gang rape." Attorneys for Rolling Stone dispute this, writing "No reasonable reader would understand from the article and the proffered extrinsic evidence that plaintiffs are identified as the perpetrators." The article didn't provide the real names of any of the alleged attackers (the main perpetrator turned out to not even exist). But the fraternity members allege that enough identifiable information was provided that friends, family members and other students were able to figure out who might have been the rapists. One of the suing students had the bedroom at the top of the first flight of stairs at the fraternity house, which was deemed "the mostly likely scene of the alleged crime," according to the lawsuit. The three students say they were interrogated and harassed by the people they knew (as well as reporters and online commenters) after they were identified. The article at the center of the lawsuit involved an accusation that members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity gang-raped a college freshman as part of an initiation party. The story fell apart when it was determined that no party took place at the fraternity the night of the alleged attack and that prospective members pledged in the spring and not the fall. Further complicating the accusation was the discovery that the man who brought the accuser to the non-existent party didn't exist either. The accuser gave multiple names and backstories for the man, and used a photo of an old high school acquaintance as evidence that he existed. She also used a text messaging service to fake texts between him and her friends. Her friends also disputed her account after being accused of apathy toward her claims of rape. They said they tried to get the accuser to go to the hospital, and stayed with her all night when she refused. She told Rolling Stone that her friends debated the social implications of coming forward with a rape accusation and persuaded her to avoid the hospital and the police. Barely a month after the article was published, it was retracted with an editor's note. In April 2015, the Columbia Journalism Review released its findings into what went wrong in the reporting. Since then, three lawsuits have been filed against the magazine. One from the three fraternity members, one from a U.Va. dean who was named in the article and one from the Phi Kappa Psi chapter as a whole. The fraternity house was vandalized in the wake of the article. |
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| abb | Jan 8 2016, 08:06 PM Post #1247 |
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https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/eramo-filing.pdf |
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| abb | Jan 9 2016, 06:44 AM Post #1248 |
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/now-says-uva-dean-s-strategy-in-lawsuit-undermines-sexual/article_082e5f35-2ed0-5167-8a96-344df51092dc.html NOW says UVa dean's strategy in lawsuit 'undermines' sexual assault victims By Dean Seal The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress | Posted: Friday, January 8, 2016 9:08 pm A national feminist organization is calling on University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan to quell the actions of a university administrator embroiled in a defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine. The National Organization for Women published an open letter to Sullivan on Jan. 6 calling out the “deeply disturbing actions” of Nicole Eramo, an associate dean of students at UVa who filed a $7.5-million federal lawsuit last May against Rolling Stone in relation to a now-retracted article about sexual assault on UVa’s campus. A former chairwoman of the university’s sexual misconduct board, Eramo claims in her suit that the article portrays her as ineffective and uncaring in helping victims of sexual assault. In recent weeks, Eramo has asked the court to compel the cooperation of “Jackie,” the UVa student whose account of her alleged gang rape at a prominent fraternity house served as the article’s centerpiece. An investigation by Charlottesville police turned over no evidence that Jackie’s alleged assault ever occurred, and the magazine has since retracted the story that the Columbia Journalism Review dubbed “a journalistic failure that was avoidable.” Counsel for Eramo has asked that Jackie turn over any communications with the magazine, friends, family and a campus support organization related to the alleged assault, but Jackie’s lawyers have countered that their client is immune from doing so, as she is not a party to the lawsuit and should be given immunity as a victim of sexual assault. In Wednesday’s letter, the National Organization for Women said Eramo’s effort is going too far. “Your dean’s demands recite nearly every false argument made to undermine victims of sexual assault,” the letter reads. “It is exactly this kind of victim blaming and shaming that fosters rape culture, re-victimizes those brave enough to have come forward, and silences countless other victims.” The letter states that by implicating Jackie in the lawsuit, Eramo has “publicly attacked” a victim whom she formerly counseled and that doing so could damage the ability of students to trust university officials tasked with protecting them. Further, the letter indicts the university for condoning Eramo’s actions and demands that it take steps to “put a stop to these actions, make clear that the university does not support them and to continue to foster a more positive environment where all students can feel safe and protected.” A spokesman for the university said Friday that Sullivan declined to comment on the matter. When reached Friday, one of Eramo’s attorneys said it was “unfortunate” that “Jackie and her cadre of lawyers have taken the unreasonable and legally untenable position that she is immune from routine civil discovery.” “And it is even more unfortunate that an organization that is supposed to advocate on behalf of women is supporting a woman who has set the cause for survivor support back so far,” said Libby Locke, a member of Eramo’s counsel. In her most recent filing in the case, Eramo called Jackie a “serial liar who invented people, events and text messages” to corroborate her story, and that she is not immune from participating in the lawsuit’s discovery phase. “Jackie was the primary source for Rolling Stone’s false and defamatory article that included her story about being the victim of a violent sexual assault. But there is no evidence whatsoever that the story Jackie told her friends, or the very story she told Rolling Stone, actually transpired,” Locke said in an email. “Instead, it appears that Jackie fabricated her perpetrator and the details of the alleged assault. … Having freely discussed her supposed sexual assault with numerous media outlets, there is no basis in law or logic for Jackie to refuse to produce documents related to her participation in the Rolling Stone article.” Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, disagreed with the notion that Jackie had fabricated her story, saying that “I have always believed Jackie” and that Jackie’s trauma could have affected her memory of the alleged assault. She further censured the university and Sullivan for condoning Jackie’s “re-victimization” through Eramo’s court filings. “They are ratcheting up the promotion of rape culture and slut-shaming with these filings,” O’Neill said Friday. “I am beyond shocked that an institution as well regarded as the University of Virginia would actually engage in this kind of behavior.” O’Neill said her organization had not sent any messages to Eramo directly, and that while UVa is not named as a party to the lawsuit, the organization “views this as an action of the administration” of the university. “What we see is the message that is unmistakably being communicated to women at UVa … if you get raped at UVa and you file a report on it, you are fair game to be viciously attacked years after the attack if the administration feels it is in their best interest,” O’Neill said. “President Sullivan is responsible for those kinds of messages, period, end of discussion.” Rolling Stone is facing two more lawsuits in relation to the retracted story. In 2015, members and alumni of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity filed lawsuits claiming they were unduly harmed by the allegations in the debunked article.[/s] Edited by abb, Jan 9 2016, 06:44 AM.
