| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,407 Views) | |
| abb | Oct 19 2016, 05:33 PM Post #1441 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rolling-stone-allegedly-edited-fake-rape-article-to-make-school-dean-look-worse/article/2604999 Rolling Stone allegedly edited fake rape article to make school dean look worse By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 10/19/16 3:22 PM When Rolling Stone published a now-retracted article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, the magazine and author of the story made it seem like a school dean wasn't really interested in sending the accuser to police. In the original article, Rolling Stone author Sabrina Rubin Erdely editorialized about how U.Va. Dean Nicole Eramo assisted "Jackie," the woman who claimed she was gang-raped as part of a fraternity initiation. "When Jackie finished talking, Eramo comforted her, then calmly laid out her options. If Jackie wished, she could file a criminal complaint with police. Or, if Jackie preferred to keep the matter within the university, she had two choices. She could file a complaint with the school's Sexual Misconduct Board, to be decided in a 'formal resolution' with a jury of students and faculty, and a dean as judge. "Or Jackie could choose an 'informal resolution,' in which Jackie could simply face her attackers in Eramo's presence and tell them how she felt; Eramo could then issue a directive to the men, such as suggesting counseling. Eramo presented each option to Jackie neutrally, giving each equal weight. She assured Jackie there was no pressure — whatever happened next was entirely her choice." In this version, Erdely makes it seem as though Eramo merely suggested Jackie could go to police, not that she should. Eramo is suing Rolling Stone for the way the magazine portrayed her in the article. After nearly two years in the court system, the trial over the lawsuit began this week. Lawyers for Eramo said in their opening statements that Rolling Stone had proof the U.Va. dean urged Jackie to go to the police, but that was edited out in the final article. Buzzfeed's Tyler Kingkade is reporting from the trial, and wrote that Eramo's lawyers showed a forwarded email from Jackie to the Rolling Stone author "showing that the dean had set up two meetings with police so Jackie could report the alleged rape to authorities." Eramo's lawyers said reference to this email appeared in an earlier draft of the article but not the final piece. "Eramo's lawyer Tom Clare said that in May 2013, the dean told Jackie that her alleged assault was 'too serious' for informal resolution by the university and that she could pursue a school disciplinary proceeding or go to the police," Kingkade wrote. "In an email Eramo sent to Jackie at that time, which was shown to jurors, she said, 'I do want you to continue to consider these options.'" Also from the Washington Examiner Clean energy group defends GOP from green attacks By John Siciliano • 10/19/16 6:12 PM But lawyers for Rolling Stone argued that Eramo only set up two meetings between Jackie and police after Jackie came back to her to report that members of the same fraternity had thrown a bottle that hit her in the face. "We did know there was a meeting with police," said Rolling Stone lawyer Scott Sexton in his opening statement, according to Kingkade. Sexton added that the "meeting was about the bottle incident." It seems like an interesting first day to a trial that may shed more light on just how badly Rolling Stone and Erdely bungled this article. Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner. |
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| abb | Oct 20 2016, 04:24 AM Post #1442 |
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/erdely-defends-reporting-in-a-rape-on-campus/article_71d7abda-a186-5c53-972e-513ef39f2ce6.html Erdely defends reporting in ‘A Rape on Campus’ By Dean Seal The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress | Posted: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 9:49 pm Sabrina Rubin Erdely took the stand Wednesday to defend her reporting in an article that led to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against her and Rolling Stone magazine. Erdely’s testimony closed out the third trial day for the $7.5 million defamation suit brought by University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo against Rolling Stone, its publisher and Erdely, the author of the now-retracted piece “A Rape on Campus.” Eramo claims she was cast as the “chief villain” in Erdely’s November 2014 article, which had been intended to showcase the culture of sexual assault on elite college campuses. The piece featured the now-debunked story of “Jackie,” a then-student who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity house during her freshman year at UVa. When it was published, Eramo served as an associate dean charged with aiding student survivors of sexual assault. She claims the article mischaracterizes her as callous and indifferent to the needs of her students. Taking the stand at U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, Erdely faced off with Eramo’s attorney Libby Locke, who asked Erdely about her body of work. Locke took the hour to highlight similarities between entries of Erdely’s catalog. Each story Locke asked about involved sexual assault, as well as some form of negligence by a governing body, including the criminal justice system, the military and the Catholic Church. When asked about each story, Erdely defended her reporting, outlined nuances in each reporting process and, for some, equated the writing of the pieces as “performing a public service.” Nonetheless, Locke referenced aspects of the stories that paralleled Eramo’s assertion that Erdely had a preconceived notion of what she wanted “A Rape on Campus” to be about. Erdely said she “disagreed with the characterization” more than once and also stated that she never sought out to find “institutional indifference” to sexual assault . Erdely’s testimony will continue on Thursday in the fourth of what’s expected to be a 12-day jury trial . |
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| abb | Oct 20 2016, 04:26 AM Post #1443 |
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/rolling-stone-writer-testifies-defamation-trial-rape-campus/story?id=42919854 Rolling Stone Writer Testifies in Defamation Trial Over 'A Rape on Campus' Story By MARIAM KHAN Oct 19, 2016, 9:20 PM ET Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the reporter behind the now-retracted Rolling Stone article "A Rape on Campus," defended her integrity as a journalist on the stand today as she and the magazine face a nearly $8 million defamation lawsuit. The defamation suit was filed by Nicole Eramo, the former associate dean of students at the University of Virginia, who is suing Erdely and Rolling Stone over her portrayal in the article. In the article, a University of Virginia student identified only as "Jackie" described a brutal gang rape at a fraternity party in 2012. "Jackie" was described as facing callous indifference from college authorities, including Eramo. Rolling Stone ultimately retracted the 2014 story after other media outlets pointed out troubling issues with the story. A police investigation into Jackie's allegations of being raped by seven men failed to uncover any sort of evidence of the alleged assault ever taking place. Eramo's attorneys are trying to paint Erdely as a reporter with a motive -- one who has a history of framing stories of sexual assault to fit a specific "vision," and they say that she was seeking to intentionally highlight institutions that demonstrate indifference toward victims of sexual assault. Erdely was questioned today about several articles she had previously written about sexual assault survivors over a span of several years before the retracted Rolling Stone story, including cases involving the Catholic Church and the rape of Petty Officer Rebecca Blumer. Lawyers for Eramo produced the original story proposal that Erdely sent to Rolling Stone editors in 2014 when she first decided to write a story about rape on college campuses. "I envision the article" and the "article I have in mind" were