| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,412 Views) | |
| abb | Jul 4 2016, 04:13 AM Post #1366 |
|
Emails: White House Task Force Member Gunned For Fraternity Smeared In Rolling Stone Article Posted By Chuck Ross On 10:50 PM 07/03/2016 In | No Comments A former White House college sexual assault task force member appears to have been gunning for a University of Virginia fraternity smeared in a Rolling Stone article about a now-debunked campus gang rape, newly released emails show. “I want to see these guys gone and I want to keep it as legally sound as possible,” UVA alum Emily Renda wrote to Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely in July 2014, several months before the Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus” was published. At the time, Renda was working in a gender-based violence prevention program at the school. That spring she had served on the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. (RELATED: Emails Show The Moment That Rolling Stone Reporter Realized The Source Of Gang Rape Article Was A Liar) Renda appeared concerned that publishing the name of the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, would “create a credibility issue” and hurt the effort to have it removed. “I may need to urge you not to publish the name of the fraternity (phi kappa psi) in her case because we are trying to pursue ongoing action,” Renda wrote to Erdely, who is also a defendant in a lawsuit filed by UVA dean Nicole Eramo. The email is included in court papers filed by the disgraced reporter on Friday. She cited the exchange to show that she relied on information about gang rapes from sources she believed to be truthful. “There are two other young women with similar stories to Jackie who have not come forward fully yet and we are trying to persuade them to in order to get punitive action against the fraternity,” Renda continued, referring to Jackie Coakley, the former UVA student whose now-debunked Sept. 2012 gang rape is the main focus of Erdely’s article. “If the article is published with her story in conjunction with the frat name before the other two girls come forward, it could appear that their stories are coached or false, which would create a credibility issue and take away our ability to kick off that frat. Does this make sense?” “Please call me with questions — basically I just raise this issue because I want to see these guys gone and I want to keep it as legally sound as possible.” Though Renda aggressively sought to oust Phi Kappa Psi, notes Erdely took during her reporting for the story show that the campus activist was aware of the two other gang rapes she mention in her email through Coakley. She had not corroborated Coakley’s claims. Under federal Title IX guidelines, action against fraternities can be taken with just two anonymous sexual violence claims. Renda and school deans hoped to use those anonymous claims — which came through Coakley — to remove the Greek organization. Renda, who introduced Erdely to Coakley, had testified the month before her exchange with the reporter at a Senate hearing about campus sexual assault. During the hearing she cited Coakley’s story, though she referred to her friend as “Jenna.” Renda stated that “Jenna” had been gang-raped by five UVA fraternity members. That conflicted with Coakley’s statement to Erdely that she had been raped by seven students. Erdely knew of the discrepancy but appears to have done little to quiz Coakley about it. Renda has largely avoided professional scrutiny since the publication of the article for her failure in judgement. (RELATED: Terry McAuliffe Appoints Activist At Center Of Rolling Stone Rape Article To Crime Commission) In Dec. 2014, after the Rolling Stone article had been debunked, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe appointed Renda to the state’s Criminal Sentencing Commission. She served as one of 17 people tasked with setting sentencing guidelines for felons. Follow Chuck on Twitter Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/03/emails-white-house-task-force-member-gunned-for-fraternity-smeared-in-rolling-stone-article/ |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 4 2016, 04:15 AM Post #1367 |
|
http://www.dailyprogress.com/starexponent/news/citing-rolling-stone-emails-eramo-argues-for-swift-decisions-in/article_82110ea6-4161-11e6-87d1-93e84cbcbbb0.html Citing Rolling Stone emails, Eramo argues for swift decisions in her defamation lawsuit BY DEAN SEAL | Posted: Sunday, July 3, 2016 5:00 pm A University of Virginia associate dean wants a federal judge to swiftly resolve five discrete issues in her multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine ahead of its October trial date. It’s been well over a year since Dean Nicole Eramo filed the $7.85 million lawsuit against Rolling Stone, decrying her portrayal in its now-retracted expose, “A Rape on Campus.” An administrator charged with aiding student survivors of sexual assault, Eramo claims she was unduly maligned by the debunked article when it was released in November 2014 to widespread controversy. At the heart of the article, which was intended to explore the culture of sexual assault on college campuses, was the story of “Jackie,” a UVa student who claimed she had been gang raped at a fraternity house party in 2012. The harrowing tale sparked campus-wide protests and condemnation of both UVa’s Greek life and the administration’s handling of sexual assault cases. When aspects of Jackie’s story began falling apart under scrutiny, including an investigation by Charlottesville police, the magazine admitted it was losing faith in Jackie’s story and, in April 2015, retracted the story completely. Eramo’s lawsuit was filed the following month. The year since has been fraught with legal maneuverings, but according to a motion filed on Friday, Eramo is ready for aspects of her lawsuit to be finalized before her Oct. 11 trial date. Eramo is asking a federal judge to make swift legal determinations, known as partial summary judgments, for five aspects of her case in an attempt to “narrow the disputed issues for trial.” According to the filing, Eramo first wants to dispel the notion that she was a public official or public figure at the time of the article’s publishing, contrary to Rolling Stone’s assertion in a previous response to her lawsuit. Eramo states that she was merely a “private citizen and low-level university administrator” before the magazine published the article and that she never discussed Jackie’s allegations in any kind of public forum. In that sense, Rolling Stone was negligent in publishing the “defamatory falsehoods” in their retracted piece, she argues. Secondly, Eramo asks for a summary judgment on the issue of whether or not statements in the magazine were “of or concerning” her, as required in a defamation case. Eramo is specifically identified by name several times in the article, she is the only individual actually visually depicted in the article and several comments made by article author Sabrina Rubin Erdely in media interviews that followed the article’s release seem pointedly directed at Eramo in her role as an administrator. Thirdly, Eramo seeks to resolve the question of whether or not the statements in the magazine can be inherently shown as defamatory. Eramo argues that