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| abb | Jan 9 2016, 06:45 AM Post #1249 |
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/08/lawsuit-uva-students-crush-on-a-friend-was-root-of-fake-rolling-stone-gang-rape-story/ Lawsuit: UVA Student’s Crush On A Friend Was Root Of Fake Rolling Stone Gang Rape Story Photo of Chuck Ross Chuck Ross Reporter 11:03 PM 01/08/2016 15 The former University of Virginia student whose false claim about being gang-raped was published by Rolling Stone is a “serial liar” who– in addition to fabricating the rape story — made up a second identity and lied about having a terminal illness, all so that she could win the affections of a student she had a crush on, attorneys representing a dean at the school claimed in a recent lawsuit filing. Jackie Coakley posed as her own suitor, a UVA student she called “Haven Monahan,” in an elaborate catfishing scheme aimed at getting her friend and classmate, Ryan Duffin, to like her, attorneys for UVA dean Nicole Eramo asserted in court papers filed this week, according to The Washington Post. She also told Duffin that she had a terminal illness and was “dying.” But her biggest lies graced the pages of Rolling Stone in a Nov. 2014 article entitled “A Rape on Campus,” which was written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Eramo filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone and Erdely last year. Not only did Coakley lie about the gang-rape claim that is the center of Erdely’s 9,000-word piece, the reporter and the magazine failed to practice basic journalistic ethics by publishing the article, Eramo asserts. FROM AROUND THE WEB How to Report Identity Theft Premium Identity Protection No ‘Making a Murderer’ Pardon From Obama, White House Says The New York Times Mining Truck Loses It! Watch What Happens Next… The Grizzled Sponsored Links by As Erdely reported, Coakley claimed that on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, she went on a date with a third-year fraternity member she knew from her job at the school’s swimming pool. She claimed that after the date, she was taken to a fraternity party were she was taken upstairs and gang-raped by seven fraternity brothers as part of a heinous hazing ritual. Coakley claimed that she was raped on top of a broken table and that a bottle was used to assault her. Besides fabricating the rape story, Coakley lied about how her friends and school officials responded to her complaint. Three friends that Coakley called after the alleged attack were reported by Erdely as urging her not to file a complaint because they were worried about not being invited to campus parties. Coakley also claimed that Eramo failed to help her pursue justice in the case. But in the recent court filing, Eramo’s attorneys asserted that Coakley’s story “was a lie when she first told it in 2012, and it was no more true when Rolling Stone recklessly published the tale in 2014.” No evidence exists which would allow anyone “to conclude that Jackie is even an ‘alleged’ victim of sexual assault, let alone an actual victim,” the lawyers added. Indeed, the Charlottesville police department found no evidence to support Coakley’s claims. They also determined that she changed her story about another physical assault she claimed occurred near campus. Though Coakley is not a defendant in the lawsuit, Eramo is arguing that her text messages, emails and testimony are “highly relevant” to the case. Eramo is suing Erdely and Rolling Stone’s editors, claiming that they should never have printed Coakley’s story given how little evidence there was to support her claims. Though the article gained national attention after it was published — with progressive journalists, activists, and liberal politicians condemning UVA and the accused fraternity — Coakley’s accusations were soon called into question. And once that thread was pulled, the entire story unraveled. As the story fell apart, it came to light that Erdely failed to perform basic tenets of journalism. Coakley declined to provide to Erdely the names of the men who she said raped her, it was revealed. But that did not deter the reporter and the magazine. The piece went ahead anyway. Erdely also did not contact the three friends who Coakley claimed she called for help after the supposed rape. Had Erdely taken that step, the story “never would have blown up like this,” Duffin, one of the three friends mentioned by pseudonym in the article, told The Post. He and the two other friends came forward several weeks after the story was published to clarify that Coakley’s claim on the night that the attack supposedly occurred was that she was forced to perform oral sex on five fraternity members. There was no blood on her dress, as Erdely reported in her article. Duffin and the other friends also disputed the claim that they convinced Coakley to keep quiet about the attack. Eramo’s lawyers contend that Coakley made up the story that later appeared in Rolling Stone as a way to get Duffin’s attention. Duffin’s text message and emails were subpoenaed as part of Eramo’s lawsuit. The records show that Coakley aggressively pursued a romantic relationship with Duffin. Soon after the pair met, Coakley put Duffin in touch with a student she said she was dating named Haven Monahan. But Monahan soon began telling Duffin that he was the object of Coakley’s affection. But Duffin was not interested. And when he told Coakley that in early Sept. 2012, “it did not go over very well,” Duffin told The Daily Caller in the weeks after he came forward. (RELATED: UVA Gang Rape Accuser’s Friend Shares New Details In Interview) “There was a lot of crying involved,” he added. According to The Post, court transcripts show that in one exchange, Haven Monahan told Duffin that Coakley had a terminal illness, likely as an attempt at generating sympathy. Duffin texted Coakley to ask what her diagnosis meant. “Ryan, it means I’m dying,” she told him via text. Coakley’s final effort at winning Duffin’s affection appears to be her sensational rape claim. She told Duffin and others on the night of the alleged attack that she was going out on a date with Haven Monahan, whose persona she had by then developed by attaching it to a picture of one of her high school classmates. But days after Coakley claimed she was sexually assaulted, Haven Monahan, the alleged gang rape ringleader, emailed a love letter that Coakley purportedly wrote for Duffin. Duffin shared that letter — which was heavily plagiarized from popular TV shows like Scrubs and Dawson’s Creek — with TheDC. All of that evidence “demonstrates that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a fake suitor created by Jackie in a strange bid to earn the affections of a student named Ryan Duffin that Jackie was romantically interested in,” Eramo’s attorneys wrote in their court filing. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/08/lawsuit-uva-students-crush-on-a-friend-was-root-of-fake-rolling-stone-gang-rape-story/#ixzz3wkMi8fL6 |