some of the phrases Eramo's lawyers pointed at to try and show Erdely's alleged bias in reporting. In her email to her editors, Erdely said she wanted to showcase the "anything-goes party atmosphere" on college campuses where "administrations have been criticized for turning a blind eye" and to show how "institutional indifference towards such complaints has created a hostile environment for women." She also wanted to show the "various ways colleges have resisted involvement," and that colleges "juke their stats" to make campuses appear safer. Eramo's lawyers say she pitched the story to Rolling Stone editors before she met "Jackie." "I was open to wherever the reporting was going to lead me," Erdely said on the stand, adding that she was transparent with her sources about where Jackie's story was taking her, and that the story "was very in flux." "My article was not about institutional indifference," Erdely said just before court was recessed for the day. She will continue to give testimony on Thursday. Earlier in the day, lawyers for Rolling Stone attempted to pick apart Eramo's defamation case against the magazine by emphasizing portions of the article that portrayed Eramo in a good light and not demonized, as her suit alleges. In her suit, Eramo says the article painted her as the villain, and that she "intentionally tried to coddle Jackie to persuade her not to report her rape; that she was indifferent to Jackie's allegations; that she discouraged Jackie from sharing her story with others; that she 'abuse[d]' Jackie; that she did 'nothing' in response to Jackie's allegations; that she claimed that UVA withholds rape statistics 'because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school'; that she did not report Jackie's alleged assault to the police; that she 'brushed off' Jackie; and that she actively sought to 'suppress' Jackie's supposed gang rape. ...These statements, and the portrayal of Dean Eramo, in 'A Rape on Campus' and in Erdely and Rolling Stone's subsequent public statements, are categorically false." 'It was Jackie's decision' Eramo, who sat alert in pink horn-rimmed eyeglasses on her second day on the stand, repeated that she did investigate Jackie's rape claims as best she could but said that she never wanted to pressure Jackie into doing something she didn't want to do. "It was Jackie's decision whether or not she wanted to speak about her rape," Eramo said. Eramo said she reached out to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity where Jackie alleged her rape occurred but that "no one came forward" and the brothers in the house were "unable to validate the allegation from the chapter's side." Rolling Stone's lawyers produced text messages Eramo exchanged with her colleagues regarding Jackie's case, including with two students who worked as sexual assault advocates on UVA's campus. In one text exchange, Eramo said, "I should have conducted an investigation due to the public safety risk, despite the wishes of the survivor [Jackie]." Jackie, Eramo said, did not want to report her alleged rape to the authorities, or even file a complaint with the university. Eramo defended her actions repeatedly throughout her testimony, saying, "This was the attempt at doing an investigation." "We were taking steps to get the police involved, we were taking the best steps we could with someone who did not want to cooperate with the investigation," she said. The jury also heard portions of an interview she had conducted with WUVA, a student-run radio station in Charlottesville, just two months before Rolling Stone published its article. In it, the interviewer is repeatedly heard asking Eramo about the school's policy in dealing with students who are accused of sexual assault. At one point, the interviewer asks, "Why is it that a student who is accused of cheating or lying is expelled, but someone found guilty of committing sexual assault is given a more lenient sentence of a one or two year school suspension?" "We are trying to balance the rights of the individual being accused with the rights of the complainant," Eramo answers. "And if a person admits they have sexually assaulted someone, it shows a 'willingness to improve' and that rehabilitation is possible." During Eramo's time at UVA, no one has been expelled for sexual misconduct. "The fact remains that under Dean Eramo's tenure as chair of the Sexual Misconduct Board, no one was expelled for sexual assault, while over 100 students were forced to leave UVA for honor code violations," Rolling Stone said in a statement provided to ABC News. Rolling Stone's lawyers also asked Eramo her salary -- $110,000 -- and highlighted that despite the negative criticism Eramo may have received, she is still employed with UVA and has since received a raise. 'I'm so sorry for the ways that I have complicated your life' Also on the stand today was Emily Renda -- the UVA alum who initially brought Jackie's story to Rolling Stone's attention after Erdely reached out to her and asked for sexual assault survivors who would be willing to share their experiences. Renda, a sexual assault survivor and student advocate, recommended five women to Erdely, including Jackie. Renda, whose testimony was heard via a video deposition she gave in March of this year, only had good things to say for her mentor, Eramo. She called her a fighter and a role model. Though Renda did acknowledge the discrepancies in Jackie's story, she said she never asked Jackie for details of her alleged rape. She said she was also concerned about Erdely’s initial pitch about the story, saying she took issue with the way Erdely described the "rape culture" that is so prevalent on college campuses. She started sobbing during her testimony while reading a letter she had written to Eramo after the article was published. "I'm so sorry for the ways that I have complicated your life," Renda read from the letter. She testified of Eramo, "I know that she cried all day on Nov. 19. She hid in her office, she felt very sick, she was very sick, she was very upset." Renda added that she perceived Eramo's primary concern was to make sure Jackie was OK, and that she was more concerned about Jackie's well-being than anyone else's, including her own. Lawyers for Rolling Stone have argued that Eramo's attorneys must prove that Erdely and the magazine's editors acted with "actual malice.” |
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| abb | Oct 20 2016, 01:55 PM Post #1444 |
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http://www.richmond.com/news/national-world/ap/article_5d70b162-999f-5906-8e71-8cb398f24b22.html Rolling Stone reporter pressed about errors in rape story Posted: Thursday, October 20, 2016 1:03 pm CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - The author of a now-retracted Rolling Stone article about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia on Thursday acknowledged Thursday that she made mistakes while reporting the story of the woman identified only as "Jackie." Sabrina Rubin Erdely took the stand in the defamation trial against the magazine over its 2014 story about a woman identified only as "Jackie." University administrator Nicole Eramo is seeking $7.8 million from the magazine for its portrayal of her in the story. Libby Locke, an attorney for Eramo, quizzed Erdely about her reporting errors, including her decision not contact the Jackie's friends who went to her aid the night of the alleged assault and failure to raise concerns about changes in Jackie's account over time. Erdley said in her earlier deposition that she was aware that Jackie had initially told her roommate she was attacked by five men, but later said it was seven men. Erdely said Thursday that Jackie's changing story didn't bother her because "it takes trauma victims time to come forward with all the details." "There's a lot of shame and self-blame involved," Erdely said. "The details had changed over time as she came to terms with the rape." Locke also criticized Erdely's failure to interview the friends Jackie said were with her just after the alleged assault. Erdely's reporting notes contained the full name of one of those friends, but Erdely said she overlooked it. "It's embarrassing to say it," she said. "I had this in my notes and I didn't even see it," she said. Eramo's attorneys tried to show Thursday that Erdely's earlier articles are also rife with errors. They pointed to an article Erdely wrote in college in which Erdely later said "just about everything in the story was wrong." The judge said that he would not allow the jury to watch a video of Erdely discussing that article because the reporter said she hadn't seen it. It's unclear whether the video could be introduced at a later time. |
