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{{short description|Retracted 2014 Rolling Stone article}} | |||
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{{good article}} | |||
{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2016}} | |||
{{Infobox book | {{Infobox book | ||
| italic title |
| italic title = no | ||
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| name = {{noitalic|"A Rape on Campus"}} | ||
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| image = A_Rape_on_Campus.jpg | ||
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| image_size = | ||
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| author = ] | ||
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| country = United States | ||
| subject = An alleged gang rape at a college fraternity | |||
| publisher = Rolling Stone | |||
| set_in = ] | |||
| pub_date = November 19, 2014 | |||
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| publisher = '']'' | ||
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| pub_date = {{unbulleted list|November 19, 2014|Retracted April 5, 2015<ref name=retraction />}} | ||
| media_type = Magazine article | |||
}} | }} | ||
"'''A Rape on Campus'''" is a ], defamatory '']'' magazine article<ref>{{cite news |last1=Daniel Sanchez |title=Rolling Stone Faces Millions More In Defamation Charges |url=https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/04/28/rolling-stone-appeal/ |access-date=14 January 2021 |work=] |date=28 April 2017 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210114060509/https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/04/28/rolling-stone-appeal/ |archive-date=14 January 2021 |quote=First published in Rolling Stone in 2014, 'A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice' turned out to be seriously fake news.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Victor Davis Hanson |title=Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name |url=https://www.hoover.org/research/fake-news-postmodernism-another-name |access-date=14 January 2021 |work=Hoover Institution |date=26 January 2017 |quote=A somewhat similar fake news story about rape was promulgated by Rolling Stone in a 9,000-word article ("A Rape on Campus") that supposedly detailed a savage gang rape in 2012 of a University of Virginia first year co-ed. |archive-date=January 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210111052453/https://www.hoover.org/research/fake-news-postmodernism-another-name |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url = https://www.deseret.com/2016/12/8/20601976/dan-liljenquist-news-stories-about-fake-news-stories|title = Dan Liljenquist: News stories about fake news stories|date = December 8, 2016|access-date = January 14, 2021|archive-date = January 15, 2021|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210115040036/https://www.deseret.com/2016/12/8/20601976/dan-liljenquist-news-stories-about-fake-news-stories|url-status = live}}</ref> written by ] and originally published on November 19, 2014, that describes a purported group ] at the ] (UVA) in ], ]. ''Rolling Stone'' retracted the story in its entirety on April 5, 2015.<ref name=retraction>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rolling-stone-and-uva-the-columbia-university-graduate-school-of-journalism-report-44930/|title=Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report|quote="With , we are officially retracting 'A Rape on Campus.'|date=April 5, 2015|magazine=Rolling Stone|access-date=September 20, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180924193722/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rolling-stone-and-uva-the-columbia-university-graduate-school-of-journalism-report-44930/|archive-date=September 24, 2018|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
"'''A Rape on Campus'''" is an article by ] published in the November 19, 2014 issue of '']'',<!-- <ref name = "Original Article">{{cite news|last1=Erdely|first1=Sabrina|title=A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA|url=http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119|accessdate=2014-11-20|work=RollingStone.com|date=November 19, 2014|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20141219172210/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119|archivedate=December 19, 2014}}</ref> --> which has since been discredited, and ] by the publisher. The article claimed that several members of a ] at the ] viciously raped a woman, identified only as Jackie, as part of an initiation rite during a ] party. After other journalists investigated the article's claims and found significant discrepancies, ''Rolling Stone'' issued multiple apologies for the story. The story was included in a '']'' feature, "The Worst Journalism of 2014", where it was described as winning "this year's media-fail sweepstakes".<ref>{{cite news |last=Uberti |first=David |date=22 December 2014 |title=The worst journalism of 2014 |url=http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/the_worst_journalism_of_2014.php |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=23 December 2014 }}</ref> The ] named it as the "Error of the Year" in journalism.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/306801/the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections-2014/ |title=The year in media errors and corrections 2014 |publisher=Poynter.org |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> | |||
</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=GRACE GUARNIERI |title=Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely deemed liable in dean's defamation suit for University of Virginia rape story |url=https://www.salon.com/2016/11/04/rolling-stone-sabrina-rubin-erdely-hit-with-7-5-million-judgement-for-university-of-virginia-rape-story/ |access-date=8 January 2021 |work=] |date=5 November 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190302102819/https://www.salon.com/2016/11/04/rolling-stone-sabrina-rubin-erdely-hit-with-7-5-million-judgement-for-university-of-virginia-rape-story/ |archive-date=2 March 2019 |quote=The Rolling Stone story, which was eventually retracted in April 2015, centered on student Jackie Coakley and her falsified story of being gang raped}}</ref> The article claimed that UVA student Jackie Coakley had been taken to a party hosted by UVA's ] ] by a fellow student and led to a bedroom to be ]d by several fraternity members as part of a fraternity ]. | |||
Jackie's account generated much media attention, and UVA President ] suspended all fraternities. After other journalists investigated the article's claims and found significant discrepancies, ''Rolling Stone'' issued multiple apologies for the story. It has since been reported that Jackie may have invented portions of the story in an unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a fellow student in whom she had a romantic interest.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Shapiro |first1=T. Tees |title=Lawyers in Rolling Stone lawsuit file new evidence that 'Jackie' created fake persona |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/18/lawyers-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-file-new-evidence-that-jackie-created-fake-persona/ |access-date=2020-01-29 |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=May 18, 2016 |archive-date=June 8, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160608172100/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/18/lawyers-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-file-new-evidence-that-jackie-created-fake-persona/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://abcnews.go.com/2020/deepdive/how-retracted-rolling-stone-article-rape-on-campus-came-print-42701166|title=How the Retracted Rolling Stone Article 'A Rape on Campus' Came to Print|last1=McNiff|first1=Eamon|date=2017|work=ABC 20/20|access-date=2020-01-29|last2=Effron|first2=Lauren|last3=Schneider|first3=Jeff|archive-date=January 29, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200129225329/https://abcnews.go.com/2020/deepdive/how-retracted-rolling-stone-article-rape-on-campus-came-print-42701166|url-status=live}}</ref> In a deposition given in 2016, Jackie stated that she believed her story at the time.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/24/rolling-stone-defamation-trial-uva-jackie-testifies|title='Jackie' testifies: Rolling Stone story was 'what I believed to be true at the time'|date=October 24, 2016|work=]|access-date=November 28, 2018|language=en|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181128210824/https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/24/rolling-stone-defamation-trial-uva-jackie-testifies| archive-date=November 28, 2018|url-status=live|df=mdy-all |quote=Jackie responded: "I stand by the account I gave to Rolling Stone. I believed it to be true at the time."}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://wtvr.com/2016/10/24/jackie-stands-by-her-story-as-rolling-stone-trial-continues/|title='I believed it to be true:' Jackie stands by her story as Rolling Stone trial continues|date=2016-10-25|work=WTVR.com|access-date=2018-11-28|language=en-US|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181128210815/https://wtvr.com/2016/10/24/jackie-stands-by-her-story-as-rolling-stone-trial-continues/|archive-date=November 28, 2018|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}}</ref> | |||
''Rolling Stone'' publisher ] asked the dean of the ] to audit the editorial processes leading up to the publication of the story.<ref name="review">{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/22/rolling-stone-farms-out-review-of-u-va-rape-story-to-columbia-journalism-school/|title=Rolling Stone farms out review of U-Va. rape story to Columbia Journalism School|work=Washington Post|accessdate=23 December 2014|first=Erik|last=Wemple|date=22 December 2014}}</ref> Dean ] agreed to review the processes with ], dean of academic affairs.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://blog.sfgate.com/chroncast/2006/11/07/veteran-filipino-investigative-journalist-takes-on-new-challenge-in-big-apple/|title=Veteran Filipino investigative journalist takes on new challenge in Big Apple|work=Chronicle Podcasts|accessdate=23 December 2014|first=Benny|last=Evangelista|date=7 November 2006}}</ref> Reporters from ''Rolling Stone'' also contacted sources from the initial story as part of an attempt to piece together what went wrong.<ref name="review"/> | |||
On January 12, 2015, Charlottesville Police officials told UVA that an investigation had failed to find any evidence confirming the events in the ''Rolling Stone'' article. UVA President Teresa Sullivan acknowledged that the story was discredited. Charlottesville Police officially suspended their four-month investigation on March 23, 2015, based on lack of credible evidence.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Rolling Stone's investigation: 'A failure that was avoidable' |url=https://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php |access-date=2023-01-30 |website=Columbia Journalism Review |language=en |archive-date=November 8, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161108013227/https://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php |url-status=live }}</ref> The ] audited the editorial processes that culminated in the article being published. On April 5, 2015, ''Rolling Stone'' retracted the article and published the independent report on the publication's history.<ref name=retraction /> | |||
On January 12, 2015, Charlottesville Police Department officials told the University that "their investigation has not revealed any substantive basis to confirm that the allegations raised in the Rolling Stone article occurred at Phi Kappa Psi...so there's no reason to keep them suspended".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.virginia.edu/content/phi-kappa-psi-reinstated-university-virginia|title=Phi Kappa Psi Reinstated at the University of Virginia|work=UVA Today|accessdate=8 February 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.businessinsider.com/police-investigation-clears-uva-phi-psi-fraternity-2015-1 |title=Police Investigation Clears UVA Phi Psi Fraternity |publisher=Businessinsider.com |date=2015-01-12 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author= |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/phi-kappa-psi-fraternity-reinstated-at-university-of-virginia/2015/01/12/1b6ddd50-9a69-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html |title=Police clear U-Va. fraternity, say rape did not happen there |publisher=Washingtonpost.com |date= |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> On January 30, 2015, UVA President ] acknowledged that the ''Rolling Stone'' story was discredited.<ref>{{cite news |last=Schow |first=Ashe |date=January 30, 2015 |title=U.Va. president admits rape story was false; keeps restrictions on fraternities |url=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/u.va.-president-admits-rape-story-was-false-keeps-restrictions-on-frats/article/2559584 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=January 31, 2015 }}</ref> Charlottesville Police officially suspended their four-month investigation on March 23, 2015, stating, "there is no substantive basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/us/police-to-release-results-of-uva-rape-inquiry.html|title=Police Find No Evidence of Rape at UVA Fraternity|last1=Robinson|first1=Owen|last2=Stolberg|first2=Sheryl|accessdate=23 March 2015|newspaper=]|date=23 March 2015}}</ref> In light of the findings, ] of '']'' pronounced the story "a complete crock".<ref name="Erik Wemple">{{cite news |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/23/charlottesville-police-make-clear-that-rolling-stone-story-is-a-complete-crock/ |title=Charlottesville police make clear that Rolling Stone story is a complete crock |author=Erik Wemple |date=March 23, 2015 |work= |publisher='']'' |accessdate=March 24, 2015 }}</ref> In the '']'', Bill Grueskin called the story "a mess — thinly sourced, full of erroneous assumptions, and plagued by gaping holes in the reporting".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cjr.org/analysis/rolling_stone_journalism.php |title=More is not always better - Columbia Journalism Review |publisher=Cjr.org |date= |accessdate=2016-01-06}}</ref> | |||
UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and several fraternity members later ] against Erdely and ''Rolling Stone''. Eramo was awarded $3 million by a jury who concluded that ''Rolling Stone'' ] her with ],<ref>{{Cite web |title=UVA dean awarded $3M in Rolling Stone magazine case |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jury-awards-3-million-to-uva-administrator-in-rolling-stone-magazine-trial-nicole-eramo/ |access-date=2022-09-08 |website=www.cbsnews.com |date=November 7, 2016 |language=en-US |archive-date=September 8, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220908132156/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jury-awards-3-million-to-uva-administrator-in-rolling-stone-magazine-trial-nicole-eramo/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and ''Rolling Stone'' settled the lawsuit with the fraternity for $1.65 million.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gardner |first=Eriq |date=2017-12-21 |title=Rolling Stone Settles Last Remaining Lawsuit Over UVA Rape Story |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/rolling-stone-settles-last-remaining-lawsuit-uva-rape-story-1069880/ |access-date=2022-09-08 |website=The Hollywood Reporter |language=en-US |archive-date=September 6, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210906195637/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/rolling-stone-settles-last-remaining-lawsuit-uva-rape-story-1069880/ |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
On April 5, 2015, ''Rolling Stone'' retracted the article and published an independent report on the incident by the Columbia University School of Journalism.<ref name = "Somaiya April">{{cite news|last1=Somaiya|first1=Ravi|title=Rolling Stone Retracts Article on Rape at University of Virginia|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/rolling-stone-retracts-article-on-rape-at-university-of-virginia.html?_r=0|website=www.nytimes.com|publisher=New York Times|accessdate=April 5, 2015|date=April 5, 2015}}</ref><ref name="columbia-report">{{cite web|last=Coronel |first=Sheila |url=http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405 |title=Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia School of Journalism Report |publisher=Rollingstone.com |date= |accessdate=2015-04-06}}</ref> The report determined that the magazine failed basic fact checking by relying excessively on the accuser's account, did not verify it through other means, and exhibited ].<ref name = "Somaiya April"/><ref name="columbia-report"/> It also found a failure in journalistic standards by not reaching out to the people on whom derogatory information was to be published, or when it did so, by not providing enough context for them to offer a meaningful response.<ref name="columbia-report"/> The report also states that the article misled readers with quotes where attribution was unclear, and used ] inappropriately as a way to address these shortcomings.<ref name="columbia-report"/> The report also points out that after the publication, the staff had initially been unwilling to recognize these deficiencies and had denied that there was a need for policy changes.<ref name="columbia-report"/> UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and several members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity have since each filed lawsuits against Erdely and ''Rolling Stone''. | |||