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| abb | Jan 9 2016, 06:50 AM Post #1250 |
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/08/lawyers-for-u-va-dean-jackie-lied-to-rolling-stone-about-gang-rape-invented-story/ Lawyers for U-Va. dean: Jackie lied to Rolling Stone about gang rape, ‘invented’ story By T. Rees Shapiro January 8 at 8:39 AM Lawyers representing a University of Virginia associate dean in a defamation suit against Rolling Stone magazine say a sensational account of a fraternity gang rape at the school was based on a series of lies told by the story’s main subject, according to new court documents. The Alexandria-based law firm representing U-Va. administrator Nicole Eramo has filed motions seeking communications between Rolling Stone and “Jackie,” a U-Va. student whose haunting tale as the alleged victim of a vicious gang-rape at a fraternity house stunned the nation and invigorated a widespread discussion on college sexual assault. But in new filings submitted in federal court, Eramo’s lawyers claim that Jackie is “a serial liar who invented” her account of being raped by seven fraternity brothers participating in a hazing ritual that had left her bloodied and emotionally scarred. “Jackie was the primary source for Rolling Stone’s false and defamatory article that included her story about being the victim of a violent sexual assault,” said Libby Locke, one of Eramo’s attorneys. “But there is no evidence whatsoever that the story that Jackie told her friends, or the very different story she told Rolling Stone, actually transpired. Instead, it appears that Jackie fabricated her perpetrator and the details of the alleged assault.” [‘Catfishing’ over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle] Rebecca Anzidei, a Washington lawyer who represents Jackie, declined to comment when reached by telephone Thursday. Two other lawyers who have worked on Jackie’s behalf did not respond to requests for comment. Jackie, who has previously spoken to The Washington Post and stood by her account, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The court documents redact Jackie’s last name, and The Post generally does not identify people who are purported victims of sex crimes. [U-Va. dean sues Rolling Stone for ‘false’ portrayal in retracted rape story] “A Rape on Campus,” the 9,000-word Rolling Stone account written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, detailed Jackie’s alleged assault and reported that there was a culture of rape on Virginia’s flagship campus, including a willful blindness to it on the part of campus leadership. The account appeared in the December 2014 issue of the magazine, and it immediately caused outrage in Charlottesville, Va., and across the country. The Phi Kappa Psi house, which Jackie told Rolling Stone was where she had been attacked on Sept. 28, 2012, became the stage for protests and a canvas for vandals, who scrawled hate-filled graffiti on its brick facade and smashed windows, forcing members of the fraternity to scatter in hiding. Jackie, who had been an activist involved with sexual assault prevention at U-Va., became a cause celebre for countless rape survivors who rallied around her. The article also drew backlash for U-Va. and Eramo, who was portrayed as a symbol of the administration’s tepid response to Jackie’s allegations. But the story quickly attracted scrutiny, and a series of Post stories revealed that there was no party at the fraternity on the night of the alleged attack nor anyone matching the name or description of the alleged ringleader of the attack at U-Va. A Charlottesville police investigation into Jackie’s claims later concluded that the assault described in Rolling Stone did not occur, and a Columbia University journalism school study commissioned by Rolling Stone found that the magazine committed grievous errors in its reporting. After apologizing for inconsistencies in the account, Rolling Stone officially retracted the story in April. [U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault] Many sexual assault advocates have suggested the possibility that Jackie’s account — which she also shared with The Post shortly after Rolling Stone’s story published — was an embellishment of a real sexual assault Jackie experienced. But Eramo’s lawyers argue that there is no evidence of any sexual assault in the case whatsoever, the boldest claim against the account yet. “The story was a lie when she first told it in 2012, and it was no more true when Rolling Stone recklessly published the tale in 2014,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court documents. They also wrote that there is “no factual basis whatsoever” in evidence submitted so far in the case “to conclude that Jackie is even an ‘alleged’ victim of sexual assault, let alone an actual victim.” In the year since its publication, the story has yielded at least three defamation lawsuits against Rolling Stone. Two lawsuits were filed by current members and alumni of the U-Va. chapter of the Phi Psi fraternity, claiming the house and individuals were irreparably harmed as a result. A third, which Eramo filed in May, seeks more than $7.5 million in damages for what her lawyers describe as the magazine’s portrayal of the associate dean as callous and indifferent to Jackie’s sexual assault allegations. The most recent filings by Eramo’s legal team request communications between Jackie and Rolling Stone, as well as the student’s correspondence with U-Va. staff. In the document, Eramo’s lawyers argue that Jackie’s “fabricated tale of sexual assault, her interactions with Dean Eramo, her statements to Rolling Stone, and her credibility (or