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| abb | Oct 21 2016, 05:17 AM Post #1445 |
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/rolling-stone-reporter-says-jackie-deceived-her-about-u-va-gang-rape/2016/10/20/77151476-967e-11e6-bc79-af1cd3d2984b_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop_b Rolling Stone reporter says ‘Jackie’ deceived her about U-Va. gang rape Moriah Balingit October 20 at 6:02 PM CHARLOTTESVILLE — Journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely fired off an email to Rolling Stone editors in the middle of the night with a sobering subject line: “Our worst nightmare.” She wrote that she no longer trusted “Jackie,” the central figure in her article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia and that she believed the magazine should issue a retraction. As an attorney representing a university administrator who is suing Rolling Stone over the piece read the email aloud in court Thursday, Erdely broke down. “Are those your words?” attorney Libby Locke asked. Local Headlines newsletter Daily headlines about the Washington region. Please provide a valid email address. “Yes,” Erdely said softly, tears streaming down her face. Jackie had told Erdely of surviving a brutal gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity when she was a freshman, an account that appeared to exemplify the problem with sexual assault on campus and the way the school responds to it. Jackie’s harrowing tale, and allegations that U-Va. administrators did little in response, was the backbone of Erdely’s cover story. But during months of reporting, Erdely was confronted with conflicting information about how the tale was relayed to Jackie’s friends. She found that the number of assailants wavered. And she noticed that Jackie had changed aspects of the account. But Erdely never questioned her credibility, and she testified in federal court that she never confronted Jackie about the discrepancies. [‘Catfishing’ over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle] Erdely said she attributed the shifting details of the young woman’s tale to the trauma she experienced. Erdely had written extensively about victims of sexual assault and said they often change the details of their stories. “It takes trauma victims some time to come forward with all the details,” Erdely said, explaining why she remained unskeptical after she learned that Jackie had told two versions of the story to her first-year roommate. “It’s not unusual.” Later, she said she regrets trusting Jackie: “It was a mistake to rely on someone whose intent it was to deceive me.” Locke, who is representing U-Va. administrator Nicole Eramo in a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Erdely and Rolling Stone, highlighted Erdely’s failure to explain inconsistencies in Jackie’s tale and her decision to run the story despite having never contacted key figures in it, including one of the young men Jackie identified as an assailant. Instead, Locke said, Erdely relied solely on the student’s word even as she grew increasingly distressed while the reporter pressed for ways to corroborate her account. [U-Va. dean testifies that retracted Rolling Stone article devastated her] In a statement, Rolling Stone countered that Erdely was not the only one who trusted Jackie. “It is clear that she firmly believed in the credibility of Jackie, as did U-Va. and Dean Eramo, when the article was published,” the statement said. “We made journalistic mistakes with respect to Jackie’s story and we have learned from them, but these mistakes do not support Dean Eramo’s lawsuit.” The story, which painted U-Va. as indifferent to victims of sexual assault, prompted protests, vandalism and calls for Eramo to resign. Eramo, then a top administrator working on sexual assault prevention, said the article undid her life’s work. She testified earlier this week that the article portrayed her as attempting to suppress Jackie’s allegations when in fact she pushed Jackie to report her story to police. Within weeks of the article’s publication, key details began to unravel, leading the magazine to issue a retraction. Eramo’s attorneys have argued that Erdely arrived at the Virginia campus with a preconceived narrative and sought to cast characters, with Jackie filling the role of traumatized victim and Eramo personifying an institutional indifference to sexual assault. Locke pointed out that the Rolling Stone article omitted key details that might have painted Eramo, who was not interviewed for the story, in a more favorable light, including quotes from subjects who viewed her positively. Locke also underscored Erdely’s failure to contact key characters in the story, including the trio of friends who Jackie said met her following her assault and one of Jackie’s assailants, who Jackie claimed had brought her to the fraternity that night. In “A Rape on Campus,” the friends, identified by pseudonyms, react to Jackie’s tale with disregard. Jackie said one friend, Kathryn Hendley, asked her: “Why didn’t you just have fun with it?” Erdely never reached out to Hendley before the article’s publication because, she testified, Jackie refused to give her Hendley’s last name. But, as her notes showed, another friend of Jackie’s provided her with an approximation of Hendley’s last name — “Handley” — that could have led her to Hendley’s identity and contact information. Contacted by The Washington Post shortly after the Rolling Stone story published, Hendley and the other friends disputed Jackie’s account. “You attributed that quote to Ms. Hendley in the article, isn’t that correct?” Locke asked Erdely. “Yes,” Erdely said. “To my great regret.” |
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| abb | Oct 21 2016, 11:10 AM Post #1446 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/author-of-fake-rolling-stone-gang-rape-article-admits-her-mistake/article/2605210 Author of fake Rolling Stone gang-rape article admits her 'mistake' By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 10/21/16 11:08 AM Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the discredited Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, admitted under oath Thursday that she had made mistakes in her reporting. Erdely was called to the stand because Rolling Stone is now being sued by U.Va. dean Nicole Eramo, who was negatively portrayed in the now-retracted article. "It wasn't a mistake to rely on someone who was so emotionally fragile," Erdely said after being pressed on if she still felt the accuser in the article was emotionally unstable. "It was a mistake to rely on someone whose intent was to deceive me." After the story was exposed as a hoax, Erdely had been told by the publisher of Rolling Stone to write a "mea culpa" detailing her failings in reporting out the story of "Jackie," the woman who claimed to have been gang-raped. Buzzfeed's Tyler Kingkade, who has been in the courtroom during the trial, wrote that Erdely's mea culpa was never published. But in writing the mea culpa, Erdely actually reached out to people described in the article that she didn't contact while writing the original story. "Erdely spoke with those three friends who Jackie said would not speak with her — Ryan Duffin, Alex Stock and Kathryn Hendley," Kingkade wrote. "Hendley informed Erdely that she no longer spoke to Jackie because Jackie had started a rumor that Hendley contracted syphilis. Erdely began to sob as she conceded this point." Kingkade wrote that Erdely became more defensive in her testimony later in the afternoon. When Eramo's attorney asked her why a line about the dean urging Jackie to go to the police after fraternity members allegedly threw a bottle at her was cut from the final draft of the article, Erdely at first said it was cut for length, but then got more defensive. "This article was not about how the university handles bottle incidents," Erdely said. "It was about how it handles sexual assault." Erdely was also asked if she thought Eramo was negatively portrayed in the article. Erdely responded: "I stand by everything in the article that did not come from Jackie." That claim from Erdely might help Eramo, but she still faces an uphill battle in this case. She needs to prove that Rolling Stone and Erdely knew or should have known they were publishing false claims about her. Clearly, Erdely still believes she accurately portrayed Eramo in the article. |