a multitude of statements about her in her role as an administrator “imputed to her unfitness to perform her duties,” a phrasing that the state Supreme Court has repeatedly believed to constitute defamation. Particularly, Eramo took aim at allegations that she “discouraged [Jackie] from sharing her story,” that she “took no action in response to either Jackie’s alleged sexual assault or the alleged sexual assaults of two other UVa students” and similar statements. Eramo states that Erdely “knew [the allegations] to be false at the time” based on email correspondence between Jackie and Eramo in April 2014. Those emails, which are available in the court filings, show that Eramo attempted to schedule a meeting between Jackie and police detectives — Jackie forwarded those emails directly to Erdely in August 2014, months before the article’s release, according to the filing. Eramo also has asked for a summary judgment regarding the three separate instances in which the article was published. According to her filing, the Dec. 4, 2014, print article, the Nov. 19, 2014, online article and the Dec. 5, 2014, online article each constitute a separate publication, and therefore rise to a separate cause of action for defamation, Eramo writes. She notes that the first online version of the article was viewed by more than 2.7 million unique visitors, the second received more than one million unique visitors and the print edition had a circulation of more than 1.4 million, of which $67,860 were newsstand sales. “Because the articles were published at different times and reached different audiences, they constitute separate and distinct ‘publications’ under black-letter law,” the motion reads. Finally, Eramo believes it is undisputable that when Rolling Stone republished their online article on Dec. 5, 2014, they did so with actual malice. While she concedes that the question of whether a defendant acted with actual malice is a “fact-intensive question,” it is incontrovertible that Rolling Stone was aware that Jackie was no longer a credible source on Dec. 5, 2014, but still published the story in full. In an email sent in the early morning hours of Dec. 5, 2014, with the subject line “our worst nightmare,” Erdely, Rolling Stone’s then-managing editor Will Dana and deputy managing editor Sean Woods discuss revelations made by Erdely, including her conclusion that “Jackie isn’t credible” and that “by the time we ended our conversation, I felt nearly certain that she was not being truthful.” At the end of the email chain, Erdely states: “We have to issue a retraction.” But instead of retracting that statement, the magazine chose to republish the story in full with an editor’s note, in which they stated they were “nearly certain that [Jackie] was not being truthful.” That preface, however, does not constitute a retraction of the statements, Eramo argues. In communications sent to Eramo on Dec. 30, 2014, the magazine said it was “not aware of any inaccuracies concerning Dean Eramo in the above article, which was well-sourced and fact-checked.” A subsequent email from Feb. 4, 2015, expressed similar sentiments. “Even if [Rolling Stone’s] claim that they “retracted” portions of the article were legally significant (it is not), [they] have admitted that they neither retracted nor intended to retract their portrayal of Ms. Eramo on December 5 and that they did not do so until April 2015,” the motion states. Rolling Stone has not yet filed a response to Eramo’s motion. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 4 2016, 12:06 PM Post #1368 |
|
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/sean-woods-affidavit.pdf |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 4 2016, 12:17 PM Post #1369 |
|
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/garber-paul-affidavit.pdf |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 4 2016, 03:41 PM Post #1370 |
|
http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/04/rolling-stone-believed-jackie-until-the UVA Lawsuit: Rolling Stone Believed Jackie Until the Bitter End, New Documents Show Jackie's obsession with Law and Order: SVU, Sabrina Rubin Erdely's search for missing scars, and more. Robby Soave|Jul. 4, 2016 3:00 pm It was blind faith in her single source—a faith bordering on zealotry—that doomed Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely to write a false story about gang rape at the University of Virginia. New documents submitted in court Friday as part of UVA Dean Nicole Eramo's lawsuit against the magazine make clear that Erdely was given plenty of reason to distrust Jackie. Instead, Erdely rationalized Jackie's repeated failure to produce corroborating witnesses by surmising that these were the actions of a true victim and survivor of sexual assault. The documents released Friday contain hundreds of pages of Erdely's notes, and transcriptions of her interviews with more than a dozen key players, including Jackie, friend Alex Pinkleton, and UVA anti-rape activist (and White House advisor) Emily Renda. Here are five of the most interesting things they reveal about the debacle. 1) Jackie Really Did Seem Traumatized To be absolutely clear, Jackie's retelling of her subsequent trauma was convincing (even if the story itself was hard to believe). Jackie painted a compelling portrait of a student who had suffered harrowing, ongoing emotional abuse. She described being unable to get out of bed for weeks, failing classes, suffering panic attacks whenever she encountered members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, having suicidal thoughts, and eventually seeking support and counselling. Anecdotal evidence suggested that this trauma was genuine. After interviewing Jackie, her then boyfriend, and Pinkleton, Erdely accompanied them to the Phi Kappa Psi house to inspect the scene of the crime. As they drew near the house, Jackie suffered a breakdown, burst into tears, and ran away. Erdely witnessed this episode herself, and took it as one of many indications of Jackie's credibility. Jackie wasn't always consistent, but the inconsistencies didn't seem compelling enough to dent Erdely's faith. In fact, these inconsistencies largely confirmed to Erdely that Jackie was telling the truth, since Erdely believed that such behavior was typical of survivors of sexual assault. It's no mystery why Erdely had come to hold this view: she consistently relied on the testimony of biased sexual assault experts, including Wendy Murphy and David Lisak. 