==Story== | ==Story== | ||
] | ] | ||
On November 19, 2014, '']'' published the now retracted article by ] titled "A Rape on Campus" about an alleged gang rape of a ] (UVA) student, Jackie Coakley.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1aM7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT235|title=The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities|first1=K. C.|last1=Johnson|author-link=KC Johnson|first2=Stuart Jr.|last2=Taylor|date=May 22, 2018|publisher=Encounter Books|via=Google Books|access-date=December 9, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190223003203/https://books.google.com/books?id=1aM7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT235|archive-date=February 23, 2019|url-status=live|df=mdy-all|isbn=9781594039881}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Shatz|first1=Naomi|title=The Misguided Idea Of The War Over Campus Sexual Assault|magazine=]|date=September 7, 2017|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-misguided-idea-of-the-war-over-campus-sexual-assault_us_59827310e4b094ff5a3f0bbc|access-date=March 23, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170925140632/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-misguided-idea-of-the-war-over-campus-sexual-assault_us_59827310e4b094ff5a3f0bbc|archive-date=September 25, 2017|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}}</ref> The UVA student, identified only as "Jackie" by the magazine, had been taken to a party by a fellow student, hosted at UVA's ] ] during 2012. At the chapter house party, Jackie alleged in the article, her date led her to a bedroom where she was ]d by several fraternity members as part of their ].<ref name=original>{{cite news|last1=Erdely |first1=Sabrina |title=A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA |magazine=Rolling Stone |date=November 19, 2014 |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119 |access-date=November 19, 2014 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20141119163531/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119 |archive-date=November 19, 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref> For anonymity, Erdely only used Jackie's first name and gave pseudonyms to other students discussed in the story.<ref name=hartmann> | |||
In 2014, Erdely has said, she set out to find an account of a sexual assault at an elite school as the subject of an article.<ref>{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Jonah |date=1 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' rape story sends shock waves – and stretches credulity |url=http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-uva-rape-rolling-stone-20141202-column.html |newspaper=]|location=] |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> Her resulting story for ''Rolling Stone'', titled "A Rape on Campus", published in the December 4, 2014 issue of that magazine, alleged that seven members of ] at the University of Virginia gang-raped a student at that fraternity house on September 28, 2012.<ref name = "Original Article">{{cite news|last1=Erdely|first1=Sabrina|title=A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA|url=http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119|accessdate=2014-11-20|work=RollingStone.com|date=November 19, 2014|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20141219172210/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119|archivedate=December 19, 2014}}</ref> The article described the school administration's response to the incident as insufficient, providing detail of the alleged crime so graphic that ] later criticized it as hard to believe due to the "diabolical" description<ref name="wapo ROLLING STONE'S DISASTROUS"/> Erdely penned:<ref group = "Note">This content is a direct quote from the ''Rolling Stone'' article, which can be referenced in its entirety in ] below.</ref> | |||
{{citation|last=Hartmann|first=M.|title=Everything We Know About the UVA Rape Case |url=https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/everything-we-know-uva-rape-case.html|magazine=New York Magazine|date=July 30, 2015|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160402075435/http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/everything-we-know-uva-rape-case.html|archive-date=April 2, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
According to '']'' columnist ]'s summary of the story, on September 28, 2012, Jackie, a freshman at UVA, had a date with a Phi Kappa Psi member "Drew", a junior at UVA. After the date, they allegedly went to a party at his fraternity house, where he brought her to a dark bedroom upstairs and "a heavy person jumps on top of her. A hand covers her mouth. Someone gets between her legs. Someone else kneels on her hair. And for the next three hours she's brutally raped and beaten, with Drew and another upperclassman supposedly shouting out instructions to the pledges, referring to Jackie as 'it'." According to Goldberg, "It is an account of a sober, well-planned gang rape by seven fraternity pledges at the direction of two members."<ref name=goldberg/> | |||
{{cquote|When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. "Grab its motherfucking leg", she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped. She remembers every moment of the next three hours of agony, during which, she says, seven men took turns raping her, while two more – her date, Drew, and another man – gave instruction and encouragement. As the last man sank onto her, Jackie was startled to recognize him: He attended her tiny anthropology discussion group. He looked like he was going to cry or puke as he told the crowd he couldn't get it up. "Pussy!" the other men jeered. "What, she's not hot enough for you?" Then they egged him on: "Don't you want to be a brother?" "We all had to do it, so you do, too."}} | |||
After leaving the party around 3 a.m., allegedly with bruises and blood stained clothes, Jackie called her three best friends, "Andy", "Randall" and "Cindy", for support.<ref name=shapirodoubt>{{citation|last=Shapiro|first=T. Rees|title=Key elements of Rolling Stone's U-Va gang rape allegations in doubt|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=December 5, 2014|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160404164217/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html|archive-date=April 4, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> In ''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s version, Jackie's friends discouraged her from going to the hospital to protect her reputation and because Andy and Randall planned to rush fraternities and worried their association with Jackie might hurt their chances if she reported it.<ref name=goldberg/> | |||
Erdely wrote that Randall was no longer friends with Jackie and, "citing his loyalty to his own frat, declined to be interviewed".<ref name=hartmann/> | |||
Jackie's academic performance reportedly declined, and she became socially withdrawn due to emotional distress. In May 2013, Jackie reported the sexual assault to dean and head of UVA's Sexual Misconduct Board, Nicole Eramo, who, according to a recap in ], offered three options: "file a criminal complaint with the police, file a complaint with the school, or face her attackers with Eramo present to tell them how she feels".<ref name=hartmann/> The university would not take further action unless Jackie disclosed the names of the individuals or the fraternity involved. In September 2013, Eramo connected Jackie with Emily Renda, a UVA staff member, recent graduate and leader in the college's sexual assault support group One Less.<ref name=coronel>{{citation|last=Coronel|title=Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405?page=13|magazine=Rolling Stone|date=April 5, 2015|access-date=April 2, 2016|display-authors=etal|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160413170339/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405?page=13|archive-date=April 13, 2016|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}} | |||
As reported by Erdely, the story was based on her interviews with the alleged victim, whom she identified only by her first name, Jackie<ref>{{cite news |last=Pearce |first=Matt |url=http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-virgina-rape-20150406-story.html |title=Rolling Stone's failure called 'systemic'; fraternity vows legal action |publisher='']'' |date=April 6, 2015|accessdate=April 8, 2015}}</ref> (interviews with several of Jackie's friends, to whom she assigned the pseudonyms "Andy", "Cindy" and "Randall", did not occur until after the article was published in ''Rolling Stone'' and were not conducted by ''Rolling Stone''). The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' report stated that "At Rolling Stone, every story is assigned to a fact-checker."<ref name="columbia-report"/> Assistant editor Elisabeth Garber-Paul provided fact-checking.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/rolling-stone-uva-emails_n_6358034.html|title=Rolling Stone Fact-Checker Didn't Ask About Alleged Rape Victim in Emails With UVA Officials|work=The Huffington Post|accessdate=23 December 2014|date=19 December 2014}}</ref><ref name="Wemple EMAILS">{{cite news|last1=Wemple|first1=Erik|title=U-Va.-Rolling Stone e-mails highlight university's attempt to correct magazine|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/19/u-va-rolling-stone-e-mails-highlight-universitys-attempt-to-correct-magazine/|website=washingtonpost.com|publisher=Washington Post|accessdate=April 9, 2015|date=December 19, 2014}}</ref> The fact-checker concluded that Ryan – "Randall" under pseudonym – had not been interviewed and that in "one of the story's many unfathomable deceits",<ref name="washingtonpost1"/> as the '']'' put it, the article pretended that he had been interviewed. The Columbia report cited the fact-checker: "I pushed. ... They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable" with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan.<ref name="columbia-report"/> | |||
</ref> Two years later, in search of a college student to feature in a story about sexual assaults that occur at a prestigious university, Erdely interviewed Renda, who suggested Jackie for the story and made the introduction.<ref name=goldberg> | |||
{{citation |last=Goldberg |first=Jonah |date=December 1, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' rape story sends shock waves – and stretches credulity |url=https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-uva-rape-rolling-stone-20141202-column.html |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |location=Los Angeles, CA |access-date=April 2, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160125235517/http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-uva-rape-rolling-stone-20141202-column.html |archive-date=January 25, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref name=farhi> | |||
{{citation|last=Farhi|first=P.|title=Sabrina Rubin Erdely, woman behind Rolling Stone's explosive U-Va alleged rape story|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/sabrina-rubin-erdely-woman-behind-rolling-stones-explosive-u-va-alleged-rape-story/2014/11/28/89f322c2-7731-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=November 28, 2014|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160311122237/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/sabrina-rubin-erdely-woman-behind-rolling-stones-explosive-u-va-alleged-rape-story/2014/11/28/89f322c2-7731-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html|archive-date=March 11, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
==Initial response from UVA community== | |||
==Reaction== | |||
] | |||
] | |||
<!-- Deleted image removed: ] --> | |||
In the aftermath of the report, the University suspended all fraternities on campus, and English professor Allison Booth declared "the whole culture is sick."<ref name="nyt" /><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-03/uva-faculty-propose-longer-frat-ban-as-alleged-rape-investigated.html |title=UVA Faculty Propose Extending Frat Ban Through School Year |last1=McDonald |first1=Michael |last2= |first2= |date=3 December 2014 |website=bloomberg.com |publisher= |accessdate=5 December 2014}}</ref> In a nationally published op-ed Colin Downes, a law student at the University of Virginia, called for fraternities to be treated as "criminal street gangs" and subject to ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Downes |first=Colin |date=December 5, 2014 |title=Greek Gangs: States should treat rogue fraternities as criminal organizations and seize their assets|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/12/fraternity_sexual_assault_and_criminal_activities_states_should_use_gang.html |work=] |location= |accessdate=April 9, 2015 }}</ref> Articles in '']'', the university student newspaper, demonstrated frustrations with Erdely's representation of the student body, with columnist Dani Bernstein writing that the problem of sexual assault was not due to "a lack of effort from the student body, but rather a lack of response from the administration."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/bernstein-starting-at-the-top|title=The Cavalier Daily :: BERNSTEIN: Starting at the top|work=cavalierdaily.com|accessdate=8 February 2015}}</ref> On November 20, 2014, the Phi Kappa Psi house was vandalized as several people hurled bottles and cinder blocks through most of the first-floor windows and spray-painted insulting messages on the building.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nbc29.com/story/27439468/uva-fraternity-house-vandalized |title=UVA Fraternity House Vandalized |last1= |first1= |last2= |first2= |date=20 November 2014 |website=WVIR-TV |publisher= |accessdate=5 December 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/21/rolling-stone-university-of-virginia-rape-story-sp/?page=all#pagebreak |title=Rolling Stone University of Virginia rape story sparked unpunished rampage |publisher=Washingtontimes.com |date=2014-12-21 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> As a result of the attacks, as well as death threats made against members, residents of the fraternity abandoned their house. Meanwhile, anonymous persons angered by the alleged rape and the university's purported indifference threatened to kill Associate Dean Nicole Eramo.<ref name="poli">{{cite news |last=Horowitz |first=Julia |date=6 December 2014 |title=Why We Believed Jackie's Rape Story |url=http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/why-we-believed-jackies-story-113365.html#.VIQn2Mk_zRs |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=7 December 2014 }}</ref> On November 22, a march organized by Victoria Olwell and other University of Virginia faculty included a protest outside the Phi Kappa Psi house.<ref>{{cite news |last=Seal |first=Dean |date=23 November 2014 |title= Hundreds protest at UVA; student says memorial to victims vandalized |url=http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/hundreds-protest-at-uva-student-says-memorial-to-victims-vandalized/article_81bc9d24-7379-11e4-a91e-f70a4bc5767c.html |newspaper=The Daily Progress |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> Four protesters were arrested outside the house on the same day.<ref>{{cite news |last=Dickerson |first=Jenna |date=22 November 2014 |title=Protest outside Phi Kappa Psi house leads to four arrests |url=http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/protest-outside-phi-kappa-psi-house-leads-to-four-arrests |newspaper=Cavalier Daily |location=Charlottesville, VA |accessdate=6 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
The University of Virginia Interfraternity Council, in a statement released on its website, responded to the accusations by noting, in part, that "an IFC officer was interviewed by ''Rolling Stone'' regarding the culture of sexual violence at the University. Although the discussion was lengthy, the reporter elected not to include any of the information from the interview in her article."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://virginiaifc.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ifc-statement-on-sexual-misconduct-at-uva1.pdf |title=The Governing Board of the Inter-Fraternity Council at UVA |last1= |first1= |last2= |first2= |date= |website= |publisher=UVa Interfraternity Council |accessdate=5 December 2014}}</ref> | |||