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| abb | Oct 22 2016, 03:31 AM Post #1447 |
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/reporter-student-uva-rape-story-tattoo-attack-article-1.2840083 Reporter says student in UVA rape story got tattoo about attack The University of Virginia student who fabricated a gang rape story published in Rolling Stone got a tattoo to commemorate the supposed assault and her ability to overcome it, the story's reporter testified on Friday. News of the tattoo came to light as former Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely testified for the third day in a $7.9 million federal defamation suit filed against the magazine by former University of Virginia Associate Dean Nicole Eramo. After a recorded interview that Erdely had with the woman was played for the jury, Erdely said that the woman had lifted up her dress to show the tattoo, a female symbol with a fist on a rose. “She wanted the tattoo to memorialize the rape and her ability to overcome it,” Erdely testified in U.S. District Court. 'Jackie' may testify at UVA Rolling Stone article trial "Did it ever occur to you that somebody would get a tattoo to memorialize something that never occurred?” asked defense attorney Scott Sexton. MANDATORY CREDIT Sabrina Erdely (center) says that her source for an article about rape at UVA had a tattoo about the alleged attack. (Ryan M. Kelly/AP) "Never,” Erdely said. She said the woman, who is named only as "Jackie" in the story and at the trial, always vividly described details of the reported 2012 assault at a fraternity house. The 2014 story, "A Rape on Campus," set off protests and debate about rape on college campuses. Rolling Stone retracted the article in April 2015, and an investigation by Charlottesville police found that the attack never occurred. Eramo has accused the magazine of painting her as the villain in the story. She and university administrators were criticized in it for not taking stronger action to support victims of sexual violence. UVA frat: $25M suit against Rolling Stone for rape story Defense attorneys have said that as a public figure, Eramo could constitutionally be subject to criticism. They also have said Erdely, her editor and Rolling Stone believed in Jackie’s credibility. MONDAY, NOV. 24, 2014, FILE PHOTO The story about a gang rape at a fraternity at the Virginia school was later debunked. (Steve Helber/AP) Attorneys representing Eramo, who is now in an administrative role, have contended that Erdely and her editors never verified key elements of the story. Jackie’s video deposition has yet to be heard by the jury. While the incident depicted in the story never occurred, sex assaults remain a major concern on U.S. college campuses. Some reports estimate that one in five female students will be victims of sex assault during their college years. Judge rejects Rolling Stone’s bid to kill UVA frat’s $25M lawsuit The lawsuit also names Rolling Stone's owner, Wenner Media, and author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, as defendants. The trial is expected to continue through next week. |
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| abb | Oct 22 2016, 03:32 AM Post #1448 |
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Rolling Stone Paid Reporter Nearly $43,000 For Disastrous UVA Article Posted By Blake Neff On 6:35 PM 10/21/2016 In | No Comments Rolling Stone magazine paid reporter Sabrina Erdely nearly $43,000 for her now-retracted article, “A Rape On Campus,” which triggered a massive defamation lawsuit against the magazine. Erdely’s article, published in Nov. 2014, told in lurid detail of Jackie Coakley’s gang-rape at a University of Virginia (UVA) fraternity. The article provoked a massive wave of outrage, but shortly after its publication serious holes in Coakley’s story were exposed. The story was subsequently retracted, and an investigative report by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism exposed many serious errors in Erdely’s reporting. Now, Rolling Stone is fighting a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit from UVA dean Nicole Eramo, who says Erdely’s article defamed her by portraying her as callously indifferent to sexual assault victims at UVA. The trial phase of the lawsuit began this week, and Erdely has testified three consecutive days. As part of her testimony, Erdely revealed the massive compensation she received for writing her disastrous article. “A Rape On Campus,” she said, was her first article under a lucrative new contract with Rolling Stone she’d signed the previous summer. Under the terms of the deal, Erdely would be paid $300,000 in return for producing seven long-form articles for the magazine over the next two years. The first three articles were due by June 2015. Assuming that “A Rape On Campus,” as the first article of seven, was worth about $42,800, then the nearly 9,000-word article cost Rolling Stone about $4.75 per word. According to local NBC29 news, Eramo’s attorney Libby Locke used the high-paying contract as an explanation for Erdely’s mistakes as a reporter. Because Erdely felt pressured to fulfill the terms of her contract, Locke suggested, she pressured a hesitant Coakley to let her story be published, and also overlooked Coakley’s many flaws as a source. Erdely’s testimony has included other strange revelations. On Friday, she revealed that Coakley showed her a tattoo she claimed commemorated her non-existent gang-rape and how she overcame it. Rolling Stone defense attorney Scott Sexton used this tattoo as a way of defending the magazine’s decision to trust Coakley. (RELATED: UVA Jackie Invented Rumor Friend Had Syphilis) “Did it ever occur to you that somebody would get a tattoo to memorialize something that never occurred?” Sexton asked, according to the New York Daily News. “Never,” Erdely replied. Follow Blake on Twitter Send tips to blake@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/21/rolling-stone-paid-reporter-nearly-43000-for-disastrous-uva-article/ |
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| abb | Oct 22 2016, 03:34 AM Post #1449 |
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http://www.c-ville.com/day-5-recording-jackie-makes-waves/#.WAskJfTkZhs Day 5: A recording of 'Jackie' makes waves Hawes Spencer Former Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely put in a third day on the stand Friday, a day spent answering friendly questions from the defense in an effort to show how a veteran journalist could be been duped by a college girl named Jackie– the centerpiece of a story that became a libel trial. For over two hours, the jury listened to an interview in which Jackie talks of “daddy issues” that led her to become depressed. College was supposed to provide a fresh start, but barely a month into her freshman year, she was allegedly attacked. She tells Erdely that she got a tattoo to brand herself a survivor. As Erdely describes it, it’s a women’s symbol with a fist, a rose, and the word “unbreakable.” Rolling Stone defense lawyer Scott Sexton stops the audio to ask Erdely, “Did it ever occur to you that someone would get a tattoo on their body to commemorate a sexual assault that didn’t happen?” Erdely’s voice shakes in reply: “Never.” As the anniversary of her alleged September 28 attack neared, Jackie tells Erdely on the tape, she’d have nightmares in which she pictures herself walking up stairs but telling herself, “Don’t go.” “I’d sleep during the day and stay up all night because I just couldn’t deal with the dark,” she said. “I