2) Failing to Interview Jackie's Mom and Friends Was the Mistake Erdely made a significant misstep when it came to second-hand sourcing, and it's one that is well-documented in her notes. Indeed, if this error had been addressed properly before publication, the entire story would likely have unraveled. Instead of seeking comment from the most relevant witnesses—Jackie's mother, her friend Ryan Duffin, and alleged perpetrator Haven Monahan—Erdely accepted Jackie's contention that her mother and Ryan wouldn't consent to be interviewed. And she didn't obtain the name "Haven Monahan" until the story had already gone to print. Erdely interviewed many friends of Jackie's who could testify to her emotional state in the weeks following the attack. But Duffin—along with two other friends, Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock—encountered Jackie immediately after the rape, and could have given key evidence about her physical state. Her mother could have confirmed the existence of Jackie's bloodied dress. To her credit, Erdely repeatedly asked to speak with these people, but Jackie stonewalled her. She also refused to give Erdely the last names of Duffin, Hendley, and Stock, which prevented the reporter from interviewing them herself. Erdely also insisted that Jackie provide the name of her attacker so that she could reach him for comment. Jackie adamantly refused, and after consulting with her editors, Erdely decided that comment wasn't necessary. But here's the thing—even if she wasn't going to contact him, Erdely should still have pressed Jackie for the name, if only to confirm his existence. A Google search would have revealed that no such person existed: indeed, this is exactly what happened, once Jackie gave up the name after publication of the article. 3) Jackie's Obsession with Law and Order: SVU Played a Role Did Jackie base her story on an episode of Law and Order: SVU? It seems plausible. According to the documents, Jackie told Erdely she was obsessed with the show—she recalled, off the top of her head, that main character Elliot Stabler departed the show after its 12th season. Jackie told Erdely that her assault called to mind a specific episode in which a female college student is gang raped by fraternity members. No one believes the girl, and she eventually commits suicide. Jackie also said that some time after her assault, she re-watched the episode with her father. This prompted her to tell him, for the first time, that what happened to the girl on the show had also happened to her. 4) Jackie's Scars Were a Tricky Issue Jackie described being knocked into a table and pressed against broken glass as part of her ordeal. But it's not clear whether there was any evidence of scarring on her body, even though Erdely looked for marks. The reporter wrote in her notes that she couldn't see any scars on Jackie's arms, and Jackie's boyfriend said that he had never noticed any on her back. Jackie said that her mother believed they had faded over time. One former friend of Jackie's told Erdely that she had noticed scratches, but attributed those to Jackie's cat, and possibly, to self-harm. 5) 'Our Worst Nightmare': Erdely's Dramatic Realization that Jackie Was Lying Happened All at Once Journalist Richard Bradley was the first to express skepticism of Erdely's reporting. He did so on November 24. I followed with my own article on December 1, which quoted Bradley. For several days, our misgivings didn't phase Erdely, even though many other news outlets had repeated them. Erdely stood by her story until the night of December 4. Up until that point, she was planning to publish a follow-up article expressing complete confidence in Jackie. What changed? Very late that evening, Erdely had a conversation with Jackie in which she asked for assistance in identifying Haven Monahan. Jackie was evasive, and eventually hung up the phone. Erdely then called Pinkleton, who had been trying to track down Haven Monahan herself. They agreed that the story no longer added up. "Hardly anything she said to me or said to you over the past year is working out at all," said Pinkleton. Erdely then sent an email to her editors with the subject line, "Our Worst Nightmare." In the email, she wrote, "We have to issue a retraction." In a statement to the court, Erdely apologized for her missteps. "I cannot stress enough that at the time the Article was published, and until the early morning of December 5, I firmly believed that everything in it was true. It was never my intention to cause harm, and I feel nothing but sorrow and regret over the entire experience. If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie's credibility as a source, I would not have published it." (Thanks to KC Johnson for providing the documents. Read his comments here.) https://storify.com/kcjohnson9/erdely-affidavit-uva-rolling-stone |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 5 2016, 04:01 PM Post #1371 |
|
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/heres-the-moment-a-rolling-stone-author-knew-her-gang-rape-story-was-complete-bull/article/2595648 Here's the moment a Rolling Stone author knew her gang-rape story was complete bull By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 7/5/16 4:39 PM It was Nov. 19, 2014, when the world first learned about "Jackie," a young woman who claimed in the pages of Rolling Stone that she had been gang-raped as part of a fraternity initiation. While many began questioning — whether publicly or privately — the validity of her story almost immediately, Rolling Stone and the author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, stuck by their story and their main source. Those who asked whether Erdely had contacted the accused ringleader of the gang-rape were met with hostility and smugness from the author and her editors. For example, in a Dec. 1 email, Erdely told the Washington Post's Paul Farhi that she "wasn't going to comment" on whether she contacted the alleged ringleader. "Suffice it to say, we took many steps to verify Jackie's story and feel confident with what we published," she added. But on Dec. 5 — just 16 days after the article was published and just four days after the email to Farhi — Erdely sent a frantic email to her editors, writing in the subject line: "Our worst nightmare." Originally, Rolling Stone was going to issue a statement in response to questions and doubts over the validity of Jackie's story. "Obviously, we regret any factual errors in any story," the statement was supposed to read. "But Rolling Stone believes the essential point of Jackie's narrative is, in fact, true: A young woman suffered a horrific crime at a party, and a prestigious university reacted with indifference to her claim." "This happens too often at college campuses all over America," the statement continued. "Any mistakes we made were honest ones, trying hard to create a narrative and an investigation that would improve the prevention, investigation and prosecution of sexual violence. For that we would never apologize." Note the insistence that the narrative was more important than the facts when it comes to combating campus sexual assault. Forget the fact that continually covering hoaxes makes the public less likely to believe the next accuser. In Erdely's Dec. 5 email, she told her editors, Will Dana and Sean Woods, not to run the statement. "In fact," she wrote, "we're going to have to run a retraction." Erdely had finally concluded that Jackie was not truthful after she spoke to her and a friend, writing to her editors that she did not find Jackie "credible any longer." "Today Jackie was interviewed by police but declined to report; her explanation to me for why she didn't go forward was lacking. I've been trying to verify the identity of her assailant, and when I asked her for help, it spiraled into confusion," Erdely wrote. "By the time we ended our conversation, I felt nearly certain that she was not being truthful. I then called her friend Alex, who has been a valuable resource; I found out that over the past day, Alex has also come to the conclusion that Jackie has probably been lying." She added: "Jackie gave specific