Within hours of the article's publication, UVA president Teresa Sullivan had called the governor's chief of staff and the Charlottesville police chief to start preparing a response. She said her initial reaction was surprise and "a certain air of disbelief" because during her 44-minute interview for the story, Erdely never brought up Jackie or asked about any of the allegations made in the article. Sullivan said: "I was plainly not prepared for what the story looked like. Nor do I think her characterization of my interview was fair."<ref>{{citation|last=Quizon|first=D.|title=UVA's Sullivan reflects on tenure, Rolling Stone controversy, student privacy laws|url=http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/uva-s-sullivan-reflects-on-tenure-rolling-stone-controversy-student/article_02a641f8-a9bf-11e4-b304-cbbab2d2f2f5.html|newspaper=The Daily Progress|date=January 31, 2015|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-date=June 10, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170610093151/http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/uva-s-sullivan-reflects-on-tenure-rolling-stone-controversy-student/article_02a641f8-a9bf-11e4-b304-cbbab2d2f2f5.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref> | |||
{{citation|last=Farhi|first=Paul|date=December 19, 2014|title=Rolling Stone never asked U-Va. about specific gang rape allegations, according to newly released e-mails and audio recording|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rolling-stone-never-asked-u-va-about-gang-rape-allegations-according-to-newly-released-e-mail-exchanges/2014/12/19/1b9cc248-87cf-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=February 1, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141221215918/http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rolling-stone-never-asked-u-va-about-gang-rape-allegations-according-to-newly-released-e-mail-exchanges/2014/12/19/1b9cc248-87cf-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html|archive-date=December 21, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
The next day, Phi Kappa Psi voluntarily suspended chapter activities at UVA for the duration of the investigation.<ref name=phikappapsi> | |||
{{citation|title= LETTER: Statement from Phi Kappa Psi|url= http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/letter-statement-from-phi-kappa-psi|date= November 20, 2014|newspaper= The Cavalier Daily|access-date= April 2, 2016|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160327191612/http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/letter-statement-from-phi-kappa-psi|archive-date= March 27, 2016|url-status= live|df= mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref name=cavaliervandalism> | |||
{{citation|last=Elliott|first=A.|title=Students claiming responsibility for Phi Kappa Psi vandalism submit anonymous letter|url=http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/letter-claiming-responsibility-for-phi-kappa-psi-vandalism-lists-anonymous-demands|newspaper=The Cavalier Daily|date=November 20, 2014|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160329025259/http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/letter-claiming-responsibility-for-phi-kappa-psi-vandalism-lists-anonymous-demands|archive-date=March 29, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> A few days later, President Sullivan suspended all Greek organizations until January 9, 2015.<ref name=debonis> | |||
{{citation|last1=DeBonis|first1=Mike|last2=Shapiro|first2=T. Rees|title=U-Va president suspends fraternities until Jan. 9 in wake of rape allegations|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-president-suspends-fraternities-until-jan-9-in-wake-of-rape-allegations/2014/11/22/023d3688-7272-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=November 22, 2014|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424043043/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-president-suspends-fraternities-until-jan-9-in-wake-of-rape-allegations/2014/11/22/023d3688-7272-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html|archive-date=April 24, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
UVA's student newspaper '']'' described mixed reactions from the student body, stating: "For some, the piece is an unfounded attack on our school; for others, it is a recognition of a harsh reality; and for what I suspect is a large majority of us, it falls somewhere in between." | |||
Also within the first day following publication, Phi Kappa Psi's fraternity house at UVA was vandalized with spray-painted graffiti that read "suspend us", "UVA Center for Rape Studies", and "Stop raping people". In addition, several windows were broken with bottles and cinder blocks, and police officials said that the group received "disparaging messages" on social media.<ref> | |||
{{citation|url=http://www.nbc29.com/story/27439468/uva-fraternity-house-vandalized|title=UVA Fraternity House Vandalized|date=November 20, 2014|newspaper=WVIR-TV|access-date=April 1, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160322070307/http://www.nbc29.com/story/27439468/uva-fraternity-house-vandalized|archive-date=March 22, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> A few hours after the incident, several news groups received an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the vandalism and demanding that the university implement harsher consequences for sexual assault (mandatory expulsion), conduct a review of all fraternities on campus, the resignation of Nicole Eramo, and the implementation of harm reduction policies at fraternity parties.<ref name=cavaliervandalism/> | |||
A few days later, hundreds of people participated in a protest and march organized by UVA faculty as "part of a series of responses to the recently published ''Rolling Stone'' article".<ref name=dickerson>{{citation|last=Dickerson|first=Jenna|date=November 22, 2014|title=Protest outside Phi Kappa Psi house leads to four arrests|url=http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/protest-outside-phi-kappa-psi-house-leads-to-four-arrests|newspaper=Cavalier Daily|location=Charlottesville, VA|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303222226/http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2014/11/protest-outside-phi-kappa-psi-house-leads-to-four-arrests|archive-date=March 3, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> A student quoted in '']'' said that men at a nearby bar were "quick to yell 'insults and slurs' at the protesters as they walked by".<ref name=dailyp>{{citation|last=Seal|first=Dean|date=November 23, 2014|title=Hundreds protest at UVA; student says memorial to victims vandalized|url=http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/hundreds-protest-at-uva-student-says-memorial-to-victims-vandalized/article_81bc9d24-7379-11e4-a91e-f70a4bc5767c.html|newspaper=The Daily Progress|access-date=April 2, 2016|archive-date=August 12, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160812152327/http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/hundreds-protest-at-uva-student-says-memorial-to-victims-vandalized/article_81bc9d24-7379-11e4-a91e-f70a4bc5767c.html|url-status=live}}</ref> A local business owner expressed support of non-violent demonstrations and told ''The Cavalier Daily'' that "The only way thing change is if you talk about what's happening."<ref name=dickerson/> | |||
The march ended outside of the Phi Kappa Psi house where protesters challenged a perceived "culture of sexual assault at the University".<ref name=dailyp/> Community members offered suggestions for immediate steps administration could take to implement preventive measures and address safety concerns regarding sexual assault. One student protester told ''The Cavalier Daily'': "I really hope the University takes this article and the protest movement as a sign that they need to be more transparent about the way they deal with sexual assault."<ref name=dickerson/> Four participants who were sitting on the steps to the Phi Kappa Psi house were arrested on trespassing charges for refusing to move when police officers asked them to leave.<ref name=dailyp/> | |||
The ] (IFC) at UVA released a statement on its website in response to the article that said: "an IFC officer was interviewed by ''Rolling Stone'' regarding the culture of sexual violence at the University. Although the discussion was lengthy, the reporter elected not to include any of the information from the interview in her article."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://virginiaifc.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ifc-statement-on-sexual-misconduct-at-uva1.pdf |title=The Governing Board of the Inter-Fraternity Council at UVA |publisher=UVa Interfraternity Council |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141222205932/https://virginiaifc.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ifc-statement-on-sexual-misconduct-at-uva1.pdf |archive-date=December 22, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
==Story's veracity== | ==Story's veracity== | ||
===Questions emerge=== | ===Questions emerge=== | ||
], editor-in-chief of '']'' magazine, was among the first mainstream journalists to question the ''Rolling Stone'' article, in a blog entry written on November 24, 2014. Recalling his experience with ] before he was exposed for ], Bradley argued the article relied heavily on ]. He also faulted Erdely for not interviewing Jackie's alleged assailants or the three friends who tried to dissuade her from going to the police.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Bradley|first1=Richard|title=Is the Rolling Stone Story True?|url=http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/|website=Shots in the Dark|publisher=richardbradley.net|access-date=April 9, 2015|date=November 24, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150409080711/http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/|archive-date=April 9, 2015|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Had It Coming: What's Fair in the Age of #MeToo|last=Doolittle|first=Robyn|publisher=Penguin Random House|year=2019|isbn=978-0-7352-3659-2|location=Toronto, Ontario|pages=135|oclc=1097247909}}</ref> After an interview Erdely gave to ''],'' in which she was questioned about the way she investigated the piece, some commentators escalated their questioning of the veracity of the article. It was later revealed Erdely had not interviewed any of the men accused of the rape.<ref> | |||
], editor-in-chief of '']'' magazine, was the first mainstream journalist<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/16/questions-raised-as-rolling-stone-reporter-reportedly-re-reports-debunked-story/ |title=Rolling Stone Reporter Reportedly 'Re-Reports' Story |publisher=Dailycaller.com |date=2014-12-16 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> to question the ''Rolling Stone'' article, in a blog entry written on November 24, 2014.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Bradley|first1=Richard|title=Is the Rolling Stone Story True?|url=http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/|website="Shots in the Dark"|publisher=richardbradley.net|accessdate=April 9, 2015|date=November 24, 2014}}</ref> The entry began drawing national media attention in the days after ] pundit ] made an entry on his own blog at the ''] Review'' on November 29 in which he discussed and linked to Bradley's piece.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://takimag.com/article/a_rape_hoax_for_book_lovers_steve_sailer/print#axzz3L3KAsBFR |title=A Rape Hoax for Book Lovers |first=Steve |last=Sailer |publisher='']'' |date=December 13, 2014 |accessdate=January 6, 2015}}</ref> After an interview Erdely gave to '']'', in which she appeared to offer evasive responses about the way in which she investigated the piece, some commentators escalated their questioning of the veracity of the story. It was later revealed Erdely had not interviewed any of the men accused of the rape.<ref name = "wapo KEY ELEMENTS">{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=Rees |date=5 December 2014 |title=Key elements of Rolling Stone's U-Va. gang rape allegations in doubt |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Moynihan |first=Michael |date=4 December 2014 |title=Why It Was Right to Question ''Rolling Stone''s UVA Rape Story|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/04/we-must-scrutinize-the-uva-rape-victim.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref><ref name="missing">{{cite news |last=Roslin |first=Hannah |date= |title=The Missing Men |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/sabrina_rubin_erdely_uva_why_didn_t_a_rolling_stone_writer_talk_to_the_alleged.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> Erdely defended her decision not to interview the accused by explaining that the ] on the fraternity's website "was pretty outdated".<ref>{{cite news |last= |first= |date=3 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Never Interviewed UVA Frat Bros Accused of Gang Rape |url=http://gawker.com/rolling-stone-never-interviewed-uva-frat-bros-accused-o-1666103599 |newspaper=Gawker |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> ''Washington Post'' media critic Erik Wemple rejected Erdely's statement on why she had not interviewed the accused, explaining that the severity of the accusations she was reporting required "every possible step to reach out and interview them, including e-mails, phone calls, certified letters, FedEx letters, UPS letters and, if all of that fails, a knock on the door. No effort short of all that qualifies as journalism."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Wemple|first1=Erik|date=2 December 2014|title=Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/02/rolling-stone-whiffs-in-reporting-on-alleged-rape/|website=WashingtonPost.com|publisher=Washington Post|accessdate=March 26, 2015}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Moynihan |first=Michael |date=December 4, 2014 |title=Why It Was Right to Question ''Rolling Stone''s UVA Rape Story |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/04/we-must-scrutinize-the-uva-rape-victim.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205073205/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/04/we-must-scrutinize-the-uva-rape-victim.html |archive-date=December 5, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref name="missing"> | |||
{{cite news |last=Roslin |first=Hannah |title=The Missing Men |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/sabrina_rubin_erdely_uva_why_didn_t_a_rolling_stone_writer_talk_to_the_alleged.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205004836/http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/sabrina_rubin_erdely_uva_why_didn_t_a_rolling_stone_writer_talk_to_the_alleged.html |archive-date=December 5, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Erdely defended her decision not to interview the accused by saying that the ] on the fraternity's website "was pretty outdated".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Farhi |first1=Paul |title=Author of Rolling Stone article on alleged U-Va. rape didn't contact accused assailants for her report |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/author-of-rolling-stone-story-on-alleged-u-va-rape-didnt-talk-to-accused-perpetrators/2014/12/01/e4c19408-7999-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |newspaper=Washington Post |access-date=August 16, 2021 |date=December 1, 2014 |archive-date=September 19, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210919043539/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/author-of-rolling-stone-story-on-alleged-u-va-rape-didnt-talk-to-accused-perpetrators/2014/12/01/e4c19408-7999-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |url-status=live }}</ref> ''The Washington Post'' media critic ] rejected Erdely's statement, saying that the severity of the accusations she was reporting required "every possible step to reach out and interview them, including e-mails, phone calls, certified letters, ] letters, ] letters and, if all of that fails, a knock on the door. No effort short of all that qualifies as journalism."<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Wemple|first1=Erik|date=December 2, 2014|title=Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/02/rolling-stone-whiffs-in-reporting-on-alleged-rape/|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=March 26, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150324051412/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/02/rolling-stone-whiffs-in-reporting-on-alleged-rape/|archive-date=March 24, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
<!-- Deleted image removed: ] --> | <!-- Deleted image removed: ] --> | ||
Fraternity officials, who rejected the published allegations, noted a number of discrepancies in the story |
Fraternity officials, who rejected the published allegations, noted a number of discrepancies in the story: there was no party held on the night that Jackie was allegedly raped, no fraternity member matched the description in the story of the "ringleader" of the rape, and details about the layout of the fraternity house provided by the accuser were wrong. Fraternity officials also noted that, prior to the ''Rolling Stone'' story, there had never been a criminal investigation or allegation of sexual assault against an undergraduate member of the chapter.<ref> | ||