reverted to thoughts of suicide and self harm,” Jackie tells Erdely. “You can run as fast as you can, but you can never get over it. I still have nightmares.” “She tells it in such a real and emotional way,” Erdely says on the witness stand. “She’s so conscientious with her details I could feel it.” She wasn’t conscientious about every detail. The jury hands a note to the judge. They want to know what to make of Jackie’s varying pronunciations of the fraternity where she was allegedly raped. The background noise is distracting, but she seems to call it Chi Phi, Chi Psi, Pi Phi– rarely, if ever, the one actually named in the story: Phi Psi. Rolling Stone’s lawyer says he’d be happy to stipulate Phi Psi. But Eramo attorney Libby Locke suddenly stands and demands that the jurors trust their own ears. “It goes to credibility,” says Locke. Judge Glen Conrad agrees. The infamous rape school quotation came into the record as Jackie can be heard telling the tale of what Dean Nicole Eramo, the plaintiff, was quoted in the article saying about the UVA’s alleged penchant to bury rape statistics. In Jackie’s words: “She looked at me very solemnly and said, like, ‘Well, who would want to send their daughter to the rape school?'” With her chin up and her gaze fixed firmly on Erdely, Eramo lets a hint of a confident smile course across her lips, as this pillar of her lawsuit– that she never actually said it– can be heard coming from the mouth of Jackie. Later, Jackie can be heard telling Erdely about running into two of her alleged rapists in the beverage section of Walmart while she and a boyfriend were making a night-time search for spinach. Erdely took the tale as more evidence of truth. “Her level of specifificity just reinforced her believability,” Erdely testified. “She didn’t just run into them at Walmart; she ran into them in the juice aisle.” Jackie’s not on trial here, as the judge and lawyers remind the jurors from time to time, but she seems to relish certain aspects of victimhood. She enthuses about her 12-person UVA course on women & violence, but she reserves her greatest enthusiasm for One Less, a support group for female sexual assault survivors. “I’m not in a sorority,” she tells Erdely. But in One Less, she says, there are sorority-like get-togethers where women share emotional “highs and lows.” “All of us are really close,” Jackie tells Erdely. “It’s a little sorority within itself.” There almost seemed to be a little sorority within Erdely and Jackie. The audio reveals the two talking of post-traumatic stress disorder and swapping tales of psychologists, bio-feedback therapy, and migraine headaches– all while as sporting events, music, and the sound of billiard balls clink in the background. In court, Erdely testifies that Jackie, who speaks at a rapid clip, seemed “outgoing and forthright” as well as “bubbly and enthusiastic.” How this sister act will play with the jurors who appear to be in their 40s, 50s, and low 60s is unclear; but the college student definitely made an impression on the reporter. “It was like drinking form a firehose when you were with Jackie,” Erdely testified. “She just talked and talked.” Jackie seems particularly talkative on the topic of “Becky,” another woman that Jackie claims shared her story of getting raped at the same fraternity. “She spoke like Spock from Star Trek,” says Jackie, as Becky tells of going into a room with three men. “They summoned another boy into the room,” continues Jackie, “and I remember she used the word ‘summoned.'” “What, was she carrying a thesaurus?” jokes Erdely, impressed with the diction and the specificity of the tale. Jackie notes that “Becky” acts formally, dresses in business casual, and proceeds to say she was an unwilling participant in “forcible sexual intercourse.” And then leaves. “She looks at her watch and was like, ‘I’ve got to get to class now.'” Jackie, while admittedly more emotional than Becky– who the defense lawyer suggests, may be fictitious– is never heard in the audio protesting her role as the controversial story’s centerpiece. And, Erdely testified, Jackie never asked the reporter to remove her. “And after it came out,” said Erdely, “she was thanking me for the article.” |
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| Baldo | Oct 22 2016, 04:17 PM Post #1450 |
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October 22 at 3:01 PM WaPo ‘She didn’t have credibility anymore’: The moment Rolling Stone’s UVa rape story unraveled CHARLOTTESVILLE — In emotional testimony in the federal courthouse here Saturday, former Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely told the jury about the phone call that led her to realize that the story she had written about a horrific sexual assault at a University of Virginia fraternity was falling apart at the seams. The story Erdely wrote for the magazine in November 2014, “A Rape on Campus,” created shockwaves across the country with its description of a brutal gang rape of a freshman identified in the story only as “Jackie.” Erdely, who is being sued along with the magazine for defamation by U-Va. administrator Nicole Eramo, had interviewed Jackie many times and believed her story. And she had interviewed friends of Jackie’s whom she also found believable. On Saturday, she testified that on a reporting trip to the university, she and Jackie had walked by the fraternity house where the rape allegedly took place and that Jackie had visibly recoiled when they neared it. “Her face had this look of, it was like terror and anger and fear.” Erdely said. “It was like she was frozen in this terrified masque.” Erdely also interviewed friends, experts on sexual assault and university administrators for her story, but did not reach out to the alleged attacker because, she said Saturday, Jackie had expressed so much fear for her safety and worried about what might happen to her or what he might do. Soon after the story published, a number of Jackie’s claims were being called into question, Erdely said, and she and the editors at Rolling Stone were preparing a statement that said they stood by their article and the reporting. Erdely reached out again to Jackie and spoke with her early in the morning of Dec. 5, 2014. She said she asked Jackie if she had gone to the police now that the story had come out to report the crime and that Jackie responded that it was not the right time. “I was a little surprised,” Erdely told the court. “A couple of other things struck me as odd…I was getting a little hinky feeling.” Erdely says that for the first time, Jackie expressed doubt about whether her alleged assailant was in the fraternity she had said he belonged to. “I was just so startled…Here she was saying in such a casual way, “Oh yeah, maybe he wasn’t in Phi Psi’.” Worried about the doubts Jackie was expressing, Erdely posed direct questions to her. The reporter’s notes from that phone call were shown to the jury. Did he rape you at the Phi Psi house? No. Did he orchestrate your rape? Yes. Did it happen the way you told me it did? Yes. Erdeley says she then told Jackie on the phone that she wanted to work with her to look up additional information about her alleged attacker online. They searched but were unable to find anything. For Erdely, the doubts quickly mushroomed. “When I got off the phone, I felt like the ground had shifted from under my feet,” Erdely said. “The person I had talked to was not the person I was familiar with from my story. I felt that she didn’t have credibility anymore, which meant that we couldn’t stand behind anything that she had given me.” Wiping away tears, Erdely confirmed that she left a voice mail with Jackie telling her that if she didn’t believe in her story than she should not go to the police. She then drafted an email to her editors explaining that she no longer had faith in Jackie’s story and telling them it should be retracted. The subject line read simply: “Our worst nightmare”. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/she-didnt-have-credibility-anymore-the-moment-rolling-stones-uva-rape-story-unraveled/2016/10/22/93488bae-9887-11e6-bc79-af1cd3d2984b_story.html “Our worst nightmare”. No it was those who were falsely accused! Edited by Baldo, Oct 22 2016, 04:18 PM.