details to her friends about her alleged assailant, including a full name (the same one she gave to me), which they discovered belonged to someone at a different fraternity, not Phi [Kappa] Psi. They showed her a picture of that person, and Jackie denied it was him. But later, when Alex and Sara pressed her, she said that maybe it WAS him." (Emphasis original.) Finally, Erdely wrote that "The whole thing stinks" and that "Alex feels betrayed." The email, first reported by the Washington Post among 431 pages of detailed notes taken by Erdely during her five-month "investigation," shows the date the author finally realized she had perpetuated a hoax. Erdely's notes make it clear that she had previously had reason to doubt Jackie's claims, including the fact that the number of men who allegedly raped her kept changing. The documents show Erdely was never very concerned with finding the alleged gang-rape organizer, but was very insistent on naming the fraternity where the alleged rape occurred. Yet after the article was published, Erdely went on national television and Slate's DoubleX Gabfest podcast claiming she knew who the student was and had contacted him. Erdely told the hosts of the podcast: "Me and several other people know exactly who did this to her." Woods, her editor, said that while they didn't speak to the men, they "verified their existence." It was ultimately discovered that the man Jackie claims lured her to the fraternity party never existed. To that last point, Erdely's notes quote Jackie as saying she didn't want to get the student involved because she "just kind of wanted him to never exist again." Funny, since he never existed in the first place. Erdely also claimed she couldn't find the three friends who allegedly tried to talk Jackie out of reporting the story (the Washington Post's T. Rees Shapiro found them within days of the article being published). What, exactly, did Erdely do for five months while she "investigated" Jackie's claims? There were other clues that the story was made up. Jackie claimed she was raped for hours atop a shattered glass table, yet she had no scars from the encounter. Her boyfriend (yes, this girl ended up getting a boyfriend) told Erdely: "I haven't really seen any marks on your back." This guy was a better fact-checker than Erdely. Erdely even wrote "In the dim lighting, I see nothing." But what should have been obvious disbelief was spun by Erdely as evidence of malice. When she discovered that Jackie's story — including the involvement of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity — resembled the gang-rape of Liz Securro, instead of taking a closer look at the stories to see if Jackie just pulled details, Erdely assumed it meant the fraternity must have been doing this all along. "Every hair on my arm is standing up," Erdely wrote. "Seems like more than a coincidence." Oh, and Jackie's alleged rape also closely resembled accounts in books on sexual assault and an episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." One could forgive Erdely for not recognizing this except Jackie mentioned these things while speaking to the author. After Erdely sent the Dec. 5, email, Rolling Stone appended an editor's note to the article, but did not officially retract it until April of the following year. In her lawsuit against Rolling Stone, University of Virginia Dean Nicole Eramo — who was portrayed in the article as being callous toward sexual assault accusations like Jackie's — claims that the numerous red flags should have shown that Jackie was not a credible source. Eramo's lawyer, Libby Locke, told the Washington Post that "none of those facts stood in the way of Rolling Stone publishing a false and defamatory article, relying on a source who was not credible and painting Ms. Eramo as a callous and indifferent administrator." It was Eramo's lawsuit that saw the release of the documents, and showed that Erdely had it out for the U.Va. dean all along. "I've been hearing these women talking about her, they love her, she's so warm and responsive to them and yet in each of their stories they don't go to police," Erdely wrote in her notes about Eramo. "The perpetrators walk free. And yet they love her." Even worse, according to Erdely, Eramo was "preserving the status quo while giving the illusion that she's helping the victims." This would seem to refer to the fact that Eramo wasn't forcing students to go to the police. Campus sexual assault activists, even in the wake of the Rolling Stone debacle, continue to argue against urging accusers to go to the police, instead wanting accusations to be handled by universities (that can be more heavily influenced by federal threats and negative media attention). The latest developments continue to shed light on an article that would never have been published had the media cared more about facts and evidence than a "narrative." If you need to find something to laugh about in all this, remember that Erdely's last tweet, from Nov. 30, 2014, scolded the editor of Texas Monthly for referring to her as the "woman" behind the article and not the "journalist." Clearly Texas Monthly had it right the first time. |
![]() |
|
| cks | Jul 5 2016, 05:20 PM Post #1372 |
|
In light of all this, how could the case of the fraternity be thrown out? |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 6 2016, 06:36 PM Post #1373 |
|
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/07/14199/ What The Rolling Stone Affidavits Show July 6, 2016 KC Johnson Leave a comment University of Virginia dean Nicole Eramo’s lawsuit against Rolling Stone has produced hundreds of pages of documents on how the botched article about University of Virginia came to be published—and how UVA employees handled sexual assault claims. Last week, Rolling Stone filed affidavits and notes from the key people involved in the project. I’ve provided excerpts from the affidavits of reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, editor Sean Woods, and fact-checker Liz Garber-Paul. Robby Soave has an excellent article with five take-aways from the material; Ashe Schow offers commentary. I recommend both pieces. In addition, a few items: Rolling Stone’s defense is based on two points, which appear in all three affidavits: (1) that everyone at the magazine believed the accuser, “Jackie,” and had reason to do so; and (2) key people involved in sexual assault adjudications at UVA believed Jackie as well. There’s no doubt that Erdely, Woods, and Garber-Paul believed Jackie. There’s also no doubt that each of them were ideologically inclined to believe Jackie. (Erdely, for instance, opened her “reporting” by speaking with the biased experts Wendy Murphy and David Lisak, and all of her interview subjects appear to have been people who agreed with her on the existence of a campus “culture of rape.”) Rolling Stone’s groupthink meant that every inconsistency in Jackie’s story, or unusual behavior on her part, was explained away as “consistent with other victims of sexual assault.” And so behavior that might have raised red flags—Jackie claiming that her attacker would retaliate against her if Erdely contacted him (while she didn’t worry about retaliation once the article appeared); Jackie discouraging Erdely from contacting friends who could corroborate her tale; Jackie changing