{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=Rees |date=November 20, 2014 |title=McAuliffe urges investigation at U-Va. after ''Rolling Stone'' depiction of sexual assault |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/mcauliffe-urges-investigation-at-u-va-after-rolling-stone-depiction-of-sexual-assault/2014/11/20/21f45eac-70ec-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141214033120/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/mcauliffe-urges-investigation-at-u-va-after-rolling-stone-depiction-of-sexual-assault/2014/11/20/21f45eac-70ec-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html |archive-date=December 14, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Fraternity officials further disputed a claim in Erdely's piece that said the rape had occurred as part of a pledging ritual by observing that pledging on the UVA campus occurs in spring, not autumn as the story stated. They said that no pledges were resident in the fraternity at the time Erdely claimed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.phikappapsi.com/news/updateuvapressrelease |title=Official Statement from the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at the University of Virginia |website=phikappapsi.com |publisher=Phi Kappa Psi |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141230112018/http://www.phikappapsi.com/news/updateuvapressrelease |archive-date=December 30, 2014 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref> | |||
'']'' reporters later interviewed the accuser at the center of Erdely's story and two of the friends that ''Rolling Stone'' said she had met on the night of the incident. The accuser told the ''Post'' that she had felt "manipulated" by Erdely, and claimed she asked Erdely to |
'']'' reporters later interviewed the accuser at the center of Erdely's story and two of the friends that ''Rolling Stone'' said she had met on the night of the incident. The accuser told the ''Post'' that she had felt "manipulated" by Erdely, and claimed she asked Erdely not to quote her in the article, a request the journalist denied.<ref name=shapirodoubt/> | ||
Jackie requested that her assailants not be contacted, and ''Rolling Stone'' agreed.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/us/magazines-account-of-gang-rape-on-virginia-campus-comes-under-scrutiny.html|title=Magazine's Account of Gang Rape on Virginia Campus Comes Under Scrutiny|newspaper=]|access-date=March 14, 2015|first=Ravi|last=Somaiya|date=December 2, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150322165637/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/us/magazines-account-of-gang-rape-on-virginia-campus-comes-under-scrutiny.html|archive-date=March 22, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
Bruce Shapiro of Columbia University said that an engaged and empathetic reporter will be concerned about inflicting new trauma on the victim: "I do think that when the emotional valence of a story is this high, you really have to verify it." He also explained that experienced reporters often work only with women who feel strong enough to deal with the due diligence required to bring the article to publication.<ref> | |||
The two friends confirmed to the ''Post'' that they remembered meeting Jackie on the night of the incident, that she was distraught but not visibly injured or bloodied, and that details she provided then were different from those in the ''Rolling Stone'' article. One friend, Ryan Duffin (called "Randall" in the ''Rolling Stone'' article), told the ''Washington Post'' that he had never spoken to any reporter from ''Rolling Stone'', despite the fact that Erdely had claimed him as a source to corroborate the accuser's story.<ref name="wapo KEY ELEMENTS"/><ref>{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=T. Rees |date=5 December 2014 |title=Key elements of Rolling Stone's U-Va. gang rape allegations in doubt |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref><ref name="wapo UPDATED APOLOGY">{{cite news |last=Wemple |first=Erik |date=8 December 2014 |title=Updated apology digs bigger hole for Rolling Stone |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/07/updated-apology-digs-bigger-hole-for-rolling-stone/ |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=8 December 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=T. Rees |date=6 December 2014 |title=U-Va. remains resolved to address sexual violence as ''Rolling Stone'' account unravels |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-remains-resolved-to-address-sexual-violence-as-rolling-stone-account-unravels/2014/12/06/66c0c780-7d64-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=7 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/media/rolling-stone-tries-to-regroup-after-campus-rape-article-is-disputed.html|title=Rolling Stone Tries to Regroup After Campus Rape Article is Disputed|newspaper=]|access-date=March 14, 2015|first=Ravi|last=Somaiya|date=December 7, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150311010941/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/media/rolling-stone-tries-to-regroup-after-campus-rape-article-is-disputed.html|archive-date=March 11, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
The two friends confirmed to the ''Post'' that they remembered meeting Jackie on the night of the incident, that she was distraught but not visibly injured or bloodied, and that details she provided then were different from those in the ''Rolling Stone'' article. One friend, Ryan Duffin (called "Randall" in the ''Rolling Stone'' article), told ''The Washington Post'' that he had never spoken to any reporter from ''Rolling Stone,'' although Erdely had claimed him as a source to corroborate the accuser's story.<ref name=shapirodoubt/><ref name="wapo UPDATED APOLOGY">{{cite news |last=Wemple |first=Erik |date=December 8, 2014 |title=Updated apology digs bigger hole for Rolling Stone |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/07/updated-apology-digs-bigger-hole-for-rolling-stone/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141208060221/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/07/updated-apology-digs-bigger-hole-for-rolling-stone/ |archive-date=December 8, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
Another questionable passage about "Cindy", whom Erdely characterizes (without attribution) as a promiscuous "self-declared hookup queen", quotes her as saying that the described assault could have been "fun", and shows her as having instigated Jackie's abandonment by her friends.<ref name = "Cindy">{{cite web|last1=Davidson|first1=Amy|title=What Rolling Stone Did to 'Cindy'|url=http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/rolling-stone-cindy-uva-rape-story|publisher=The New Yorker|accessdate=12 December 2014|date=11 December 2014}}</ref> In the aftermath, "Cindy" told ABC News a different story, and states no effort was made by ''Rolling Stone'' to interview her, despite her being a central witness.<ref name="ABC"/> Sandra Menendez, another student who claimed to have been interviewed by Erdely but who was not directly quoted in the piece, told ] that she and others became uncomfortable after speaking with the reporter, concluding she had "an agenda".<ref>{{cite news |last=Stelter |first=Brian |date=7 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' apologizes for rape article: What now? |url=http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/07/media/rolling-stone-crisis/ |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=7 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=T. Rees |date=December 6, 2014 |title=U-Va. remains resolved to address sexual violence as ''Rolling Stone'' account unravels |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-remains-resolved-to-address-sexual-violence-as-rolling-stone-account-unravels/2014/12/06/66c0c780-7d64-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141207082638/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-remains-resolved-to-address-sexual-violence-as-rolling-stone-account-unravels/2014/12/06/66c0c780-7d64-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html |archive-date=December 7, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Sandra Menendez, a student who claimed to have been interviewed by Erdely but who was not directly quoted in the article, told ] that she and others became uncomfortable after speaking with Erdely, concluding she had "an agenda".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Stelter |first=Brian |date=December 7, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' apologizes for rape article: What now? |url=https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/07/media/rolling-stone-crisis/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141209132729/https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/07/media/rolling-stone-crisis/ |archive-date=December 9, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
===Existence of "Drew"=== | ===Existence of "Drew"=== | ||
The article uses the pseudonym "Drew" to refer to a third-year student at the University of Virginia who takes Jackie to the fraternity party where the alleged rape takes place. "Drew" gives "instruction and encouragement" to the seven rapists. Jackie's friends in the story have provided evidence since then that the man ''Rolling Stone'' calls "Drew" was electronically introduced to them as "Haven Monahan."<ref> | |||
{{cite web|url=http://www.businessinsider.com/theres-more-bizarre-evidence-that-uva-student-jackies-alleged-rapist-doesnt-exist-2014-12|title=There's More Bizarre Evidence That UVA Student Jackie's Alleged Rapist Doesn't Exist|date=December 17, 2014|work=Business Insider|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141221190659/http://www.businessinsider.com/theres-more-bizarre-evidence-that-uva-student-jackies-alleged-rapist-doesnt-exist-2014-12|archive-date=December 21, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> Jackie forwarded messages from "Monahan", and "Monahan" exchanged messages with Jackie's friends, including sending a picture of "himself" directly to Ryan Duffin.<ref> | |||
{{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/us/uva-rape/index.html|title=Friends' accounts differ from victim in UVA rape story – CNN.com|author=Sara Ganim|author2=Ray Sanchez|date=December 17, 2014|work=CNN|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141222095955/http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/us/uva-rape/index.html|archive-date=December 22, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> However, media investigations have determined that no student named "Haven Monahan" has attended the University of Virginia;<ref> | |||
{{cite web|url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/more-problems-with-the-rolling-stone-piece-199821.html|title=More problems with the Rolling Stone piece|author=Hadas Gold|work=POLITICO|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141227035416/http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/more-problems-with-the-rolling-stone-piece-199821.html|archive-date=December 27, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all|author-link=Hadas Gold}} | |||
</ref> the portrait of "Haven Monahan" is an image of a classmate of Jackie's in high school, who has never attended the University of Virginia;<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS"> | |||
{{cite news|last=Shapiro|first=T. Rees|date=December 10, 2014|title=U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html|newspaper=]|access-date=December 11, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161123201907/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html|archive-date=November 23, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> the three telephone numbers through which "Haven Monahan" contacted Jackie's friends are registered "internet telephone numbers" that "enable the user to make calls or send SMS text messages to telephones from a computer or iPad while creating the appearance that they are coming from a real phone"<ref name=":1"> | |||
{{cite web|url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/friends-uva-rape-accuser-begin-doubt-story?page=3|title=U.Va. rape accuser's friends begin to doubt story – Washington Times|work=The Washington Times|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141225001520/http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/friends-uva-rape-accuser-begin-doubt-story/?page=3|archive-date=December 25, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> and love letters written by Jackie and forwarded by "Haven Monahan" to Ryan Duffin are largely plagiarized from scripts of the TV series '']'' and '']''.<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Ganim|first1=Sara|last2=Sanchez|first2=Ray|title=Friends' accounts differ significantly from victim in UVA rape story|url=http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/us/uva-rape/index.html|access-date=18 September 2017|publisher=]|date=December 17, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141222095955/http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/us/uva-rape/index.html|archive-date=December 22, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
Per records released by Yahoo under subpoena in 2016, Haven Monahan's e-mail account was created from inside the University of Virginia "only one day before that same account sent an email to Jackie's friend Ryan Duffin" in 2012. The same account was accessed on March 18, 2016, from inside ALTG, Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone LLP, Jackie's legal firm.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Seal|first1=Dean|title='Jackie' withholding documents in Rolling Stone case, lawyers for UVa associate dean say|url=http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_ba7de94a-59ba-57ae-80bc-2379c5e4a3a1.html|access-date=June 15, 2016|work=The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress|date=May 19, 2016|quote=Yahoo showed that the email account was created in Charlottesville at an IP address "allocated to the University of Virginia" on Oct. 2, 2012, only one day before that same account sent an email to Jackie's friend Ryan Duffin. Yahoo further showed that the Monahan email had last been accessed from an IP address in Washington, D.C., that was "allocated to ALTG, Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone LLP"—the same firm representing Jackie—on March 18, days before and after Jackie's counsel stated they were not in possession of the Haven Monahan documents.|archive-date=September 12, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912051139/http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_ba7de94a-59ba-57ae-80bc-2379c5e4a3a1.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref> | |||
The article uses the pseudonym "Drew" to refer to a third-year student at the University of Virginia who takes Jackie to the fraternity party where the alleged rape takes place. "Drew" gives "instruction and encouragement" to the seven rapists. Jackie's friends in the story have provided evidence that the man ''Rolling Stone'' calls "Drew" was electronically introduced to them as "Haven Monahan".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.businessinsider.com/theres-more-bizarre-evidence-that-uva-student-jackies-alleged-rapist-doesnt-exist-2014-12|title=There's More Bizarre Evidence That UVA Student Jackie's Alleged Rapist Doesn't Exist|date=17 December 2014|work=Business Insider|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref> Jackie forwarded messages from "Monahan" and "Monahan" exchanged messages with Jackie's friends, including sending a picture of "himself" directly to Ryan Duffin.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/us/uva-rape/index.html?|title=Friends' accounts differ from victim in UVA rape story - CNN.com|author=Sara Ganim and Ray Sanchez, CNN|date=17 December 2014|work=CNN|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref> Nonetheless, media investigations have determined that no "Haven Monahan" has attended the University of Virginia;<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/more-problems-with-the-rolling-stone-piece-199821.html|title=More problems with the Rolling Stone piece|author=Hadas Gold|work=POLITICO|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref> the portrait of "Haven Monahan" is actually an image of a classmate of Jackie's in high school, who has never attended the University of Virginia;<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS">{{cite news |last=Shapiro|first=T. Rees|date=10 December 2014|title=U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=11 December 2014 }}</ref> the three telephone numbers through which "Haven Monahan" contacted Jackie's friends are registered "internet telephone numbers" that "enable the user to make calls or send SMS text messages to telephones from a computer or iPad while creating the appearance that they are coming from a real phone";<ref name=":1">{{cite web|url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/friends-uva-rape-accuser-begin-doubt-story?page=3|title=U.Va. rape accuser's friends begin to doubt story – Washington Times|work=The Washingtion Times|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref> and love letters written by Jackie and forwarded by "Haven Monahan" to Ryan Duffin are in fact largely plagiarized from scripts of the TV series '']'' and '']''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/18/did-uva-student-plagiarize-dawsons-creek-in-love-letter-to-friend/|title=Did UVA Student Plagiarize 'Dawson's Creek'? – The Daily Caller|work=The Daily Caller|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/18/what-uva-student-jackie-wrote-in-email-about-friend-she-liked/|title=What UVA Student Jackie Wrote in Email About A Friend She Liked – The Daily Caller|work=The Daily Caller|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unz.com/isteve/the-literary-sources-of-haven-monahans-glitch-in-the-matrix-email/|title=The literary sources of Haven Monahan's glitch in the matrix email|first=Steve |last=Sailer |authorlink=Steve Sailer |work=The Unz Review|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/cnn/posts/10153154468596509|title=CNN – Who is Haven Monahan? Jackie, the alleged victim of... – Facebook|publisher=|accessdate=23 December 2014}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Shapiro|first1=T. Rees|title=Lawyers in Rolling Stone lawsuit file new evidence that 'Jackie' created fake persona|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/18/lawyers-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-file-new-evidence-that-jackie-created-fake-persona/|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=May 18, 2016|access-date=July 3, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160608172100/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/18/lawyers-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-file-new-evidence-that-jackie-created-fake-persona/|archive-date=June 8, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> After initially refusing to answer whether Jackie had access to or created the Haven Monahan email account, on May 31, 2016, Jackie's law firm filed court papers acknowledging they had recently accessed "Haven Monahan's" e-mail account for the purpose "of confirming that documents Eramo requested for the lawsuit were no longer in Jackie's possession."<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Shapiro|first1=T. Rees|title=Lawyers in Rolling Stone lawsuit acknowledge 'Jackie' has ties to fake persona|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/06/01/lawyers-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-acknowledge-jackie-has-ties-to-fake-persona/|access-date=October 26, 2016|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=June 1, 2016|quote=After initially refusing to address the charge that Jackie made up the Haven Monahan email account, the lawyers for Jackie admitted in a later filing that they had recently accessed the Monahan e-mail, but solely for the purpose of confirming that documents Eramo requested for the lawsuit were no longer in Jackie's possession.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161026163405/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/06/01/lawyers-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-acknowledge-jackie-has-ties-to-fake-persona/|archive-date=October 26, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