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| abb | Oct 23 2016, 04:32 AM Post #1451 |
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/when-erdely-lost-faith-in-jackie-s-story-the-ground/article_16125b30-df4e-5dc6-a567-d5c41942c70a.html When Erdely lost faith in 'Jackie's' story, 'the ground had shifted under me' BY LAUREN BERG Jurors made their way back into a Charlottesville federal courtroom Saturday morning to hear further testimony from Sabrina Rubin Erdely on the sixth day of a defamation lawsuit brought by University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo against Rolling Stone magazine, its publisher and Erdely, author of the November 2014 article “A Rape on Campus.” For close to three and half hours, Erdely’s attorney, Scott Sexton, continued his cross-examination of his client, focusing on the steps she took when reporting “Jackie’s” story, the then-student who claimed she was gang-raped by seven men at a fraternity house during her freshman year at UVa. Jackie’s story served as the centerpiece of Erdely’s article. Intense scrutiny and several investigations eventually debunked Jackie’s claims, ultimately leading to the article’s retraction. Much of Saturday’s testimony focused on Erdely’s initial belief in Jackie’s story — from speaking to her on the phone, to meeting her for dinner and then walking to the fraternity where the alleged rape was said to have happened. Erdely said she never felt a reason to not believe Jackie, particularly when seeing her reaction to the fraternity house. “She stared at it, frozen,” Erdely said, referring to the house. “Her face had a look of terror and anger. And then she turned around and collapsed into [her boyfriend’s] arms, sobbing. I knew it was genuine. “Something happened to her,” she added. “I have no doubt she is a traumatized person.” When asked about her personal feelings toward Eramo, the former associate dean tasked with aiding student survivors of sexual assault, Erdely said she always viewed her as a professional and thought she had genuine concern for the students who came to her, including Jackie. “I had no reason to have any bad feelings toward Dean Eramo,” Erdely told the court. “I thought she had a really hard job. She was trying to help students but was tied up by school policy.” Erdely steadfastly maintained that Eramo was never the object of criticism in the article but that the school’s policy of “victim’s choice” — putting the onus on sexual assault survivors to take their cases forward in the legal system — was problematic. “Jackie received the emotional support and kindness she needed, but survivors need people to tell them they can report and that they should report,” Erdely said. Eramo is seeking $7.5 million from Erdely and the magazine over her characterization in Erdely’s piece, which was officially retracted in April 2015. She alleges that her career, reputation, physical and mental health all suffered when the article cast her as a callous and indifferent administrator who sought to suppress claims of sexual assault. When questioned about why she had not contacted the man Jackie accused of orchestrating the gang rape, Erdely said she did it out of compassion and respect for Jackie’s feelings. In the article, Erdely addressed the issue but chalked it up to Jackie’s trauma and said Jackie never gave her his full name. “I thought Jackie was brave and heroic, and I hoped readers would see her the same way,” said Erdely. In the end, though, Erdely said Jackie’s story lost credibility in her eyes when Jackie told her she couldn’t remember which fraternity she was in at the time of the assault nor the name of her alleged assailant after the story had already been published and had faced public skepticism. Becoming emotional on the stand, Erdely spoke about the exact moment she knew they would need to retract the story. “I got off the phone with Jackie and I felt like the ground had shifted under me,” Erdely said. “What I knew was that she had told me things that weren’t true. She gave me a false name and might have been wrong about the fraternity. “If I wasn’t sure about those things, then I couldn’t be sure about anything in her story.” At the end of the cross examination, attorneys for Eramo brought forward a new witness, Brian Head, a recent UVa graduate who was featured in Erdely’s article. In his last year at UVa, Head was the president of One in Four, an all-male sexual assault prevention and education club at the school. Speaking about Eramo, Head said he knew her through all four years of his education and advocacy work at UVa. As he spoke about Eramo’s caring nature and ability to speak for the students to the administration, Eramo became emotional at the table she shared with her attorneys. “It seemed like Dean Eramo was a scapegoat for the administration,” he said. Head also spoke about his frustration with the article and said Erdely did not mention his role with One in Four and seemed to focus on comments he made about UVa’s reputation as a “smart” college with a “partying” culture. “I knew it was going to be critical of UVa,” Head said. “But I wanted to paint a full picture of the advocacy work being done on Grounds. I didn’t think it was highlighted at all. I felt it was dishonest.” After the article was retracted, Head expressed frustration that advocacy work would be more difficult and said survivors might now have a more difficult time getting people to believe their stories. The trial will continue Monday morning with more testimony from Erdely. |
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| abb | Oct 24 2016, 11:15 AM Post #1452 |
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https://academicwonderland.com/2016/10/24/erdely-jackie-conversations/ Erdely-Jackie Conversations October 24, 2016 KC Johnson1 Comment If the Rolling Stone-Nicole Eramo trial is the Iran-Iraq war of academic due process (in that both sides are extremely unappealing), the 150-minute conversation between Sabrina Rubin Erdely and the hoaxer Jackie is something of a modern-day version of the Monica Lewinsky-Linda Tripp tapes–a long conversation between two people who enjoyed talking about themselves, with the older person pressing for information and the younger person alternating between imagined trauma and mundane gossip. I’ll have a writeup on the tape, made public by CBS-19, at Minding the Campus. But below are some of the most pertinent brief excerpts. The two had their extremely lengthy conversation in a loud restaurant; the audio quality is mediocre. At several points, Erdely made clear–despite later suggestions in response to the Phi Kappa Psi lawsuit against Rolling Stone–that her article would target the fraternity. The incident, she suggested, was a gang rape fraternity initiation ritual: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. The fraternity, Erdely believed, might well have a “culture of gang rape”: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Erdely said that she wanted to “get these guys”: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Phi Kappa Psi members, Erdely maintained, personified the “banality of evil”: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. And Erdely presses Jackie to recognize how confronting her purported attackers would show that she had power over them: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Jackie, meanwhile, comes across as a fanatic. After Erdely presses her to name Phi Kappa Psi to identify the initiation ritual, Jackie suggests she wants all fraternities to be subjected to a comprehensive investigation, on grounds that if they had done nothing wrong, they’d have nothing to hide: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Jackie also makes clear that she and her allies in the accusers’ rights movement welcomed bad publicity against UVA: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Both Jackie and Erdely see a non-existent campus, dominated by rape culture, in which people are terrified even to mention sexual assault. For good measure, Jackie talks about an imagined conversation with her catfish target, Ryan Duffin: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Erdely, meanwhile, imagines a campus in which students actively discourage victims from reporting: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. The two have highly negative views of fraternities: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. This clip, in which Jackie passes along allegedly negative information about Eramo, will be helpful to Erdely in the libel trial: Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Finally, this clip, in which Jackie talks about why she stopped seeing a campus counselor, captures her me-centered, unappealing personality: |