lack thereof) as a primary source for Rolling Stone’s article and false claims about Dean Eramo are the key issues in the defamation case, and Jackie’s documents and testimony are highly relevant not only to Dean Eramo’s claims, but to Rolling Stone’s defenses to those claims.” [Rolling Stone denies it defamed U-Va. administrator in campus rape story] In court filings, Jackie’s lawyers wrote that she should not have to produce any of the requested documents because of certain legal protections for sexual assault victims. Jackie’s lawyers wrote that asking her to provide the information “constitutes exactly the abusive re-victimization that these protections were designed to prevent.” Relying on text messages between Jackie and one of her closest friends at the time, Eramo’s lawyers argue that Jackie not only fabricated the account of her alleged sexual assault but also created the false persona of her perpetrator, whom she repeatedly identified to her friend as Haven Monahan. Charlottesville police said that no one by that name ever attended U-Va., and extensive efforts to find the person were not successful. Also, photographs that were texted to one of Jackie’s friends showing the alleged attacker were actually pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a student at a university in another state, confirmed to The Post that the photographs were of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hadn’t been to Charlottesville for many years. “All available evidence suggests that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a figment of Jackie’s imagination,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court documents. Ryan Duffin, who was a U-Va. freshman in 2012 when he came to Jackie’s aid that September night, said in an interview Thursday that he no longer finds much credence in Jackie’s account. She wrote in texts to him that “Haven” had stopped by to apologize to her after the attack and that the attacker had dropped out of school days later; Duffin contemporaneously questioned the account, according to the texts, after students could find no evidence there was ever such a person at U-Va. “It makes the most logical sense to say that it was fabricated,” said Duffin, who provided hundreds of text messages for the case under subpoena. Duffin said that he read through the messages he sent to Jackie and received from “Haven Monahan” before handing the documents over. “It was strangely emotional, but I think for all of the wrong reasons,” Duffin said. “For realizing that we probably got duped, and it’s not a good feeling to have.” |
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| Quasimodo | Jan 9 2016, 07:45 AM Post #1251 |
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Well, that's more than Duke's lawyers ever admitted (ie, that they were duped by an invented story; that their faculty were lied to, and duped.) Where's the apology from the Gang --"Sorry. We were duped."? |
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| cks | Jan 9 2016, 09:01 AM Post #1252 |
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On another note - what is happening with the case against the Mattress Martyr? |
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| abb | Jan 10 2016, 05:47 AM Post #1253 |
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National Organization For Women Defends Rolling Stone Gang Rape Fabricator Posted By Chuck Ross On 1:49 AM 01/10/2016 In | No Comments The radical feminist National Organization for Women is defending the former University of Virginia student whose false rape claims against a group of fraternity members appeared in a Rolling Stone article that is now the subject of a massive defamation lawsuit. In an open letter published this week, NOW president Terry O’Neill called on UVA president Teresa Sullivan to intervene to stop Nicole Eramo, a dean at the school, from pushing forward with her lawsuit against Rolling Stone and its reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, for the Nov. 19, 2014 article “A Rape on Campus.” Eramo filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone and Erdely last year. Besides faulting the magazine and the reporter for publishing the article without doing due diligence, Eramo’s attorneys assert in that the UVA student at the center of the piece — a woman named Jackie Coakley — is a “serial liar” who fabricated the assault in order to gain the attention of a man she was in love with. (RELATED: Lawsuit: UVA Student’s Crush On A Friend Was Root Of Fake Rolling Stone Gang Rape Story) Besides the rape claim, Coakley allegedly lied about having a terminal illness. She also falsely posed as her own suitor — a UVA student she called “Haven Monahan” — as part of the scheme to gain the attention of her crush, an engineering student named Ryan Duffin. Despite every suggestion that Coakley is lying about being raped, O’Neill contends in her open letter that the UVA dropout is a “sexual assault survivor.” “We recently learned about deeply disturbing actions by one of your Deans against a sexual assault survivor and member of the UVA community,” O’Neill wrote in the letter. “It is exactly this kind of victim blaming and shaming that fosters rape culture, re-victimizes those brave enough to have come forward, and silences countless other victims,” she continued, adding that Eramo’s demands “recite nearly every false argument made to undermine victims of sexual assault.” Eramo has requested that Coakley turn over her emails and text messages with Erdely and others in order to show that Rolling Stone should have been more diligent about fact-checking the rape claims. The 9,000-word bombshell generated immediate outrage. But in the weeks after publication, Coakley’s story and Erdely’s reporting came under fire. Many details provided by Coakley did not match what she had told some of her friends at the time of the alleged assault. It also came to light that Erdely failed to obtain the names of the men that Coakley claimed raped her. The reporter also did not attempt to contact three friends who met Coakley on the night of the alleged rape. Those friends came forward after the article was published and disputed nearly all of Coakley’s statements. But O’Neill cares not about all of that damning evidence. “We are writing to request that you put a stop to