the number of assaulters—was dismissed or excused. The only problem, of course, is that Jackie was a fabulist. Rolling Stone’s argument that the behavior of an actual victim and the behavior of someone inventing a gang rape are identical should raise significant concerns about the always-believe-accusers mantra. Second, the Rolling Stone affidavits make clear that campus activists, and every UVA employee dealing with sexual assault matters that Erdely encountered, also believed Jackie. Rolling Stone highlighted the point for legal reasons: if all of the UVA apparatus, including Eramo, believed Jackie, how can Eramo sue Rolling Stone for publishing an article based on Jackie’s fantasies? From the standpoint of policy, however, this material is chilling: if the UVA sexual assault bureaucracy believed that someone like Jackie was a victim, how could the process of which they’re a part possibly be fair? Ironically, since Rolling Stone, UVA’s policy has only grown more unfair, as the recent FIRE lawsuit indicated. In this respect, Erdely actually had a great story—how a campus atmosphere of moral panic was exploited by a fabulist. But she was too closed-minded to see it. Third, it’s striking that even as their case collapsed, those who Jackie had fooled didn’t change their underlying assumptions. Erdely, for instance, stated in her affidavit that he she had any sense that Jackie might be lying, she simply would have used another vignette to prove her campus “rape culture” thesis—without even stopping to wonder whether her initial assumptions, which had led her to trust Jackie, were wrong. Sara Surface, a UVA activist, told Erdely that Jackie was no longer credible—but rationalized, “I think trauma has done something to the details.” A few days later, another UVA activist, Alex Pinkleton, reminded the Washington Post that “the majority of survivors who come forward are telling the truth.” Pinkleton didn’t explain how the minority—who, by her framing, were not telling the truth—could be “survivors.” And, perhaps, my favorite item from the affidavits: Editor Sean Woods said, “I stand by the statement that we verified the perpetrator’s existence.” If the case goes to trial, perhaps Rolling Stone could summon Jackie’s invented attacker, “Haven Monahan,” as a witness? |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 7 2016, 12:00 PM Post #1374 |
|
http://heatst.com/culture-wars/jackies-uva-fake-rape-story-had-more-red-flags-than-a-soviet-military-parade/ Jackie’s UVA Fake Rape Story Had More Red Flags Than a Soviet Military Parade By Cathy Young | 11:37 am, July 7, 2016 The litigation over Rolling Stone’s discredited 2014 cover story about a horrific (and fictional) fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia is the gift that keeps giving. Only recently, we learned that someone accessed the email account of non-existent rapist “Haven Monahan” from the office of lawyers for the pseudo-victim, Jackie. And now, newly released affidavits from reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, as well Erdely’s notes and correspondence related to the story, offer a revealing look at the article’s origins. Erdely set out to write an exposé of campus “rape culture.” Instead, she inadvertently exposed a rape-hoax culture, both on college campuses and in the mainstream media — a culture in which “believe the survivors” is such an article of faith that a not-very-clever fabulist with half-decent acting skills can get away with blatant lies. But there’s a lot more in the new documents made public as part of Eramo’s defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone and Erdely. We now know that Erdely did not simply neglect to interview the man who supposedly engineered the attack — called “Drew” in the Rolling Stone piece — or the three friends who saw Jackie that night and could have been key witnesses to her condition. In fact, Erdely repeatedly pressed Jackie for those contacts. But Jackie adamantly refused to put her in touch with “Drew” (she did not give Erdely the name “Haven Monahan” until after the story was published), and Erdely finally decided to go along with her wishes. Jackie also strung Erdely along with promises to arrange an interview with Ryan Duffin, one of the three friends who came to her aid after the alleged attack. First, she claimed that she wasn’t able to get hold of Duffin, even though he was a friend living on the same campus, and that he wasn’t returning her text messages. Then, she said that she had finally spoken to Duffin but he refused to cooperate out of loyalty to “the Greek system” which he felt she wanted to undermine. She would not give Erdely Duffin’s last name, or those of the other two friends — Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock. Erdely now acknowledges that “perhaps I stopped pushing as hard as I could for those names.” Yet at the time she seemed, as history professor and writer K.C. Johnson put it on Twitter, “remarkably non-curious” about Jackie’s odd behavior. While Jackie initially said that her mother was willing to talk to Erdely — and perhaps even to produce the bloodstained dress Jackie wore during the alleged rape — that interview never materialized, either. And two women who Jackie said had been raped at the same fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, proved equally elusive. This pattern of important witnesses being unavailable did not set off any alarm bells for Erdely, either. As Johnson sums up their interaction, “Throughout: Erdely wants info. Jackie refuses to provide. Erdely excuses: consistent w/being victim. True believer.” Then there was a matter of Jackie’s scars from the broken glass. Erdely wrote in her notes that she saw “nothing” when Jackie showed her what she said were scars on her arms; she blamed the “dim lighting.” When she asked about scars on Jackie’s back, Jackie said that they were “not distinct anymore.” Her boyfriend Connor, who was present at the conversation, volunteered, “I haven’t really seen any marks on your back.” Yet Erdely states in her affidavit, “None of this struck me as odd or raised any concerns.” When Erdely did notice inconsistencies and contradictions in Jackie’s various accounts, she readily explained them away as typical behavior for a victim of trauma: “I know that [victims’] stories can sometimes evolve over time as they come to terms with what happened to them and work through their own shame and self-blame, and that this process can result in the victim revealing new or different details over time.” She also “knew,” from her research and writing, that “false allegations of sexual assault are extremely rare,” which evidently reassured her that Jackie wasn’t making it up. For Erdely, Jackie’s credibility was also bolstered by the fact that her friends and fellow activists at UVA unquestioningly accepted her story. So did UVA employee Emily Renda, the school’s project coordinator for sexual assault prevention (and a 2014 UVA graduate); Renda had introduced Erdely to Jackie and had told Jackie’s story at a congressional hearing on campus rape. In Erdely’s eyes, this gave Jackie “UVA’s imprimatur.” And just how credulous were the true believers from Jackie’s circle of supporters at UVA? So credulous that even after they realized Jackie’s claims did not add up (The Washington Post had shot