"Haven Monahan", as reported by T. Rees Shapiro, "ultimately appeared to be a combination of names belonging to people Jackie interacted with while in high school in Northern Virginia. Both of those |
"Haven Monahan", as reported by T. Rees Shapiro, "ultimately appeared to be a combination of names belonging to people Jackie interacted with while in high school in Northern Virginia. Both of those people—who attend different colleges and bear no resemblance to the description Jackie gave of her attacker—said in interviews that they knew of Jackie but did not know her well and did not have contact with her after she left for the University of Virginia."<ref> | ||
{{cite news | url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/police-find-no-evidence-of-alleged-sexual-assault-at-u-va-fraternity/2015/03/23/374c767e-cf5e-11e4-a2a7-9517a3a70506_story.html | title = Police find no evidence of alleged sexual assault at U-Va. fraternity – ''The Washington Post'' | author = T. Rees Shapiro | date = March 23, 2015 | newspaper = ] | access-date = January 10, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151220102649/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/police-find-no-evidence-of-alleged-sexual-assault-at-u-va-fraternity/2015/03/23/374c767e-cf5e-11e4-a2a7-9517a3a70506_story.html | archive-date = December 20, 2015 | url-status = live | df = mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> According to news articles covering lawsuits resulting from the ''Rolling Stone'' article, Jackie concocted the Haven Monahan persona in a ] scheme directed at Duffin, who had not responded to romantic overtures that Jackie had directed at him.<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Shapiro|first1=T. Rees|title='Catfishing' over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/08/catfishing-over-love-interest-might-have-spurred-u-va-gang-rape-debacle/|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=January 8, 2016|access-date=February 23, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160221051116/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/08/catfishing-over-love-interest-might-have-spurred-u-va-gang-rape-debacle/|archive-date=February 21, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news|title='Catfishing' may have begun gang rape scandal at University of Virginia|url=http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2016/01/17/Catfishing-may-have-begun-gang-rape-scandal-at-U-VA-nbsp/stories/201601170020|access-date=November 5, 2016|work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|date=January 17, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161105160833/http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2016/01/17/Catfishing-may-have-begun-gang-rape-scandal-at-U-VA-nbsp/stories/201601170020|archive-date=November 5, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news|title=These Surreal "Catfishing" Texts May Have Prompted The UVA Rape Scandal|url=https://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/these-surreal-catfishing-texts-may-have-prompted-the-uva-rap|access-date=November 5, 2016|work=BuzzFeed|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161223143914/https://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/these-surreal-catfishing-texts-may-have-prompted-the-uva-rap|archive-date=December 23, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
===''Rolling Stone'' apologizes=== | ===''Rolling Stone'' apologizes=== | ||
Initially Erdely stood by her story, stating |
Initially, Erdely stood by her story, stating: "I am convinced that it could not have been done any other way, or any better."<ref name="nyt"> | ||
{{cite news |last=Somaiya |first=Ravi |date=December 2, 2014 |title=Magazine's Account of Gang Rape on Virginia Campus Comes Under Scrutiny |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/us/magazines-account-of-gang-rape-on-virginia-campus-comes-under-scrutiny.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205061558/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/us/magazines-account-of-gang-rape-on-virginia-campus-comes-under-scrutiny.html |archive-date=December 5, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> But on December 5, 2014, ''Rolling Stone'' published an online apology, stating that there appeared to be "discrepancies" in the accounts of Erdely's sources and that their trust in the accuser was misplaced.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |date=December 5, 2014 |title=A Note to Our Readers |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/a-note-to-our-readers-20141205 |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150903121715/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/a-note-to-our-readers-20141205 |archive-date=September 3, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> A subsequent tweet sent by ''Rolling Stone'' managing editor Will Dana offered further comment on Erdely's story: "e made a judgement—the kind of judgement reporters and editors make every day. And in this case, our judgement was wrong."<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Mai-Duc |first=Christine |date=December 6, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' editor: 'Failure is on us' in UVA gang rape story |url=https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-rolling-stone-uva-rape-apology-20141205-story.html#page=1 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 6, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205221939/http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-rolling-stone-uva-rape-apology-20141205-story.html#page=1 |archive-date=December 5, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> On December 6, ''Rolling Stone'' updated the apology to say the mistakes in the article were the fault of ''Rolling Stone'' and not of its source, while noting that "there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Holley |first=Peter |date=December 7, 2014 |title=After apology, ''Rolling Stone'' changes its story once more |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/07/after-apology-rolling-stone-changes-its-story-once-more/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141209014657/http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/07/after-apology-rolling-stone-changes-its-story-once-more/ |archive-date=December 9, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
'']'' stated that ''Rolling Stone'' deputy managing editor Sean Woods (the editor directly responsible for the article)<ref name=somaiya/> tendered his resignation to the magazine's owner, ]. Wenner, who was reportedly "furious" at Erdely's story, declined to accept the resignation.<ref>{{cite news |last=Kurson |first=Ken |date=December 9, 2014 |title=Rolling Stone Deputy Editor Tendered Resignation; Wenner Declines |url=http://observer.com/2014/12/source-rolling-stone-editor-tendered-resignation-wenner-declines/ |newspaper=] |location=] |access-date=December 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141209222701/http://observer.com/2014/12/source-rolling-stone-editor-tendered-resignation-wenner-declines/ |archive-date=December 9, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
But on December 5, 2014, ''Rolling Stone'' published an online apology stating there appeared to be "discrepancies" in the accounts of Erdely's sources and that their trust in the accuser was misplaced.<ref>{{cite news |date=December 5, 2014 |title=A Note to Our Readers |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/a-note-to-our-readers-20141205 |newspaper=Rolling Stone |accessdate=5 December 2014}}</ref> A subsequent tweet sent by ''Rolling Stone'' managing editor Will Dana offered further comment on Erdely's story: "e made a judgement — the kind of judgement reporters and editors make every day. And in this case, our judgement was wrong."<ref>{{cite news |last=Mai-Duc |first=Christine |date=6 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' editor: 'Failure is on us' in UVA gang rape story |url=http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-rolling-stone-uva-rape-apology-20141205-story.html#page=1 |newspaper=] |accessdate=6 December 2014}}</ref> On December 6, ''Rolling Stone'' updated the apology to say the mistakes in the article were the fault of ''Rolling Stone'' and not of its source, while noting that "there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account."<ref>{{cite news |last=Holley |first=Peter |date=7 December 2014 |title=After apology, ''Rolling Stone'' changes its story once more |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/07/after-apology-rolling-stone-changes-its-story-once-more/ |newspaper=] |accessdate=7 December 2014}}</ref> | |||
</ref> In the aftermath of the collapse of the story, Dana noted: "Right now, we're picking up the pieces."<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Somaiya |first=Ravi |date=December 7, 2014 |title=Rolling Stone Tries to Regroup After Campus Rape Article Is Disputed |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/media/rolling-stone-tries-to-regroup-after-campus-rape-article-is-disputed.html |newspaper=] |location=New York |access-date=February 12, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150311010941/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/media/rolling-stone-tries-to-regroup-after-campus-rape-article-is-disputed.html |archive-date=March 11, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s lawyer told jurors in a 2016 trial that ''Rolling Stone'' was victim of a "hoax" and a "fraud", and added with regard to Jackie: "the magazine's editorial staff was no match for Jackie ... 'she deceived us, and we do know it was purposeful'."<ref> | |||
The ''New York Observer'' stated that ''Rolling Stone'' deputy managing editor Sean Woods (the editor directly responsible for the article)<ref name = "Somaiya April"/> tendered his resignation to the magazine's owner, ]. Wenner, who was reportedly "furious" at Erdely's story, declined to accept the resignation.<ref>{{cite news |last=Kurson |first=Ken |date=9 December 2014 |title=Rolling Stone Deputy Editor Tendered Resignation; Wenner Declines|url=http://observer.com/2014/12/source-rolling-stone-editor-tendered-resignation-wenner-declines/ |newspaper=] |location=]|accessdate=9 December 2014}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news|first1=T. Rees|last1=Shapiro|title=Jury finds reporter, Rolling Stone responsible for defaming U-Va. dean with gang rape story|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jury-finds-reporter-rolling-stone-responsible-for-defaming-u-va-dean-with-gang-rape-story/2016/11/04/aaf407fa-a1e8-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html|access-date=November 5, 2016|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=November 4, 2016|quote=Scott Sexton, an attorney for Rolling Stone, told the jurors in his closing statement that the magazine 'acknowledges huge errors in not being more dogged ... It's the worst thing to ever happen to ''Rolling Stone''.' Sexton said that, in effect, Erdely and ''Rolling Stone'' had fallen victim to what he called at points a 'hoax,' a 'fraud' and a 'perfect storm.' The magazine's editorial staff was no match for Jackie, Sexton said, noting that the magazine was not sure what exactly had happened to her, but admitted 'she deceived us, and we do know it was purposeful.'|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161105032628/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jury-finds-reporter-rolling-stone-responsible-for-defaming-u-va-dean-with-gang-rape-story/2016/11/04/aaf407fa-a1e8-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html|archive-date=November 5, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
In the aftermath of the collapse of the story, Dana revealed, "Right now, we're picking up the pieces."<ref>{{cite news |last=Somaiya |first=Ravi |date=December 7, 2014 |title=Rolling Stone Tries to Regroup After Campus Rape Article Is Disputed |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/media/rolling-stone-tries-to-regroup-after-campus-rape-article-is-disputed.html?_r=0 |newspaper=] |location=New York|accessdate=February 12, 2015}}</ref> | |||
===Erdely apologizes=== | ===Erdely apologizes=== | ||
Erdely publicly apologized for the article on April 5, 2015,<ref> | |||
Erdely publicly apologized for the article on April 5, 2015,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/statement-from-writer-of-rolling-stone-rape-article-sabrina-erdely.html|title=Statement from Writer of Rolling Stone Article Sabrina Erdely-New York Times|work=New York Times}}</ref> though her apology did not include any mention of the fraternity, or the members of the fraternity who were accused.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2015/04/06/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-fraternity-rape-story-pundits-react|title=Rolling Stone Retracts UVA Fraternity Rape Story, Pundits React - US News|author=Rachel Brody|work=US News & World Report}}</ref> The '']'' called the apology "a grudging act of contrition."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cjr.org/first_person/david_folkenflik_rolling_stone.php |title=Rolling Stone fails to take full responsibility for its actions - Columbia Journalism Review |publisher=Cjr.org |date= |accessdate=2016-01-06}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/statement-from-writer-of-rolling-stone-rape-article-sabrina-erdely.html|title=Statement from Writer of Rolling Stone Article Sabrina Erdely|work=The New York Times|date=April 5, 2015 |access-date=March 1, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170223135244/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/statement-from-writer-of-rolling-stone-rape-article-sabrina-erdely.html|archive-date=February 23, 2017|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> though her apology did not include specific mention of the fraternity or the members of the fraternity who were accused, instead mentioning only "the U.V.A. community".<ref> | |||
{{cite web|url=https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2015/04/06/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-fraternity-rape-story-pundits-react|title=Rolling Stone Retracts UVA Fraternity Rape Story, Pundits React – US News|author=Rachel Brody|work=U.S. News & World Report|access-date=August 23, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829160909/https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2015/04/06/rolling-stone-retracts-uva-fraternity-rape-story-pundits-react|archive-date=August 29, 2017|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> The '']'' called the apology "a grudging act of contrition".<ref name=cjrfail> | |||