what we regard as a re-victimization of this young woman,” the feminist activist wrote Sullivan. “In our view, the filings display a very troubling pattern of abuse towards ‘Jackie’, a woman profiled in that article, which cannot be allowed to continue.” O’Neill expressed concern that Eramo’s lawsuit will have a chilling effect on women who are actually sexually assaulted. “This has not only threatened ‘Jackie’s’ dignity and privacy, but also the dignity and privacy of numerous other student survivors on your campus,” wrote O’Neill, who characterized Eramo as “attacking” a “survivor” in Coakley. “We do not see how students who experience sexual assault at UVA will be able to trust University officials tasked with protecting them if this conduct is allowed to continue,” O’Neill continues in her diatribe. Sullivan has not yet responded to the letter. But her response is anyone’s guess. After the Rolling Stone article was published, Sullivan suspended all Greek life activity. She also declined to come to the defense of Eramo or of the fraternity that was falsely accused of taking part in gang rape. Follow Chuck on Twitter Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/10/national-organization-for-women-defends-rolling-stone-gang-rape-fabricator/ |
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| Quasimodo | Jan 10 2016, 08:25 AM Post #1254 |
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"Yes, rape is terrible and we must take a stand against it. As for stopping the lawsuits, we are forming a committee to report on steps to be taken..." |
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| abb | Jan 10 2016, 08:41 AM Post #1255 |
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http://now.org/media-center/press-release/an-open-letter-to-uva-president-teresa-a-sullivan/ |
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| abb | Jan 11 2016, 05:09 AM Post #1256 |
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http://www.vdare.com/posts/uva-rape-hoax-the-importance-of-three-words-catfishing-and-haven-monahan UVA Rape Hoax: The Importance of Three Words: “Catfishing” and “Haven Monahan” Steve Sailer January 9, 2016, 11:00 pm From the Washington Post: ‘Catfishing’ over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle According to text messages in new court documents, one student was aggressively pursuing a romantic relationship but had been rebuffed just ahead of now-discounted rape allegations. By T. Rees Shapiro What is catfishing? A brief history A lot of effort has been put into stuffing the UVA – Rolling Stone gang rape on broken glass hate hoax down the Memory Hole by making the scandal seem as boring and technical as imaginable: mistakes were made in following proper journalistic procedures. Nothing else to remember here, move along. The key roadblock was to keep the words “catfishing” and “Haven Monahan” out of the public mind. If you understand how those two fit together, the story is hilarious: a super-girly girl, Jackie, catfishes a dream date “Haven Monahan” into digital existence to make a boy she likes, Ryan, jealous. When that’s not working she makes up a story about Haven Monahan’s sexual assault. When that still doesn’t make Ryan fall in love with her, she switches back to having Haven send Ryan an email explaining why Ryan should fall in love with Jackie, cribbed from Dawson’s Creek and other romance shows for boy-crazy tween girls. When that fails, Jackie slowly becomes aware over many months that if she can’t have Ryan, she can still have some of the attention she craves by portraying herself as a victim of campus rape culture. But of course she can’t call the police because she just made everything up. Dean Nicole Eramo recognizes that Jackie’s probably never going to talk to the police about her woozy story. Eventually, Sabrina Rubin Erdely comes to town for Rolling Stone and between them they work up a doozy of a story. With publication, an actual Night of Broken Glass ensues with SJW vandals smashing the windows of the libeled fraternity house. Jackie then defends Dean Eramo when America’s feminists try to get the poor woman fired. It’s a complete fiasco, but nobody in the media seems to notice that Erdely’s article is absurd until Richard Bradley blogs about it five days later. After four more days, I post a link to Bradley’s blog and the great unraveling begins. A week and a half later, Shapiro publishes a long article in the Washington Post that lays out many facts (although not yet the name Haven Monahan), but requires a very high reading comprehension level to extract the details and arrange them into an interesting story. (That’s not unusual in a case where a reporter has gotten a scoop under deadline pressure with legal and ideological worries.) That evening in December 2014, a legendary comedy writer called me out of the blue to talk over the question: Is this Washington Post article actually as hilarious as it appears to me if I boiled it down? Yes, it is. But most of the news media never really grasps these later developments in the story that make it so vivid. The NYT, in particular, is extremely reluctant to mention the whole catfishing / Dawson’s Creek angle. Fortunately, the ongoing lawsuits have allowed Shapiro to return to the story and use the megaphone of the Washington Post to finally start to craft a more memorable public image of this highly representative tale of our age. |