down some key details, and Jackie had decided that Phi Kappa Psi wasn’t the rape frat), they still insisted that Jackie was a victim. Erdely reports that one campus activist told her, “It pains me to say that she’s not credible because I don’t think that’s the case. I think the trauma has done something to the details.” No inconvenient facts could disrupt the narrative in which campus rape is an epidemic and universities protect the rapists. In Johnson’s words, “Erdely had a great story here — how a campus atmosphere of moral panic was exploited by a fabulist. But she was too closed-minded to see it.” Erdely was further emboldened, as the new materials show, by the knowledge that other media including The New York Times had run accounts by alleged rape survivors without interviewing the accused. One instance that she cited was the May 2014 Times profile of Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia student who later began to carry a mattress on campus to protest the university’s exoneration of the man she accused of rape. And indeed, Erdely’s reporting, which treated a woman’s account of a rape on campus and a callous response from the college bureaucracy as presumptive fact despite the lack of any corroboration, was not particularly out of line with prevailing journalistic standards. The Times story on Sulkowicz was one example; there was also National Public Radio’s 2010 coverage of campus rape activist Laura Dunn and Slate’s 2014 report on Brown University student Lena Sclove’s accusations against fellow student Daniel Kopin. Both stories turned out to be considerably more complicated than made out to be in the initial reports. While the Rolling Stone UVA fiasco was a lesson in skepticism, the “listen and believe” mentality is alive and well. Just a few months after Erdely’s piece was retracted, the media lavished praise on the college-rape documentary The Hunting Ground, hailed in the Times as “a must-watch work of cine-activism,” later broadcast on CNN, and honored with a “Best Original Song” Oscar nomination. Yet the film presented the stories of alleged victims with no attempt at fact-checking or balance; some of those accounts eventually came under withering scrutiny from dissenters. Legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. obtained an email in which TV journalist Amy Herdy, who worked on the film, assured an interviewee’s attorney, “This is a film project very much in the corner of advocacy for victims, so there would be no insensitive questions or the need to get the perpetrator’s side.” Pity poor Jackie. If Erdely hadn’t chosen her as the heroine of the Rolling Stone story, she could have been one of the stars of The Hunting Ground. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 7 2016, 03:30 PM Post #1375 |
|
https://academicwonderland.com/2016/07/07/celebrating-erdely-as-a-journalist/ Celebrating Erdely as a Journalist K C Johnson - 7/7/16 Regardless of their impact on Dean Eramo’s lawsuit, the release of the Rolling Stone affidavits leave little doubt that Sabrina Rubin Erdely isn’t a very good reporter. She had her thesis—existence of a campus “rape culture”—in advance. As Cathy Young noted, the spine of the article, Jackie’s story, “had more red flags than a Soviet military parade.” Yet as Jackie was unwilling or unable to answer key questions, Erdely, a true believer, plowed ahead. And even the discrediting of Jackie’s story didn’t shake Erdely’s confidence in her thesis. In her affidavit, she suggested that if she learned that Jackie had invented the tale, she just would have substituted the experience of another person she had decided was a victim, “Stacy,” as the central vignette. Earlier today, Worth editor Richard Bradley found it “fascinating to read some of these pre-debunking tweets.” I took a look. He’s right. It’s easy to see how people could have been horrified by the article. But it’s remarkable to observe how many high-caliber editors and reporters praised the quality of Erdely’s journalism. It seems their agreement with Erdely’s thesis blinded them to her flaws—a consistent problem in how most of the mainstream media has approached campus sexual assault. It’s worth reiterating: Bradley, along with Robby Soave, expressed doubts about Erdely’s work from the start. And within a couple of weeks, the Washington Post (with assists from the Daily Caller and a disastrous Erdely appearance on Slate’s DoubleX podcast) had done the reporting Erdely had not. The overwhelming tendency to praise her reporting, therefore, is notable. Three categories stand out: Praising the Caliber of Erdely’s Journalism Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at the New Yorker and CNN legal analyst, tweeted to Erdely: “You did amazing work, a real public service.” “Great journalism,” he added. “Fantastic reporting,” gushed Nina Gregory, senior editor on the arts desk at NPR. New York contributing editor Marin Cogan described the piece as “easily one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve read this year.” NBC’s Luke Russert hailed this “extraordinary piece of journalism.” Voactiv’s Susie Banikarim recommended this “important and very well-reported piece on rape culture.” The normally even-handed Richard Deitsch, of Sports Illustrated, expressed “thanks” to Erdely for “her reporting.” Among editors: Eric Umansky, deputy managing editor at Pro Publica, deemed Erdely’s article—which he said had exposed “lawlessness”—“a triumph of investigative storytelling.” Philadelphia Magazine’s featured editor Richard Rhys described Erdely’s work as “mag[azine] journalism at its best.” BuzzFeed deputy culture editor Karolina Waclawiak celebrated Erdely’s “brilliant reporting.” Steven Ward, the news director at the Clarion-Ledger, hailed Erdely as a “superstar” who exposed “rape culture at UVA.” For widely published freelance reporter Alex Suskind, Erdely’s article was “required” reading. Former Gawker editor Maggie Shnyarson remarked, “I’d love to get my hands on those little shits.” She presumably wasn’t referring to the campus activists who uncritically championed Jackie’s story. A tweet from Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg deeming Erdely’s reporting “amazing” survives. But Goldberg had another, presumably more detailed, tweet, in which he also passed along the link to the article. Erdely thanked him for it; many people responded to it. But the tweet has vanished from his timeline. Calls to Action David Beard, executive editor for Public Radio International (and formerly of the Washington Post) had a message for Erdely: “You are making change happen. This editor thanks you.” “Thank you, David,” Erdely replied. Retweeting a Washington Post article on UVA president Sullivan’s decision to suspend all fraternities at the school, Post reporter Dan Zak had a blunt message: “Now burn ‘em down.” Imagine the (appropriate) outrage if—under any circumstances—a Washington Post reporter had publicly advocated burning down a Multicultural Center or a Women’s Center after an allegation that some of their students had committed misconduct. Capture Neal Rogers, U.S. editor-in-chief of Cycling Tips, said that after reading Erdely’s article, he wanted to “‘rush a frat’—with a semiautomatic.” The New York Times The Times has led the way in flawed reporting of campus sexual assault, so