{{cite web |url=https://www.cjr.org/first_person/david_folkenflik_rolling_stone.php |title=Rolling Stone fails to take full responsibility for its actions |work=Columbia Journalism Review |publisher=Cjr.org |access-date=January 6, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151224113736/https://www.cjr.org/first_person/david_folkenflik_rolling_stone.php |archive-date=December 24, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
Spokesmen for both Wenner<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last=Stelter|first=Brian|date=April 6, 2015|title=Major 'failures' found in Rolling Stone's 'A Rape on Campus'|url=https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/05/media/rolling-stone-uva-rape-article-columbia-probe/|newspaper=]|access-date=April 6, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150406041244/https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/05/media/rolling-stone-uva-rape-article-columbia-probe|archive-date=April 6, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> and Dana said that Erdely would continue to write articles for ''Rolling Stone''.<ref> | |||
{{cite news|author1=Valerie Bauerlein|author2=Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg|title=Probe of Now-Discredited Rolling Stone Article Didn't Find Fireable Error|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/probe-of-now-discredited-rolling-stone-article-didnt-find-fireable-error-1428352237|access-date=April 7, 2015|newspaper=The Wall Street Journal|date=April 6, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150406222625/http://www.wsj.com/articles/probe-of-now-discredited-rolling-stone-article-didnt-find-fireable-error-1428352237|archive-date=April 6, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
===2016 comments by Jackie=== | |||
Both a spokesman for publisher Wenner<ref>{{cite news |last=Stelter|first=Brian|date=6 April 2015|title=Major 'failures' found in Rolling Stone's 'A Rape on Campus'|url=http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/05/media/rolling-stone-uva-rape-article-columbia-probe/|newspaper=]|access-date=6 April 2015}}</ref> and Will Dana, managing editor, said that Erdely would continue to write articles for ''Rolling Stone''.<ref>{{cite news|author1=Valerie Bauerlein|author2=Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg|title=Probe of Now-Discredited Rolling Stone Article Didn't Find Fireable Error|url=http://www.wsj.com/articles/probe-of-now-discredited-rolling-stone-article-didnt-find-fireable-error-1428352237|accessdate=April 7, 2015|publisher=Wall Street Journal|date=April 6, 2015}}</ref> | |||
On October 24, 2016, in a video deposition, Jackie said, "I stand by the account I gave ''Rolling Stone''. I believed it to be true at the time."<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Laura French|title='I believed it to be true:' Jackie stands by her story as Rolling Stone trial continues|url=http://wtvr.com/2016/10/24/jackie-stands-by-her-story-as-rolling-stone-trial-continues/|access-date=October 26, 2016|work=CBS 6 News – WTVR|date=October 24, 2016|quote=Jackie testified, 'I stand by the account I gave Rolling Stone. I believed it to be true at the time.'|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161026081352/http://wtvr.com/2016/10/24/jackie-stands-by-her-story-as-rolling-stone-trial-continues/|archive-date=October 26, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Richer |first=Alanna Durkin |title='Jackie' Says She Felt Pressure to Be in Rolling Stone Story |date=October 24, 2016 |newspaper=] |url=https://apnews.com/3aef3379326341c3a8d029f304e51f36/defamation-trial-over-rolling-stone-rape-story-enters-week |access-date=December 11, 2017 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20171211125845/https://apnews.com/3aef3379326341c3a8d029f304e51f36/defamation-trial-over-rolling-stone-rape-story-enters-week |archive-date=December 11, 2017 |url-status=live |quote=The woman whose harrowing account of being gang-raped at a University of Virginia fraternity house was the centerpiece of a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article testified in a deposition heard by the public for the first time on Monday that the story was what she believed 'to be true at the time.' |df=mdy-all }}</ref> Around the same time, ] of Charlottesville, Virginia, published the audio of Jackie's 2014 statements to Erdely.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Courteney Stuart|title=Rolling Stone magazine "Jackie" recording released|url=http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Rolling-Stone-magazine-Jackie-recording-released-398045851.html|access-date=October 26, 2016|work=CBS 19 Newsplex|date=October 22, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170613051737/http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Rolling-Stone-magazine-Jackie-recording-released-398045851.html|archive-date=June 13, 2017|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref> | |||
==Debate== | ==Debate== | ||
===Media reaction=== | ===Media reaction=== | ||
''The Washington Post'' journalist ] criticized the story's graphic details of the alleged crime and said that it was hard to believe due to the "diabolical" description. A number of commentators accused the magazine of setting rape victims "back decades", while ''The Washington Post'' described the ''Rolling Stone'' story as a "catastrophe for journalism".<ref name="missing" /><ref>{{cite news |date=December 5, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' just wrecked an incredible year of progress for rape victims |url=https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/5/7342317/rolling-stone-retraction-rape-blame-consent |newspaper=The Verge |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206175731/http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/5/7342317/rolling-stone-retraction-rape-blame-consent |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
A number of commentators accused the magazine of setting rape victims "back decades", while the '']'' described the ''Rolling Stone'' story as a "catastrophe for journalism".<ref name="missing" /><ref>{{cite news |last=|first=|date=5 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' just wrecked an incredible year of progress for rape victims |url=http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/5/7342317/rolling-stone-retraction-rape-blame-consent |newspaper=The Verge |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Schow |first=Ashe |date=3 December 2014 |title=If false, ''Rolling Stone'' story could set rape victims back decades |url=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/if-false-rolling-stone-story-could-set-rape-victims-back-decades/article/2556895 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a columnist at '']'', said that Erdely's decision not to interview the accused fraternity members showed "a horrendous, hidden bias ... the premise that none of these guys would tell the truth if asked", while a staff editorial in the '']'' charged that "Ms. Erdely did not construct a story based on facts, but went looking for facts to fit her theory."<ref>{{cite news |last=|first=|date=5 December 2014 |title=Like a ''Rolling Stone'' |url=http://online.wsj.com/articles/like-a-rolling-stone-1417823962 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Vargas-Cooper|first=Natasha |date=5 December 2014 |title=Hey, Feminist Internet Collective: Good Reporting Does Not Have To Be Sensitive |url=https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/05/spleen-venting-rant-rolling-stone-rape-thing/ |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> Lauren Kling of the ] criticized ''Rolling Stone'' for "blaming source" instead of taking ownership of their own errors.<ref>{{cite news |last=Merlan |first=Anna |date=5 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' backs off story of alleged fraternity rape at UVA |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/1205/Rolling-Stone-backs-off-story-of-alleged-fraternity-rape-at-UVA |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> Anna Merlan, a writer for '']'' who had earlier called '']'' columnist Robby Soave an "idiot" for expressing skepticism of the ''Rolling Stone'' story, declared "I was dead fucking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize."<ref>{{cite news |last=Merlan |first=Anna |date=5 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Partially Retracts UVA Story Over 'Discrepancies' |url=http://jezebel.com/rolling-stone-partially-retracts-uva-story-over-discrep-1667329573 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Schow |first=Ashe |date=December 3, 2014 |title=If false, ''Rolling Stone'' story could set rape victims back decades |url=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/if-false-rolling-stone-story-could-set-rape-victims-back-decades/article/2556895 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141203191436/http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/if-false-rolling-stone-story-could-set-rape-victims-back-decades/article/2556895 |archive-date=December 3, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a columnist at '']'', said that Erdely's decision not to interview the accused fraternity members showed "a horrendous, hidden bias ... the premise that none of these guys would tell the truth if asked", while a staff editorial in '']'' charged that "Ms. Erdely did not construct a story based on facts, but went looking for facts to fit her theory."<ref> | |||
{{cite news |date=December 5, 2014 |title=Like a ''Rolling Stone'' |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/like-a-rolling-stone-1417823962 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150204042106/http://www.wsj.com/articles/like-a-rolling-stone-1417823962 |archive-date=February 4, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Vargas-Cooper |first=Natasha |date=December 5, 2014 |title=Hey, Feminist Internet Collective: Good Reporting Does Not Have To Be Sensitive |url=https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/05/spleen-venting-rant-rolling-stone-rape-thing/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206020708/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/05/spleen-venting-rant-rolling-stone-rape-thing/ |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Lauren Kling of the ] criticized ''Rolling Stone'' for "blaming source" instead of taking ownership of their own errors.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Merlan |first=Anna |date=December 5, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' backs off story of alleged fraternity rape at UVA |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/1205/Rolling-Stone-backs-off-story-of-alleged-fraternity-rape-at-UVA |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206105418/http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/1205/Rolling-Stone-backs-off-story-of-alleged-fraternity-rape-at-UVA |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Anna Merlan, a writer for '']'', who had earlier called '']'' columnist ] an "idiot" for expressing skepticism of the ''Rolling Stone'' story, declared: "I was dead fucking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize."<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Merlan |first=Anna |date=December 5, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Partially Retracts UVA Story Over 'Discrepancies' |url=http://jezebel.com/rolling-stone-partially-retracts-uva-story-over-discrep-1667329573 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205210847/http://jezebel.com/rolling-stone-partially-retracts-uva-story-over-discrep-1667329573 |archive-date=December 5, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Merlan had also labeled journalist Richard Bradley's doubts about the article a "giant ball of shit".<ref> | |||
{{cite web|last1=Merlan|first1=Anna|title='Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?' Asks Idiot|url=http://jezebel.com/is-the-uva-rape-story-a-gigantic-hoax-asks-idiot-1665233387|website=Jezebel|date=December 2014 |access-date=November 5, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110232417/http://jezebel.com/is-the-uva-rape-story-a-gigantic-hoax-asks-idiot-1665233387|archive-date=November 10, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
On December 6, ''The Washington Post''{{'}}s media critic Erik Wemple called for all ''Rolling Stone'' staff who were involved with the story to be fired. Wemple posited that the claims presented by the magazine were so incredible that editors should have called for further inquiry before publication. "Under the scenario cited by Erdely", Wemple wrote, "the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they're criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. If this allegation alone hadn't triggered an all-out scramble at ''Rolling Stone'' for more corroboration, nothing would have."<ref name=wapodisastrous> | |||
Fellow ''Jezebel'' writer Jia Tolentino wrote an analysis of Erdely's story and reported on fraternity rush after the ''Rolling Stone'' article was discredited. In it Tolentino stated, "Five years after I'd left the UVA Greek system, I read 'A Rape on Campus' as an outsider account about a true problem, written by someone good at cherry-picking...So it took me a day or two to admit that I found many of Erdely's details unrecognizable. No one says 'UVrApe'; no one I know has ever heard the Rugby Road-themed 'traditional fight song' that poetically ('fuck for 50 cents'/'panties on the fence') separated the article's sections... Jackie was lying, and railroaded into the spotlight on a story that now appears to be a PTSD-laced delusional flashback."<ref>{{cite news |last=Tolentino|first=Jia|date=January 28, 2015 |title=Rush After 'A Rape On Campus': A UVA Alum Goes Back to Rugby Road |url=http://jezebel.com/rush-after-a-rape-on-campus-a-uva-alum-goes-back-to-ru-1682251600 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=January 28, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Wemple |first=Erik |date=December 5, 2014 |title='Rolling Stone' 's disastrous U-Va. story: A case of real media bias |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/05/rolling-stones-disastrous-u-va-story-a-case-of-real-media-bias/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=December 6, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206161428/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/05/rolling-stones-disastrous-u-va-story-a-case-of-real-media-bias/ |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> An editorial in the '']'' declared: "a fifth-grader would've done some basic ] before potentially ruining men's lives" before repeating the call for the firing of ''Rolling Stone'' staff involved in the story.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |date=December 7, 2014 |title=Apparently, this ''Rolling Stone'' gathers no facts |url=http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/adriana_cohen/2014/12/adriana_cohen_apparently_this_rolling_stone_gathers_no |newspaper=] |access-date=December 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141207105348/http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/adriana_cohen/2014/12/adriana_cohen_apparently_this_rolling_stone_gathers_no |archive-date=December 7, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
Journalist ], who wrote an exposé in '']'' titled "The Dark Power of Fraternities: A yearlong investigation of Greek houses", told '']'' that she was concerned that Erdely's article could inhibit reforms of the Greek system. She said: "I think we've gone backwards 30 years. And I think the level of devastation that this ''Rolling Stone'' report that's now looking to go from a misremembered event to perhaps an actual hoax." Flanagan noted that "what ''Rolling Stone'' has pushed me into is that I have now become someone who is on the side of fraternities and defending fraternities."<ref name=OTM>{{cite web|title=SPECIAL: The UVA Story|url=http://www.onthemedia.org/story/special-uva-story/transcript/|archive-url=https://archive.today/20141207085956/http://www.onthemedia.org/story/special-uva-story/transcript/|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 7, 2014|publisher=]|access-date=December 7, 2014|date=December 6, 2014}}</ref> | |||
On December 6, the ''Washington Post'''s media critic Erik Wemple called for all ''Rolling Stone'' staff involved with the story to be fired. Wemple posited that the claims presented by the magazine were so incredible that editors should have called for further inquiry before publication. "Under the scenario cited by Erdely", Erik Wemple wrote, "the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they're criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. If this allegation alone hadn't triggered an all-out scramble at ''Rolling Stone'' for more corroboration, nothing would have."<ref name="wapo ROLLING STONE'S DISASTROUS">{{cite news |last=Wemple |first=Erik |date=5 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'''s disastrous U-Va. story: A case of real media bias |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/05/rolling-stones-disastrous-u-va-story-a-case-of-real-media-bias/ |newspaper=''Washington Post'' |location= |accessdate=6 December 2014 }}</ref> An editorial in the '']'' declared "a fifth-grader would've done some basic fact-checking before potentially ruining men's lives" before repeating the call for the firing of ''Rolling Stone'' staff involved in the story.<ref>{{cite news |last=|first=|date=7 December 2014 |title=Apparently, this ''Rolling Stone'' gathers no facts |url=http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/adriana_cohen/2014/12/adriana_cohen_apparently_this_rolling_stone_gathers_no |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=7 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