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| abb | Jan 11 2016, 01:20 PM Post #1257 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feminist-organization-still-defending-rolling-stone-rape-hoaxer/article/2580101?custom_click=rss Feminist organization still defending Rolling Stone rape hoaxer By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 1/11/16 11:05 AM The National Organization for Women must be hurting for publicity and must also adhere to the old saying that there is "no such thing as bad publicity," because their recent decision to come to the defense of the woman who lied about being gang raped to Rolling Stone is otherwise astonishing. Police found no evidence to back up the allegation (although they haven't officially closed the case). The accuser, Jackie, named the man she claimed took her to a fraternity party and initiated the gang rape — and no one by that name was a student at the University of Virginia or even existed in the United States. There was no party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on the night she claimed to have been raped. Her story changed in material ways over the years. At one point, she claimed he had been forced to perform oral sex on five men. At another, she said she had been raped by seven, including with a beer bottle. Every detail she provided to Rolling Stone was either absolutely proven false or cast into very deep doubt — from her bloody and torn dress to the way her friends and a university administrator treated her after she came forward. Despite all of this, NOW is calling Jackie a "survivor" and condemning the U.Va. dean who is suing Rolling Stone and requesting documents to prove she was defamed by the magazine. "Your dean's demands recite nearly every false argument made to undermine victims of sexual assault," NOW's president, Terry O'Neill, wrote to U.Va. president Teresa Sullivan. "It is exactly this kind of victim blaming and shaming that fosters rape culture, re-victimizes those brave enough to have come forward, and silences countless other victims." I'm sorry, what? It's not victim blaming if there isn't a victim. In the very next sentence, NOW refers to Jackie as a "survivor." The organization then questions how victims of sexual assault will be able to come forward after the dean's actions. The dean in question, Nicole Eramo, has been described by numerous women who have come forward with sexual assault accusations as being their greatest ally. She was defended by them in the days and weeks following the article, even before the hoax was brought to light. Dean Eramo was maligned by Rolling Stone and by Jackie. She is suing Rolling Stone but not Jackie, however, Jackie likely has documentation that proves what was printed about Eramo was false. NOW requests that U.Va. somehow take "necessary steps to put a stop" to Eramo's request for documentation that will help her lawsuit. How U.Va. could do such a thing is not outlined by NOW, and outside of threatening to fire Eramo (which could then be grounds for a wrongful termination lawsuit), it's unclear what the university could do. Standing with victims and survivors is admirable; standing with liars is not. If anything, standing with proven liars hurts the cause, because it shows desperation on the part of a leading feminist organization to cling to the belief that women don't lie about rape. It also sends a message to real victims that the truth doesn't actually matter, and that liars deserve the same treatment as actual survivors. That seems to be more harmful to real victims than requesting documentation from a rape hoaxer. NOW did not respond to the Washington Examiner's inquiries. |
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| abb | Jan 12 2016, 05:17 AM Post #1258 |
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jackies-rape-story-was-false-so-why-hasnt-the-media-named-her-by-now/2016/01/11/c1733926-b89e-11e5-b682-4bb4dd403c7d_story.html Jackie’s rape story was false. So why hasn’t the media named her by now? By Paul Farhi January 11 at 9:50 PM In the 14 months since her story shocked the world, Jackie has been at the heart of a national debate about sexual assaults on college campuses, has become embroiled in a media scandal, and is the central figure in a series of defamation lawsuits. Yet there’s one important fact missing about Jackie, the young woman who concocted a harrowing story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity: her full name. News organizations have declined to reveal Jackie’s full identity since her now-discredited story appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in November 2014. Her single-name identity — just Jackie — is in keeping with a long-standing journalistic convention against identifying alleged victims of sexual crimes to protect the accuser’s privacy. As a result, news accounts of rape or sex-related crimes almost never name an accuser without their explicit permission, making it the only class of crime involving adults in which this practice is observed. But that standard arguably doesn’t apply in Jackie’s case. Her story has been shown repeatedly to be false, both through news reporting and an extensive police investigation. Rolling Stone has withdrawn the article, “A Rape on Campus,” and apologized to its readers for publishing an account that a Columbia Journalism School report called “a story of journalistic failure.” Even so, Jackie has remained nearly anonymous. No mainstream media outlet has reported Jackie’s full name. Investigators for the Charlottesville police, who found no evidence to support Jackie’s story, haven’t revealed it, either. Her identity has also been redacted in documents by a court hearing one of the lawsuits against Rolling Stone. While it’s debatable whether knowing Jackie’s full name would serve much public purpose, the collective reticence to identify her plays into an underlying discussion about the media’s responsibility in identifying accusers. In contrast, the accused are regularly identified once they are charged. Proponents of maintaining an accuser’s anonymity say it protects a presumed victim from retaliation or humiliation. But an emerging faction argues that not naming the alleged victims perpetuates a climate of silence and shame surrounding such crimes and discourages more people from reporting them. Moreover, they say, it’s unfair for media accounts to shield the accuser but identify the accused, potentially putting a social stigma on a person who may be innocent. The Washington Post, which broke many of the details that led to the unraveling of Jackie’s story, hasn’t named Jackie for a particular reason: The newspaper made an agreement with Jackie not to do so. In exchange for discussing her story with Post reporters, The Post agreed in late 2014 not to report her full name. “We told her we wouldn’t name her, in large part because we thought she was a sex-assault victim at that time and we don’t name victims of sexual assault without their permission,” said Mike Semel, The Post’s Metro editor. “That agreement for anonymity needs to be considered until we are absolutely certain that there was no assault at all.” Steve Coll, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, said he, too, would be against