it was little surprise to see several of its reporters praise Erdely’s work. Jessica Lustig, deputy editor at the Times Magazine, commented on how, after Erdely’s “devastating” report,” UVA suspended all fraternities. Times tech policy reporter Celia Kang likewise gave her “kudos” to Erdely, after her “deeply reported” article led to the suspension of all UVA’s fraternities. Times Sunday Styles reporter Katie Rosman also praised Erdely’s role in getting the fraternities suspended: “THIS is a journalism affecting change,” she wrote. Times business columnist Claire Martin hailed the “incredibly well reported” article. Times political reporter Ashley Parker shared a link to the “devastating” article, which exposed the “culture of rape” at UVA, to people on her twitter feed. David Dobbs, who has written features and essays for the Times, almost sounded like an Erdely fan-boy: “Incredibly good and important work there, Sabrina,” he gushed. “Deep bow to you. Splendid, vital reporting and writing.” Erdely’s Responses Before her piece was discredited, Erdely responded to some of the praise. She also offered her own additional analysis. “Not to state the obvious,” she noted on November 22, 2014, “but enlightened men are key to fixing the rape epidemic. It’s so good to have you on board. Let’s recruit more.” (Meanwhile, she deemed herself “shocked” by the phenomenon of “women perpetuating rape culture.”) The next day, she anticipated a movement, hoping “that fraternities at UVA & elsewhere will embrace this as an opportunity to be leaders in turning the tide against rape.” Administrators needed to get in on the act, as well, since the “scary truth is, the culture of rape and impunity is hardly limited to UVA. Every school should be taking a hard look at itself.” And Erdely deemed it a “good time” for “very, very rich” alumni to pressure the UVA leadership. A final note. Because Rolling Stone replaced Erdely’s article with the Columbia Journalism Review’s (partial) autopsy of the magazine’s editorial failures, reporters whose tweets included an embedded URL now look like the below. Capture Capturea Somehow fitting to see the praise for Erdely’s work accompanied by “what went wrong?” |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 9 2016, 04:00 AM Post #1376 |
|
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/07/eramo-files-motion-for-partial-summary-judgment-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit Eramo files motion for partial summary judgment in Rolling Stone lawsuit Defendants dispute claims, file request for summary judgment by Daisy Xu | Jul 08 2016 | 14 hours ago Marshall Bronfin | Cavalier Daily Eramo's lawsuit against Rolling Stone, author Erdely and Wenner Media is set to be heard in October of this year. Former University Dean Nicole Eramo recently filed a motion requesting partial summary judgment in her defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone, author Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Wenner Media. In response, the defendants have also filed a request for summary judgment. Eramo’s lawsuit — filed more than a year ago — claims the now-retracted Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus” unfairly depicted Eramo as a villain in her role as a University administrator handling sexual assault reports. If the defendants’ motion for summary judgments is granted, the civil case will close quicker than it would have with the current trial date set for October. A motion for partial summary judgment, on the other hand, only disposes some of the issues prior to the trial date. Eramo is requesting judgment regarding five discrete, legal points in order to narrow the disputed issues of the lawsuit. The motion for partial summary claims that Eramo was not a public figure or public official at the time of the release of the Rolling Stone article — and her administrative position at the University did not equip her with considerable influence regarding governance and policy. If considered a public official, Eramo would have to abide by a higher standard of proof in the lawsuit. Eramo’s motion also claims statements in the article are clearly “of and concerning” her, per se defamatory, that the online and print articles published by Rolling Stone constitute separate causes of action for defamation and that the Dec. 5 statements about Eramo were published with "actual malice." According to Eramo’s motion, statements in the article “took direct aim at Ms. Eramo’s fitness for that employment” and accused her of knowingly suppressing Jackie’s sexual assault, subjegating Jackie’s interests to those of the University’s reputation and “even subjecting Jackie to ‘abuse’.” The motion also claims that "there is no material dispute" that Rolling Stone "had no factual basis upon which to publish its defamatory statements" besides the testimony of Jackie — whose credibility was in question. According to the document, Rolling Stone was "nearly certain Jackie was not being truthful." In response, the defendants’ memorandum in support of their motion for summary judgment states that Eramo was a figure of authority in handling sexual misconduct at the University. The motion states Eramo was referred to as an “expert in all things related to sexual assault” by her colleagues, and that Eramo “acted in her official capacity as a U.Va. administrator” in her interactions with Jackie after Jackie came forward with an allegation. The defendants’ motion argues that certain out-of-context phrases do not negate the article’s major critiques to the University administrators’ ineffective handling of sexual assault allegations. “U.Va. should have alerted the university about a campus safety issue and should have sooner commenced an independent investigation into the multiple allegations of gang rape,” reads the defendants’ motion. “[Secondly] that strict allegiance to ‘victim choice’ has the net effect of causing victims to not pursue actions.” The author of the Rolling Stone article — Sabrina Rubin Erdely — also recently submitted a declaration to the court in support of defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Erdely claims that statements in the article do not aim specifically at Eramo. Erdely claims she was criticizing the University administration and at the same time made clear that Eramo “did take actions and offered to ‘assist’ Jackie if she elected to pursue proceedings.” The defendants claim the article made accurate statements regarding Eramo and the University’s handling of sexual assault cases. “It is undisputed that between 1998 and 2014, 183 students were expelled for Honor Code violations and none for sexual assault. Nor is it disputed that these statistics are not readily available to students and parents,” reads the motion. Relying solely on Jackie does not create actual malice, the defendants added. In Erdely’s declaration, she said she had entire faith in Jackie. “After feeling so sure about the article, and believing so strongly that it would help spur change on college campuses, losing faith in the credibility of one of my major sources post-publication took me entirely by surprise,” Erdely said. Three alumni of the University and previous members of Phi Kappa Psi — the fraternity where sexual assaults occur according to Jackie’s account — filed a defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone in Nov. 2015. The lawsuit was dismissed last week. As of now, the judge has not responded to either the defendants' motion or the plaintiff’s motion for prior judgment. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 10 2016, 03:52 AM Post #1377 |