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| abb | Oct 24 2016, 12:31 PM Post #1453 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/4-things-weve-learned-about-a-rolling-stone-authors-rape-bias/article/2605396 4 things we've learned about a Rolling Stone author's rape bias By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 10/24/16 12:23 PM As the trial over a discredited gang-rape article from Rolling Stone continues into its second week, CBS19 has released a recording of the story's author from the day she interviewed the rape hoaxer. Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author, said several things during the interview that made her bias and desire for sensationalism quite clear. K.C. Johnson, professor and co-author of the book about the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax, highlighted some of the most interesting excerpts from the 150-minute interview. 1. Erdely really hates fraternities I don't know if Erdely had some bad experience in her past with a fraternity member or at a fraternity, or if she's seen one too many movies showing fraternities to be boorish rape dens, but she certainly holds some serious ill will toward such institutions and their members. It seems that it was Erdely who made the suggestion that the alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia was part of a fraternity initiation. "It doesn't do anybody any good to say: 'Oh, there's a fraternity on campus that may actually be, uh, you know, have an initiation of gang-rape initiation ritual,'" she said while trying to get "Jackie," the name used to refer to the story's subject, to agree to name the specific fraternity she was accusing. In addition, Erdely said the fraternity "might have a culture of gang rape" and that the members of Phi Kappa Psi — where Jackie claimed the gang rape took place — represented a "banality of evil." Erdely also told Jackie she wanted to "get these guys" and insisted that going after the fraternity member Jackie claimed orchestrated the gang rape would demonstrate her power over him. "I was actually going to say, like, he's probably more terrified of you because even though, like, I mean you feel helpless in the situation, but like you actually have all the power," Erdely said. "You know, you have so much power over him. You could destroy him." 2. Like, really thought negatively of fraternities At another point in the conversation, Erdely starts citing a study she read that purported to show fraternity members were more likely to rape and have inappropriate beliefs about rape. "Like, there is something — and there's actually research to suggest that, like, fraternity members are more likely to, you know, rape — they are more likely to rape people," Erdely said. "They're also more likely to have, like, maybe like rape supportive attitudes, you know like to be more sexually aggressive," and to hold attitudes that suggest it's okay to sleep with a drunk woman after another man already has. 3. Erdely came into the story with her own preconceived notions about college and sexual assault After Jackie claimed to have talked to one of her former friends who said he wouldn't participate in the article, Erdely, accepting what she said as fact, insisted this was evidence of "rape culture." "In a weird way, this is actually part of the rape culture stuff that we're even talking about, like, on campus," Erdely said. "The kind of stuff that helps to perpetuate sexual assault." 4. Erdely already believed students actively discouraged accusers from coming forward Jackie was talking about how her former friends who came to her after she told them she was gang raped didn't want to participate in Erdely's article. Erdely then went on a long rant about how Jackie's friends cared more about their reputation than her, and implied that's what it's like at all colleges. "And again, this actually gets into sort of the heart of the story is that, like, the story that's kind of taking shape, which is that, the idea that like social capital is actually more important than people's safety and their, like, health, and like, you know, and the idea that like, people are afraid to report their rapes or talk about being raped because they might be blackballed and, like, nobody's even going to help, like, their friends because, like, they're afraid that, like, something – they're going to take some kind of social, um, backlash because of it," she said. "That's just, like, crazy." Now remember, the conversation Jackie allegedly had with her friends that night, in which they discussed their own reputations and discouraged her from reporting, did not happen the way she described. The three friends each told their story of what happened that night — which were consistent with one another — and which contradicted Jackie's claim. Indeed, her friends said they begged her to go to the police and the hospital but that Jackie refused. They also said she was crying, but not wearing a damaged and bloody dress, as Jackie had claimed. |
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| abb | Oct 25 2016, 04:38 AM Post #1454 |
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/tylerkingkade/jackie-rolling-stone?utm_term=.dw0ZQBJA97#.ltRGl8r4em Why Jackie Won’t Be Outed In The Rolling Stone Trial Her attorneys still maintain she was sexually assaulted, despite the discrediting of a story about her alleged rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. posted on Oct. 24, 2016, at 3:14 p.m. Tyler Kingkade BuzzFeed News Reporter Three days into the trial against Rolling Stone magazine for its story about an alleged rape at the University of Virginia, a document was displayed on the courtroom’s widescreen TVs and the jurors’ personal monitors. Libby Locke, a lawyer for the plaintiff in the libel case, quickly saw a mistake and ordered her colleagues to take the document down. Attorneys realized they’d done one thing that both sides in this contentious case vowed not to do: identify the woman whose rape allegation is at the center of the trial. The trial, which opened one week ago, stems from former UVA dean Nicole Eramo’s portrayal in the story of the university response to an alleged gang rape of a student named Jackie in 2012. Eramo is suing Rolling Stone and writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely for defamation, and much of the trial in the first week focused on inaccuracies in the article. The original article only used Jackie’s first name and pseudonyms for her former friends and the alleged assailants. But when her former friends came forward and challenged Jackie’s account, the story unraveled and was retracted. Despite the version of events surrounding Jackie’s alleged attack largely being discredited, the court is still considering her a sexual assault victim, and so the judge has agreed to maintain her anonymity. False rape reports are rare, but making a false claim to police can lead to criminal charges for the accuser even when no specific person is named as an alleged assailant. In the Duke lacrosse rape story from a decade ago, which is often compared to the Rolling Stone–UVA story, the accuser, Crystal Mangum, was initially kept anonymous. Mangum was outed widely after the state not only dropped charges against her alleged assailants but also declared them innocent. Jackie never filed a police report about her alleged assault at the Phi Kappa Psi frat house. The Charlottesville Police Department’s investigation of her case in 2015 was conducted at the request of UVA. Although police found no evidence to support her rape claims as described in Rolling Stone, the cops avoided saying that Jackie was not assaulted at some point. They never officially closed the case. Just because they couldn’t find evidence to support the events described in the article, Charlottesville Chief of Police Tim Longo said at the time, “that doesn’t mean something terrible did not happen to Jackie on Sept. 28, 2012. We’re just not able to gather sufficient facts to determine what that is.” “That’s such an important reason for having anonymity for survivors, so they can feel comfortable and not face retaliation or backlash.” Testimony during the trial so far has revealed the inner workings of Rolling Stone, and how UVA handled reports of sexual assault. But the court took extra steps to conceal Jackie’s last name and what she looks like from courtroom spectators for reasons largely stemming from agreements struck before the trial started. On Monday, the court began playing prerecorded video depositions from Jackie. However, the video monitors in the courtroom were turned off for the gallery, which is where the public and press sit. At another point in court, lawyers questioned