revealing Jackie’s name. Columbia’s highly critical report on the Rolling Stone article, which Coll co-wrote, didn’t name Jackie when it was released in April. “It’s an unusual situation, and I understand the argument on the other side, but I would not name her,” said Coll, a former Post managing editor. “She never solicited Rolling Stone to be written about. She’s not responsible for the journalism mistakes. To name her now just feels gratuitous, lacking sufficient public purpose. That could change depending on how the legal cases unfold, but that’s my sense now.” Coll’s reluctance is seconded by Kristen Houser, spokeswoman for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, a social service organization. Houser said victims of a sexual predator are more willing to step forward and be named these days — witness the avalanche of accusers in the Bill Cosby case — but that many are still deterred by the social consequences. “We still have an environment overall that is hostile and suspicious of people who say they were sexually assaulted,” she said. “For many people, there are risks that come along with public exposure,” such as harassment, bullying or additional violence. “It’s best to leave it up to the survivors” to make the call, Houser said. But veteran journalist Geneva Overholser said silence and anonymity only perpetuate the social climate that rape victims and their advocates are fighting against. Overholser was editor of the Des Moines Register in 1991 when the paper won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series on an Iowa woman who was raped. The woman, Nancy Ziegenmeyer, gave permission to the newspaper to use her name and photograph in the stories, sparking a national debate on the naming of rape victims. Now an independent journalist in New York, Overholser has written that the practice of withholding accusers’ names from news stories “is a particular slice of silence that I believe has consistently undermined society’s attempts to deal effectively with rape. . . . Nothing affects public opinion like real stories with real faces and names attached. Attribution brings accountability, a climate within which both empathy and credibility flourish.” She argues that the practice of not naming names hasn’t reduced the underreporting of sexual assaults or retaliation against accusers. While Overholser said she doesn’t believe there are many false charges of rape — a number of studies bear this out — she said the practice of naming one side and not the other creates “fundamental unfairness” that can be exploited. “I think [Jackie] should have been named in the first place,” she said in an interview. The “protection” of anonymity the media grants accusers “was never an appropriate one for journalists to afford, because it implies that we know what party deserves protection when someone brings charges of rape. It implies that we can determine guilt or innocence.” |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:29 AM Post #1259 |
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/crime/judge-calls-for-jackie-to-release-documents-in-rolling-stone/article_b9823cec-b9a4-11e5-9a9b-a74505f4b9b6.html Judge calls for 'Jackie' to release documents in Rolling Stone lawsuit By T. Rees Shapiro | The Washington Post | Posted: Tuesday, January 12, 2016 10:21 pm CHARLOTTESVILLE — A federal judge said Tuesday that a young woman who was the central figure in a sensational Rolling Stone story of a gang rape at the University of Virginia will have to turn over documents related to the retracted article as part of a pending defamation lawsuit. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Glen E. Conrad said in court that he plans to grant most aspects of a motion from lawyers for UVa associate dean Nicole Eramo, who is suing Rolling Stone for its depiction of her in a 2014 article about rape at the campus here. The story focused on allegations that a UVa student named Jackie was brutally assaulted at a UVa fraternity and that UVa officials were callous in their handling of the case; the story was later debunked, and Eramo is seeking communications Jackie had with the magazine and others at the time. Lawyers have asked Jackie to turn over documents in her possession related to the article and Rolling Stone's reporting. Jackie's legal team has argued that her status as an alleged victim of sexual assault largely protects her from the request. Jackie is not a party to the lawsuit, and the court has redacted her last name from documents; The Washington Post generally does not identify people who say they were victims of sex crimes. Eramo's lawyers wrote in court documents that Jackie fabricated the 2012 gang rape that was the focus of the Rolling Stone article and argue that the magazine recklessly published the account, which fell apart under media and police scrutiny. They also wrote that Jackie's gang rape claims might have been the result of a "catfishing" scheme to attract the romantic interest of a classmate. Shortly after the alleged attack, Jackie's crush began to openly question her about the supposed ringleader of her sexual assault, whom she named as Haven Monahan, a UVa junior. An investigation by the Charlottesville police found that no one by that name had ever been a UVa student and efforts to locate him were not successful. Eramo's lawyers claim that Haven Monahan is a figment of Jackie's imagination. In court, Conrad said that he was likely going to call on Jackie to hand over her communications with UVa administrators and staff, Rolling Stone and the author of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The judge said that he was still considering other requests filed by Eramo's lawyers, including communications from Jackie to friends and family related to the article. "We are pleased with the court's decision," said Libby Locke, a lawyer representing Eramo. "Jackie was the primary source for Rolling Stone's false and defamatory article. It appears that Jackie fabricated the account of the sexual assault portrayed in Rolling Stone, and that Rolling Stone knew she was an unreliable source. We look forward to moving forward with discovery and taking this case to trial." Conrad said that Jackie's communications with Rolling Stone and Erdely likely would be integral to Eramo's lawsuit. Jackie's lawyers declined to comment Tuesday. One of Eramo's lawyers, Tom Clare, said in court that text messages or emails from Jackie about her attack could show that she was not a reliable source. Clare said that Jackie apparently gave significantly different details about her assault in accounts she gave to Rolling Stone and members of the UVa administration. A lawyer for Rolling Stone, Elizabeth McNamara, said that Jackie never mentioned the name Haven Monahan to Erdely or the magazine's fact-checkers. |