Writing for '']'', columnist ] said that the unraveling of Erdely's article "exposed the troubling zealotry of advocates for whom believing rape claims is somewhat akin to a matter of religious faith".<ref> | |||
Journalist ], who wrote an exposé in ] titled "The Dark Power of Fraternities: A yearlong investigation of Greek houses", told '']'' she was concerned Erdely's article could inhibit reforms of the Greek system, saying "I think we've gone backwards 30 years. And I think the level of devastation that this ''Rolling Stone'' report that's now looking to go from a misremembered event to perhaps an actual hoax." Flanagan went on to note that "what ''Rolling Stone'' has pushed me into is that I have now become someone who is on the side of fraternities and defending fraternities."<ref name=OTM>{{cite web|title=SPECIAL: The UVA Story|url=http://www.onthemedia.org/story/special-uva-story/transcript/|publisher=]|accessdate=7 December 2014|date=6 December 2014}}</ref> | |||
{{cite magazine |author=Cathy Young |url=https://time.com/3651057/a-better-feminism-for-2015/#3651057/a-better-feminism-for-2015/ |title=A Better Feminism for 2015 |magazine=] |date=December 31, 2014 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150310141532/http://time.com/3651057/a-better-feminism-for-2015/#3651057/a-better-feminism-for-2015/ |archive-date=March 10, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> ], being interviewed by ] for ''Reason'', commented that the story "proved to be a sort of gothic fantasy, a male-demonizing fantasy. It was absurd."<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Stossel |first=John |date=March 4, 2015 |title=Raping Culture |url=http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/04/raping-culture |newspaper=] |access-date=March 5, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150305111700/http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/04/raping-culture |archive-date=March 5, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
After two ] football players were convicted of rape on January 27, 2015, ], who was the first mainstream journalist to question the ''Rolling Stone'' story, wrote a blogpost titled "Why Didn't Sabrina Rubin Erdely Write about Vanderbilt?" In the post, he asked: "Is Vanderbilt just not as sexy a story as UVA?"<ref>{{cite news |last=Bradley |first=Richard |date=January 27, 2015 |title=Why Didn't Sabrina Rubin Erdely Write about Vanderbilt? |url=http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2015/01/27/why-didnt-sabrina-rubin-erdely-write-about-vanderbilt/ |newspaper=Shots In The Dark |access-date=January 28, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150129103703/http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2015/01/27/why-didnt-sabrina-rubin-erdely-write-about-vanderbilt/ |archive-date=January 29, 2015 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref> | |||
Columnist ] said that the unraveling of Erdely's article "exposed the troubling zealotry of advocates for whom believing rape claims is somewhat akin to a matter of religious faith."<ref>{{cite news|author=Cathy Young |url=http://time.com/3651057/a-better-feminism-for-2015/#3651057/a-better-feminism-for-2015/ |title=A Better Feminism for 2015 |publisher=Time.com |date=2014-12-31 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> ], being interviewed by ] for ''Reason'', commented that the story "proved to be a sort of gothic fantasy, a male-demonizing fantasy. It was absurd."<ref>{{cite news |last=Stossel|first=John|date=March 4, 2015 |title=Raping Culture |url=http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/04/raping-culture |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=March 5, 2015 }}</ref> ''The Daily Caller'' published an article with the title of "Here Are EIGHT Campus Rape Hoaxes Eerily Like The UVA Rape Story" with examples that took place at several other schools such as ], ], and ]. "In each case, the cruel hoaxes were initially accepted as true. In some cases, real lives were ruined."<ref>{{cite news |last=Owens|first=Eric|date=December 14, 2014 |title=Here Are EIGHT Campus Rape Hoaxes Eerily Like The UVA Rape Story |url=http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/14/here-are-eight-campus-rape-hoaxes-eerily-like-the-uva-rape-story/ |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=February 12, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |date=January 28, 2015 |title=Jury: Ex-Vandy players guilty of rape |url=https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/12239000/jury-finds-ex-vanderbilt-football-players-brandon-vandenburg-cory-batey-guilty-rape |newspaper=] |access-date=January 28, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150128072449/http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/12239000/jury-finds-ex-vanderbilt-football-players-brandon-vandenburg-cory-batey-guilty-rape |archive-date=January 28, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Robby Soave in ''Reason''{{'}}s ''Hit & Run Blog'' responded to Bradley's query about why Erdely chose UVA over Vanderbilt, arguing:<ref> | |||
After two ] football players were convicted of rape on January 27, 2015, ], who was the first mainstream journalist to question the ''Rolling Stone'' story, wrote a blogpost titled, "Why Didn't Sabrina Rubin Erdely Write about Vanderbilt?" In the post, he asked, "Is Vanderbilt just not as sexy a story as UVA?"<ref>{{cite news |last=Bradley|first=Richard|date=January 27, 2015 |title=Why Didn't Sabrina Rubin Erdely Write about Vanderbilt? |url=http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2015/01/27/why-didnt-sabrina-rubin-erdely-write-about-vanderbilt/ |newspaper=Shots In The Dark |location= |accessdate=January 28, 2015 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=January 28, 2015 |title=Jury: Ex-Vandy players guilty of rape |url=http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/12239000/jury-finds-ex-vanderbilt-football-players-brandon-vandenburg-cory-batey-guilty-rape |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=January 28, 2015 }}</ref> Robby Soave in Reason's ''Hit & Run Blog'' answered Bradley's query about why Erdely chose UVA over Vanderbilt; he wrote, "At the end of the day, UVA's incredible story fit Erdely's narrative better than Vanderbilt's credible one. Erdely wanted to tell the story of a campus body and university administration behaving indifferently to an unspeakable crime." He further added, "What distinguished the UVA story from anything else ever reported was that the assault did not involve drugs or alcohol, required elaborate planning, and involved so many people that the perps could not have reasonably expected to get away with it—a confluence of factors that caused the allegations to have substantially more in common with ones that ultimately proved to be false, like the ] and ] incident."<ref>{{cite news |last=Soave|first=Robby|date=January 28, 2015 |title=Why Did Rolling Stone Writer Choose UVA, Not Vanderbilt, for Gang Rape Exposé? |url=http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/28/why-rolling-stone-chose-uva-not-vanderbi |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=January 28, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Soave |first=Robby |date=January 28, 2015 |title=Why Did Rolling Stone Writer Choose UVA, Not Vanderbilt, for Gang Rape Exposé? |url=http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/28/why-rolling-stone-chose-uva-not-vanderbi |newspaper=] |access-date=January 28, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150129133609/http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/28/why-rolling-stone-chose-uva-not-vanderbi |archive-date=January 29, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
{{blockquote| | |||
At the end of the day, UVA's incredible story fit Erdely's narrative better than Vanderbilt's credible one. Erdely wanted to tell the story of a campus body and university administration behaving indifferently to an unspeakable crime. ... What distinguished the UVA story from anything else ever reported was that the assault did not involve drugs or alcohol, required elaborate planning, and involved so many people that the perps could not have reasonably expected to get away with it—a confluence of factors that caused the allegations to have substantially more in common with ones that ultimately proved to be false, like the ] and ] incident.}} | |||
===Local reaction=== | ===Local reaction=== | ||
Students at the University of Virginia expressed "bewilderment and anger" following ''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s apology for its story, with one female student declaring "''Rolling Stone'' threw a bomb at us." Virginia Attorney-General ] said he found it "deeply troubling that ''Rolling Stone'' magazine is now publicly walking away from its central storyline in its bombshell report on the University of Virginia without correcting what errors its editors believe were made."<ref name="Bloom">{{cite news |last1=Lauerman |first1=John |last2=McDonald |first2=Michael |date=December 6, 2014 |title=UVA Anger Focused on ''Rolling Stone'' After Rape Story Discredited |url= |
Students at the University of Virginia expressed "bewilderment and anger" following ''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s apology for its story, with one female student declaring "''Rolling Stone'' threw a bomb at us." Virginia Attorney-General ] said he found it "deeply troubling that ''Rolling Stone'' magazine is now publicly walking away from its central storyline in its bombshell report on the University of Virginia without correcting what errors its editors believe were made."<ref name="Bloom"> | ||
{{cite news |last1=Lauerman |first1=John |last2=McDonald |first2=Michael |date=December 6, 2014 |title=UVA Anger Focused on ''Rolling Stone'' After Rape Story Discredited |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-06/uva-anger-focused-on-rolling-stone-after-rape-story-discredited |publisher=Bloomberg |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402131000/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-06/uva-anger-focused-on-rolling-stone-after-rape-story-discredited |archive-date=April 2, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
] | |||
Emily Renda, the university's project coordinator for sexual misconduct, policy and prevention declared that "''Rolling Stone'' played adjudicator, investigator and advocate and did a slipshod job at that."<ref>{{cite news |agency=Associated Press |date=6 December 2014 |title=Advocates Fear Impact of ''Rolling Stone'' Apology | |||
|url=http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/06/advocates-fear-impact-rolling-stone-apology/ |publisher=Fox News |accessdate=6 December 2014}}</ref> Sociology professor ], meanwhile, tweeted that "I was wrong to give it credence."<ref>{{cite news |last=Dreher |first=Rod |date=5 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Rolls Off Cliff |url=http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/rolling-stone-rolls-off-cliff/ |newspaper=] |accessdate=6 December 2014}}</ref> Writing in '']'' two days after the "story fell apart", Julia Horowitz, deputy editor of the university's campus newspaper, described the feeling among students: "The campus—relatively oversaturated with emotion after a semester of significant trauma—feels as if it is on stand-by, poised in anticipation of where the next torrent of news will take us."<ref name="poli" /> | |||
Emily Renda, the university's project coordinator for sexual misconduct, policy and prevention declared that "''Rolling Stone'' played adjudicator, investigator and advocate and did a slipshod job at that."<ref> | |||
In an interview with '']'', President Sullivan discussed her surprise upon reading the ''Rolling Stone'' story. She recalled, "Almost from the beginning, we were reading the story with a certain air of disbelief. It was quite surprising. You can listen to my interview with Sabrina and see what Sabrina had talked to me about. And based on what we had talked about, I was plainly not prepared for what the story looked like. Nor do I think her characterization of my interview was fair."<ref>{{cite news |title=UVA's Sullivan reflects on tenure, Rolling Stone controversy, student privacy laws | |||
{{cite news |agency=Associated Press |date=December 6, 2014 |title=Advocates Fear Impact of ''Rolling Stone'' Apology |url=https://www.foxnews.com/us/advocates-fear-impact-of-rolling-stone-apology/ |work=Fox News |access-date=December 6, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206073200/http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/06/advocates-fear-impact-rolling-stone-apology/ |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
|url=http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/uva-s-sullivan-reflects-on-tenure-rolling-stone-controversy-student/article_02a641f8-a9bf-11e4-b304-cbbab2d2f2f5.html |newspaper=] |date=January 31, 2015 |accessdate=February 1, 2015}}</ref> As shown in the audio recording of Sabrina Erdely's 44-minute interview with Sullivan, not once did Erdely ask about Jackie and her allegations. In emails obtained by the ''Washington Post'' under a Freedom of Information Act request, they revealed that ''Rolling Stone'' also never discussed Jackie with UVA officials.<ref>{{cite news |last=Farhi |first=Paul |date=December 19, 2014 |title=Rolling Stone never asked U-Va. about specific gang rape allegations, according to newly released e-mails and audio recording |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rolling-stone-never-asked-u-va-about-gang-rape-allegations-according-to-newly-released-e-mail-exchanges/2014/12/19/1b9cc248-87cf-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html |newspaper=] |accessdate=February 1, 2015}}</ref> | |||
</ref> Sociology professor ], meanwhile, tweeted that "I was wrong to give it credence."<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Dreher |first=Rod |date=December 5, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Rolls Off Cliff |url=http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/rolling-stone-rolls-off-cliff/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 6, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141207202723/http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/rolling-stone-rolls-off-cliff/ |archive-date=December 7, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Writing in '']'' two days after the "story fell apart", Julia Horowitz, deputy editor of the university's campus newspaper, described the feeling among students: "The campus—relatively oversaturated with emotion after a semester of significant trauma—feels as if it is on stand-by, poised in anticipation of where the next torrent of news will take us."<ref name="poli"> | |||
{{cite news |last=Horowitz |first=Julia |date=December 6, 2014 |title=Why We Believed Jackie's Rape Story |url=http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/why-we-believed-jackies-story-113365.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141208003450/http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/why-we-believed-jackies-story-113365.html |archive-date=December 8, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
===Response of fraternity and sorority groups=== | ===Response of fraternity and sorority groups=== | ||
Within days following the unraveling of the ''Rolling Stone'' story, the ], the National Panhellenic Council, and the ] demanded that the University of Virginia "immediately reinstate operations for all fraternity and sorority organizations on campus" and issue an apology to Greek students.<ref>{{cite news | |
Within days following the unraveling of the ''Rolling Stone'' story, the ], the National Panhellenic Council, and the ] demanded that the University of Virginia "immediately reinstate operations for all fraternity and sorority organizations on campus" and issue an apology to Greek students.<ref> | ||
{{cite news |date=December 8, 2014 |title=University urged to end Greek groups' suspension |url=http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20141208_University_urged_to_end_Greek_groups__suspension.html#0jHZzYEqr5dOot4y.99 |newspaper=Philadelphia Inquirer |access-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141220091409/http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20141208_University_urged_to_end_Greek_groups__suspension.html#0jHZzYEqr5dOot4y.99 |archive-date=December 20, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> On December 8, the University of Virginia restated their original decision that the suspensions would be lifted on the resumption of classes in the new term, on January 9.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |date=December 8, 2014 |title=UVA Issues Statement Regarding Fraternal Suspension |url=http://www.nbc29.com/story/27578048/uva-issues-statement-regarding-fraternal-suspension |newspaper=] |access-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141209005135/http://www.nbc29.com/story/27578048/uva-issues-statement-regarding-fraternal-suspension |archive-date=December 9, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