|
http://nypost.com/2016/07/09/how-gullible-journalists-do-harm-to-rape-victims/ How gullible journalists do harm to rape victims By Megan McArdle - 7/9/16 A new report from The Washington Post, based on recently released court documents, reveals just how credulous the writer of the now-discredited Rolling Stone rape article had to be. Short answer: quite. Looking into the notes of the writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Post reporter finds that she pressed forward with the UVA story even though: The protagonist, Jackie, refused to give her the names of any corroborating witnesses, or the name of the attacker to contact for comment. Hours of being raped atop broken glass had apparently left no scars (the writer asked to see them). Jackie herself brought up a “Law and Order: SVU” episode that strongly resembled her story. Others warned the writer that Jackie’s story had changed over time. And the story itself contained numerous red flags. It’s hard to fathom how Erdely went along with all this (not to get into why editors and Rolling Stone’s lawyer signed off on the article). Perhaps because she committed a journalistic sin known as “writing the lede on the way to the ballpark.” She was out for a story about institutional indifference to an epidemic of campus rape, and the best way to tell that story is to find a horrifying incident that obviously should’ve been prosecuted to a slam-dunk conviction, but was instead hushed up. Unfortunately, when you start out committed to a narrative, you tend to be looking for reasons to believe, instead of reasons to doubt. Journalists are not the only ones who want to believe. There were powerful voices saying rape was a special sort of crime, one that must be treated very differently from other sorts of crimes. Rape is, unfortunately, a difficult crime to prosecute: There are generally only two witnesses, sometimes one or both of whom are often impaired by intoxicants, and even if you think that the rate of false accusations is “only” 8 percent . . . well, an 8 percent chance that any given rape accusation is false gets you at least a big start toward “reasonable doubt.” This enrages a lot of activists, as well it should; every rape left unprosecuted is a tragic injustice. But activists pushed the notion that the answer was to use weaker standards of evidence, to refrain from questioning victims’ stories, to err on the side of believing accusers rather than giving the accused the benefit of the doubt. They weren’t very successful in the criminal justice system, but they were successful in campus judiciary proceedings — and perhaps they also succeeded in getting journalists like Erdely to change the standards they used to evaluate rape accusations. The most surprising thing about the UVA case was not that a single reporter got rooked, but that Erdely’s editors let the story go ahead, and a Columbia Journalism School professor defended them for publishing the story. I understand the humanitarian impulse here. Being raped is incredibly traumatic; being treated with suspicion afterward adds insult to terrible injury. But this is not, as is often implied, a problem unique to rape cases. If your spouse is murdered, or simply dies under suspicious circumstances, it’s quite likely soon afterward you’ll find yourself subjected to interviews with police who think you were involved. You’ve just lost the person most important to you in the world, and now you’re also being tacitly accused of having committed a crime. It’s horrible. Police don’t like having to make someone who is grieving sit through hours of interviews. But investigations are the only tool they have; they don’t know any other way to keep bad people from murdering their spouses. And in the long run, the “I believe women” standard is not only bad for people who are accused, but also bad for rape victims. The Jackie debacle was an enormous setback for campus rape activists. I don’t blame the activists for having listened to Jackie without interrogating her claims too closely. But that’s why the journalists who tell their stories are supposed to vet them carefully. Rape is a terrible crime. But beating someone severely is also a terrible crime. Murder is a terrible crime. The horror of the crime doesn’t absolve any of us from the need to be careful about the accusations we level, even if taking that care means we sometimes do further psychic injury to victims. In a better world, we wouldn’t have to choose between vigorous investigation and generosity toward victims. But laws and ethical standards are made to make the best of this flawed world we have. |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 23 2016, 11:23 AM Post #1378 |
|
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/eramo-countermotion.pdf https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/eramo-opposition-to-mtd.pdf https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/erdely-email-to-jackie.pdf |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 24 2016, 03:34 AM Post #1379 |
|
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/ryan-duffin-deposition.pdf |
![]() |
|
| abb | Jul 24 2016, 03:53 AM Post #1380 |
|
http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/22/court-docs-rolling-stone-recently-fired-author-of-debunked-campus-gang-rape-article/ Court Docs: Rolling Stone Recently Fired Author Of Debunked Campus Gang Rape Article Posted By Chuck Ross On 11:39 PM 07/22/2016 In | No Comments Rollings Stone recently “terminated” its contract with Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the reporter who wrote the debunked article about the gang rape of a University of Virginia student. Erdely’s status with Rolling Stone has been kept under wraps since UVA dean Nicole Eramo sued the magazine for defamation because of its reporter’s Nov. 2014 article “A Rape on Campus.” In previous disclosures Erdely appeared to still be employed by the magazine. [dcquiz] But according to papers filed by Eramo in the U.S. District Court of Western Virginia on Friday, “Rolling Stone is no longer working with Sabrina Rubin Erdely and has terminated her contract.” The school administrator claims that Eramo and Rolling Stone smeared her in an article detailing claims made by former UVA student Jackie Coakley about a 2012 gang rape on campus. Erdely reported that Eramo failed to take Coakley’s claims seriously. But after the article was published, it came to light that Coakley had lied about the gang rape and that Erdely failed to conduct basic journalistic due diligence to verify the claims. Erdely failed to obtain the names of Coakley’s alleged attackers. She also did not find out the identifies of three friends that Coakley met after the alleged gang rape. Had Erdely done so she would have learned that Coakley fabricated the incident. Erdely did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment. [h/t Brooklyn College professor K.C. Johnson] |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers · Next Topic » |







9:14 AM Jul 11