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| abb | Jan 13 2016, 05:30 AM Post #1260 |
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http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25843/ ‘Jackie’ must turn over communications with ‘Rolling Stone’ in suit over discredited rape story Courtney Such - Furman University •January 13, 2016 27 9 Share141 0 sabrina-erdely.kellywritershouse.flickr Feminists demand UVA president punish the dean for ‘victim blaming’ The source of Rolling Stone’s retracted story on gang rape at the University of Virginia, “Jackie,” will be forced to turn over some of her communications as part of a defamation lawsuit against the magazine. Considering motions by Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo, a federal judge in Virginia said in court Tuesday that Jackie’s communications with Rolling Stone and “A Rape on Campus” author Sabrina Rubin Erdely “likely would be integral” to Eramo’s case, The Washington Post reported. Judge Glen Conrad said he’s still mulling whether to require Jackie to turn over communications with her friends and family “related to the article,” the Post said. Feminist organizations had earlier accused Eramo – and the university itself – of “victim blaming” for trying to force Jackie to turn over documents deemed by Eramo’s counsel to be “highly relevant” to her $7.5 million lawsuit. Jackie mostly fears ‘being exposed as a liar’ Eramo was portrayed in “A Rape on Campus” as trying to convince the former UVA student – who has remained unnamed by mainstream media organizations – to not formally report her alleged rape, which Eramo claims harmed her reputation and career at UVA. In her latest filing last week, Eramo said Jackie was not really concerned about her privacy when she refused to provide such documents, but rather fears “being exposed as a liar” whose “own momentous and injurious falsehoods will be revealed.” The National Organization for Women released an open letter to UVA President Teresa Sullivan following Eramo’s filing, apparently calling for Eramo to be punished for asking a judge to bring Jackie out of the shadows. The filings by a UVA official can only be seen “as occurring with the approval and participation of the university,” said the letter, signed by NOW President Terry O’Neill, Virginia NOW President Diana Egozcue and Tannis Fuller of Charlottesville NOW. “Your dean’s demands recite nearly every false argument made to undermine victims of sexual assault,” according to the letter. “It is exactly this kind of victim blaming and shaming that fosters rape culture, re-victimizes those brave enough to have come forward, and silences countless other victims.” The NOW officials asked Sullivan to “take the necessary steps to put a stop to these actions,” which include Eramo’s request for Jackie to produce “years of her most private, personal communications” with not only friends but UVA’s “campus survivor support group,” the letter said. NOW did not respond to The College Fix’s request to clarify whether it was asking for Eramo’s termination or lesser action. ‘I have always believed Jackie’ President O’Neill told The Daily Progress of Charlottesville that she still supports Jackie’s claims: “I have always believed Jackie” but the trauma could have affected Jackie’s memory. “They are ratcheting up the promotion of rape culture and slut-shaming with these filings,” O’Neill said of Eramo’s latest filing. Without opposing action by Sullivan, who is “responsible” for Eramo’s messages, female students will learn that “if you get raped at UVa and you file a report on it, you are fair game to be viciously attacked years after the attack if the administration feels it is in their best interest,” O’Neill said. When the Charlottesville Police and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism conducted their own investigation into Jackie’s case, they found that Jackie reported drastically different details to each person she confided in and even fabricated text messages. UVAJackiepolicepresser.CavalierDaily.YouTube Eramo’s filing says her counsel repeatedly contacted Jackie, trying to arrange more meetings with her and the Charlottesville Police, to which Jackie never responded. Only Jackie’s communications can answer “the disputed issues” in the defamation suit, Eramo’s filing said. Not only is the former student “a central witness in this case” who “put herself in that position of her own volition,” but her counsel has not provided “any substantiation whatsoever that Jackie was the victim of a sexual assault on September 28, 2012,” as told in “A Rape on Campus,” according to the filing. In addition to Eramo’s suit, current and former brothers of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity filed their own suits against Rolling Stone. Not identifying accusers undermines ‘society’s attempts to deal effectively with rape’ Media organizations’ continued refusal to fully identify Jackie, whose “identity is already public” as noted in Eramo’s filing, was the subject of a column by Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi this week. Though concealing alleged rape victims’ identities “is in keeping with a long-standing journalistic convention” of treating rape differently than any other “class of crime involving adults,” Jackie’s story “has been shown repeatedly to be false,” Farhi wrote. He noted that Geneva Overholser, the editor of the Des Moines Register when it won the Pulitzer Prize for a series on a named rape victim, has written that shielding alleged rape victims “has consistently undermined society’s attempts to deal effectively with rape.” Naming accused people while hiding their accusers also “implies that we know what party deserves protection when someone brings charges of rape,” Overholser told Farhi. |
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9:15 AM Jul 11