Erdely on what Jackie told her about an April 2014 incident — separate from the alleged rape — in which she was attacked by men outside a bar. They showed jurors a photo that Jackie had sent to Erdely, supposedly taken soon after the men threw a bottle at her. The photo showed what appeared to be a large dark mark around Jackie’s eye, but the monitors for the gallery were turned off to hide her appearance. These steps are taken even though cameras, cell phones, and recording devices are not allowed in the courtroom. In her deposition played for jurors Monday, Jackie said she stands by the account she gave to Rolling Stone of being gang-raped at a UVA fraternity. Lawyers for Jackie maintain that she is a rape victim and repeatedly refer to her in legal filings as a sexual assault survivor. Eramo and her attorneys have said in court papers that “Jackie’s claims were entirely false, and that she likely invented the supposed gang rape in order to gain the sympathy of a man she was romantically interested in and to cover for her failing grades.” Still, they agreed to keep her anonymous “in the continuing spirit of cooperation and good faith.” Ebony Tucker, advocacy director for the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, says that is the right approach. If Jackie were outed against her wishes while maintaining that she was a sexual assault victim, it could send a message to survivors that if people doubt their rape report, they too could be publicly identified, Tucker said. That could deter people from reporting rapes. “That’s such an important reason for having anonymity for survivors, so they can feel comfortable and not face retaliation or backlash,” Tucker said. “Once we start compromising that, we start compromising safety for all survivors.” “She’s not responsible for the journalism mistakes.” During questioning on the stand, Eramo said she doesn’t believe “this particular incident occurred,” but still thinks Jackie was traumatized by some event. “I don’t know what happened to her at this point,” she testified. No mainstream media outlet at the local or national level has published Jackie’s full name or image, though some far-right blogs have. None of the publicly available court documents or police reports use Jackie’s full name, show her email address, or display her phone number. Long-standing journalistic conventions call for news outlets to avoid using a sexual assault victim’s name unless they expressly give permission. When the Columbia School of Journalism conducted a review of Rolling Stone’s errors, it did not use Jackie’s name. Steve Coll, the school’s dean and a veteran journalist, told the Washington Post earlier this year that he didn’t think Jackie should be exposed. “She never solicited Rolling Stone to be written about,” Coll said. “She’s not responsible for the journalism mistakes. To name her now just feels gratuitous, lacking sufficient public purpose.” |
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| abb | Oct 25 2016, 04:39 AM Post #1455 |
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http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Erdely-continues-testimony-for-fifth-day-398198971.html Erdely wraps up testimony, tapes of Jackie deposition being played By Tomas Harmon | Posted: Mon 11:33 AM, Oct 24, 2016 | Updated: Mon 6:29 PM, Oct 24, 2016 CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (NEWSPLEX) -- For the fifth day, Sabrina Erdely was on the witness stand, testifying in the trial of a defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone. Tempers got high Monday morning between Erdely and the attorney representing former University of Virginia Dean Nicole Eramo, who filed the lawsuit after an article, "A Rape on Campus," was published in Rolling Stone in November of 2014 that she says defamed her. Erdely, the woman who wrote the retracted article, and the attorney, Libby Locke, fired back and forth at each other over questions about the purpose of the article. Eramo's attorneys asked why she did not double check facts from Jackie, the woman around whom the article is written. At that heart of Eramo's case are the allegation that she seemed "unphased" by reports of several gang rapes at the same fraternity. Erdely says she believed Jackie, a woman who claimed she had been gang raped at a party at the fraternity, at the time of talking to her, saying to the jury that it was "to her great regret." Attorneys also pushed Erdely on her criticism that UVA did nothing to alert students about Jackie's alleged sexual assault. "Wouldn't issuing a campus alert about the alleged gang rape at Phi Psi be the same thing as what you and Rolling Stone did," asked Locke. Erdely responded, "No, because [UVA] never even too the first step." Once Erdely was finished testifying, jurors got to watch Jackie's videotaped deposition, in which she answered questions about Rolling Stone, Eramo and her role in the article. In the video, Jackie talked about the weeks leading up to the article's publication. She told attorneys she stood by her account of the sexual assault that was published in "A Rape on Campus," but the tape also reveals memory gaps. "I stand by the account that I gave to Rolling Stone," she said. "I believed it to be true at the time." When Eramo's attorney's asked Jackie why she said she believed the account to be true at the time, Jackie replied that she has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the details of the alleged incident are "foggy." As a result of PTSD, Jackie said "I don't know" in response to several of the questions asked her during the deposition. Key questions included asking if she had met with police, or if she had faked text messages that she then shared with the magazine, or even when she had met and talked with Eramo. However, she was very clear on one particular quote from Eramo, which is also at the center of the lawsuit and explains why sexual assault numbers at UVA are hard to find. Jackie said, "Like I don't want to get her in trouble for saying this, but she like looked at me very like solemnly and was like, 'Now who would want to send their daughter to the rape school?'" On tape, Jackie said she doesn't remember telling Erdely about the comment, but she did say she and Erdely has different interpretations of the comment. "I don't remember verbatim the conservation," said Jackie in her deposition. "When I was talking to Eramo about this, it was not about UVA, but that any school doesn't want to be the rape school." When pressed about whether or not Eramo actually made the comment, Jackie told attorneys she remembered Eramo saying it, but she wasn't sure if it was true. She told attorneys she wanted out of the article once she realized her alleged gang rape was the focus of the story and not advocacy work against sexual assault. Jackie also stated she felt pressure from Rolling Stone and some of her friend to keep moving forward. Attorneys played several voicemails from Erdely that were created just two weeks before publican, and in one of those, Erdely tells Jackie she wants her to be part of the story. "I understand you are scared," said Erdely in the message. "If all goes according to plan, this article is shipping to the printer in the next two weeks." After that, Jackie says she stopped responding to Erdely. When asked why, she replied, "I felt overwhelmed and stressed and scared. I felt like I was getting a lot of pressure from a lot of different people to do thing I did not want to do." On the tape, the attorneys also asked Jackie about Eramo and what she thought of her. Jackie said Eramo became the center of the outrage and protests on UVA Grounds after the article was published. Jackie said she was upset by this because she said she owed Eramo her life, which is why she is among several people who submitted open letters supporting Eramo in 2014. "I just remembered I cared about her and wanted everyone to know she was an asset to the UVA community and helping people, which I believe she was doing at the time," said Jackie. She was also asked if she was worried Rolling Stone would portray Eramo in a negative way. "I believe Ms. Erdely was concerned about the administration as a whole and Dean Eramo was part of that," she replied. "And I didn't want to see Dean Eramo hurt." When the defamation lawsuit was filed, Jackie was not listed as a defendant. Legal analyst Scott Goodman says, even though what Jackie allegedly said was not true, Rolling Stone was the actual publisher of the statements Eramo claims defamed her. Attorneys for both sides agree that Jackie is a sexual assault survivor, just not of the assault that was described in the article. |
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9:14 AM Jul 11