After Phi Kappa Psi was reinstated at the start of the 2015 Spring semester, UVA Phi Psi President Stephen Scipione said, "We are pleased that the University and the Charlottesville Police Department have cleared our fraternity of any involvement in this case... In today's 24-hour news cycle, we all have a tendency to rush to judgment without having all of the facts in front of us. As a result, our fraternity was vandalized, our members ostracized based on false information."<ref>{{cite news|url= |
After Phi Kappa Psi was reinstated at the start of the 2015 Spring semester, UVA Phi Psi President Stephen Scipione said, "We are pleased that the University and the Charlottesville Police Department have cleared our fraternity of any involvement in this case... In today's 24-hour news cycle, we all have a tendency to rush to judgment without having all of the facts in front of us. As a result, our fraternity was vandalized, our members ostracized based on false information."<ref name=wapo20150112> | ||
{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/phi-kappa-psi-fraternity-reinstated-at-university-of-virginia/2015/01/12/1b6ddd50-9a69-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html |title=Police clear U-Va. fraternity, say rape did not happen there |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=January 12, 2015 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |first=T. Rees |last=Shapiro |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150404070129/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/phi-kappa-psi-fraternity-reinstated-at-university-of-virginia/2015/01/12/1b6ddd50-9a69-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html |archive-date=April 4, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
==Accuser scrutinized== | ==Accuser scrutinized== | ||
On December 8, 2014, ABC News reported that the person quoted by Erdely as alleging a rape at Phi Kappa Psi had retained an attorney. |
On December 8, 2014, ABC News reported that the person quoted by Erdely as alleging a rape at Phi Kappa Psi had retained an attorney.<ref name="ABC">{{cite news |last=Davis |first=Lindsay |date=December 8, 2014 |title=UVA Student in ''Rolling Stone'' Rape Story Reportedly Hires Attorney |url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/uva-student-rolling-stone-rape-story-reportedly-hires/story?id=27437138 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141208191807/http://abcnews.go.com/US/uva-student-rolling-stone-rape-story-reportedly-hires/story?id=27437138 |url-status=live }}</ref> | ||
On December 10, 2014, |
On December 10, 2014, ''The Washington Post'' published an updated account of its inquiry into the ''Rolling Stone'' article.<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS"/> '']'' reported that the ''Post'' account strongly implied Jackie's tale of rape had been fabricated in an attempt to win over "Randall", who had previously rebuffed her romantic advances. Writing in ''Slate'', Hannah Rosin described the new ''The Washington Post'' investigation as close "to calling the UVA gang rape story a fabrication".<ref>{{cite news |last=Rosin |first=Hannah |date=December 10, 2014 |title=The Washington Post Inches Closer to Calling the UVA Gang Rape Story a Fabrication |url=http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/12/10/rolling_stone_sabrina_rubin_erdely_the_washington_post_inches_closer_to.html |newspaper=Slate |access-date=December 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141211034250/http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/12/10/rolling_stone_sabrina_rubin_erdely_the_washington_post_inches_closer_to.html |archive-date=December 11, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | ||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Dreher |first=Rod |date=December 10, 2014 |title=Did Jackie Make The Whole Thing Up? |url=http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/did-jackie-make-the-whole-thing-up-rolling-stone-uva/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 11, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141213015617/http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/did-jackie-make-the-whole-thing-up-rolling-stone-uva/ |archive-date=December 13, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Emily Renda, who was a University of Virginia student at the time of the alleged attack and in whom Jackie also confided, said that she had become suspicious as to the veracity of Jackie's story prior to the ''Rolling Stone'' report, commenting to a ''The Washington Post'' editor: "I don't even know what I believe."<ref name="wapo UPDATED APOLOGY"/> In the aftermath, Jackie was characterized as "a really expert fabulist storyteller" by ''Rolling Stone'' publisher Jann Wenner in an April 5, 2015 interview.<ref name=somaiya/><ref name="hosted1">{{cite web |url=http://hosted2.ap.org/KSMAN/94eb43b374534ff9af90ca1f8bdce81e/Article_2015-04-05-US--Fraternity-Rolling%20Stone/id-1455e7d56f3f404fbd24ea1348365fbc |title=Report: Rolling Stone rape article 'journalistic failure' |publisher=Hosted2.ap.org |access-date=April 6, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150409053824/http://hosted2.ap.org/KSMAN/94eb43b374534ff9af90ca1f8bdce81e/Article_2015-04-05-US--Fraternity-Rolling%20Stone/id-1455e7d56f3f404fbd24ea1348365fbc |archive-date=April 9, 2015 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref> At the subsequent trial, one of Jackie's friends the night of the alleged attack testified that their friendships eventually dwindled because of Jackie's "tendency to fabricate things".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.wvtf.org/post/updated-jurors-hear-jackies-friends-rolling-stone-trial#stream/0|title=Updated: Jurors Hear From 'Jackie's' Friends in Rolling Stone Trial|website=www.wvtf.org|date=October 28, 2016|last1=O'Neal|first1=Tab|last2=Hausman|first2=Sandy|access-date=June 25, 2020|archive-date=March 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309032416/https://www.wvtf.org/post/updated-jurors-hear-jackies-friends-rolling-stone-trial#stream/0|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
===Key discrepancies according to ''The Washington Times''=== | ===Key discrepancies according to ''The Washington Times''=== | ||
In Erdely's story, Jackie is lured into an alleged seven-man rape by U. Va. upperclassman "Drew". Prior to the alleged event, Jackie provided evidence of her relationship with "Drew" to her friends by supplying a phone number for "Drew", with whom Jackie's friends subsequently exchanged messages. '']'' determined that "Drew"'s "telephone" and "Blackberry" numbers were in fact "Internet phone numbers that enable the user to make calls or send SMS text messages to telephones from a computer or iPad while creating the appearance that they are coming from a real phone". "Drew" eventually sent a photo of "himself" to Jackie's friends, but "the man depicted in that photograph never attended U. Va" and was a high-school classmate of Jackie.<ref name=":1" /> | |||
===Key discrepancies according to ABC News=== | ===Key discrepancies according to ABC News=== | ||
In Erdely's story, Jackie sank into depression after the alleged rape and was holed up in her dorm room for a while. Her friends, however, told ABC News that she seemed fine after the alleged assault,<ref name="real names interview">{{cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/questions-raised-rolling-stones-uva-rape-story/story?id=27537952|title=New Questions Raised About Rolling Stone's UVA Rape Story|author=<!--Not stated-->|publisher=ABC News|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-date=May 25, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240525021854/https://abcnews.go.com/US/questions-raised-rolling-stones-uva-rape-story/story?id=27537952|url-status=live}}</ref> contradicting Jackie's former roommate, Rachel Soltis, who claimed that Jackie "was depressed, withdrawn, and couldn't wake up in the mornings" following the alleged rape.<ref name=hartmann /> | |||
In Erdely's story, Jackie tells her three friends the night of the alleged event that she was raped by seven men over a three-hour period while rolling on a mat of broken glass. The three friends disclosed to ABC News their actual names – Alex Stock's pseudonym was "Andy", Kathryn Hendley's was "Cindy", Ryan (Duffin) was "Randall"<ref name="real names interview" /> – and went on record that on the night of the alleged event Jackie told the two men that she was forced to fellate five men while a sixth stood by.<ref name="real names interview" /> | |||
===Key discrepancies according to ''The Washington Post''=== | ===Key discrepancies according to ''The Washington Post''=== | ||
In Erdely's story, the rape was supposed to have occurred during a party at Phi Kappa Psi as part of a pledging ritual. Phi Kappa Psi countered by noting that there had been no party held on the night of the alleged attack and no pledges resided in the house at that time of year. In response to those revelations, Jackie's father declared that Phi Kappa Psi had been misidentified and the attack had occurred at a different fraternity, though he did not elaborate as to which one. However, that statement seemed to contradict an earlier assertion the accuser had made to ''The Washington Post'', in which she stated: "I know it was Phi Psi, because a year afterward, my friend pointed out the building to me."<ref name="shapirodoubt" /> | |||
* In Erdely's story, Jackie disclosed to friends Cindy, Andy, and Randall the identity of her date to the fraternity party and said he was the ringleader of the rape. Later media analysis of photos Jackie showed her friends of her date showed instead that they were pictures taken from the public social media profile of a former high school classmate of Jackie who was not a student of the University of Virginia, did not live in the Charlottesville area, and was out of state at an athletic competition the day of the alleged attack.<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS"/> | |||
* Jackie's friends Cindy, Andy, and Randall had become suspicious as to whether Jackie's date to the fraternity party where she was allegedly raped was a real person. Prior to the date, they attempted to locate him in a student directory and were unable to find evidence he existed. The trio also sent text messages to a phone number Jackie said was the mobile phone of her date and were surprised that the owner of the phone number responded primarily with flattering messages about Randall, on whom Jackie was known to have had a crush.<ref>{{cite news |last=Byers |first=Dylan |date=10 December 2014 |title=U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault |url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/more-problems-with-the-rolling-stone-piece-199821.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=10 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
* In 2012 Jackie told her friends she had been accosted by five men, though she later testified to Erdely she had been attacked by seven, with two more directing and encouraging the rape.<ref name="wapo UPDATED APOLOGY" /> | |||
* Erdely said that Jackie regained consciousness alone in the fraternity after 3 a.m. and fled the building blood spattered and bruised, phoning three friends for help. They arrived "minutes later" and found her on the corner next to the building. However, the ''Washington Post'' stated that the three friends reported getting called at 1 a.m.<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS"/> and meeting Jackie a mile away from the fraternities, and that they saw "no blood or visible injuries".<ref name = "wapo KEY ELEMENTS"/> | |||
In Erdely's story, Jackie disclosed to friends Cindy, Andy, and Randall the identity of her date to the fraternity party and said that he was the ringleader of the rape. Later media analysis of photos Jackie showed her friends of her date demonstrated that they were pictures taken from the public social media profile of a former high-school classmate of Jackie, who was not a student of the University of Virginia, did not live in the Charlottesville area, and was out of state at an athletic competition the day of the alleged attack.<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS" /> | |||
===Key discrepancies according to '']''=== | |||
Jackie's friends Cindy, Andy, and Randall had become suspicious as to whether Jackie's date to the fraternity party where she was allegedly raped was a real person. Prior to the date, they attempted to locate him in a student directory and were unable to find evidence that he existed. The trio also sent text messages to a phone number Jackie said was the mobile phone of her date and were surprised that the owner of the phone number responded primarily with flattering messages about Randall, whom Jackie was romantically interested in.<ref>{{cite news |last=Byers |first=Dylan |date=December 10, 2014 |title=U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault |url=http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/more-problems-with-the-rolling-stone-piece-199821.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141227035416/http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/12/more-problems-with-the-rolling-stone-piece-199821.html |archive-date=December 27, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
* ''Inquirer'' media columnist Michael Smerconish recounted that when he interviewed Erdely about the story on ] radio, she told him, "I talked to all of her friends, all the people that she confided in along the way." But as Smercomish wrote, "he did not talk to all of Jackie's friends. In fact, her failure to speak to the three friends in whom Jackie supposedly confided immediately after the alleged incident was perhaps the most egregious of a string of journalistic failures."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150412_The_Pulse__Red_flags_on_piece_were_there.html|title=The Pulse: Red flags on piece were there|date=12 April 2015|work=Philly.com}}</ref> | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news|title='Catfishing' over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/08/catfishing-over-love-interest-might-have-spurred-u-va-gang-rape-debacle/|access-date=November 5, 2016|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=January 8, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161114231852/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/08/catfishing-over-love-interest-might-have-spurred-u-va-gang-rape-debacle/|archive-date=November 14, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref>{{efn|The fact that Jackie had a romantic interest in Randall was also noted by other news media.<ref>{{cite news|title=What Happened to Jackie? Watch Full Episode {{!}}|url=http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode-guide/2016-10/14-101416-what-happened-to-jackie|access-date=November 5, 2016|work=ABC|date=October 14, 2016|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161105224055/http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/episode-guide/2016-10/14-101416-what-happened-to-jackie|archive-date=November 5, 2016|df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news|title=The Lies of UVA's Jackie: Read All the Catfishing Texts She Sent Her Crush|url=http://reason.com/blog/2016/02/10/the-lies-of-uvas-jackie-read-all-the-cat|access-date=November 5, 2016|work=Reason.com|date=February 10, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161024163558/http://reason.com/blog/2016/02/10/the-lies-of-uvas-jackie-read-all-the-cat|archive-date=October 24, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref>}} | |||
In 2012 Jackie told her friends that she had been accosted by five men, though she later testified to Erdely that she had been attacked by seven, with two more directing and encouraging the rape.<ref name="wapo UPDATED APOLOGY" /> | |||
==Consequences== | |||
Erdely said that Jackie regained consciousness alone in the fraternity after 3 a.m. and fled the building blood-spattered and bruised, phoning three friends for help. They arrived "minutes later" and found her on the corner next to the building. However, ''The Washington Post'' stated that the three friends reported getting called at 1 a.m.<ref name="wapo U-VA STUDENTS" /> and meeting Jackie a mile away from the fraternities, and that they saw "no blood or visible injuries". The ''Post'' did report, however, that Jackie appeared distraught after the rape allegedly took place.<ref name=shapirodoubt/> | |||
The '']'' reported that the members of Phi Kappa Psi "went into hiding for weeks after their home was vandalized with spray paint calling them rapists and bricks that broke their windows", and had to escape to hotels. The report indicated the college students suffered disgust, emotion, and confusion. Some students "actually had to leave the room while they were reading because they were so upset." A former student who graduated in 2013 said "the day came out was the most emotionally grueling of my life."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-phi-kappa-psi-members-speak-about-impact-of-discredited-gang-rape-allegations/2015/01/14/d781ad90-9c04-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html|title=U-Va. Phi Psi members speak about impact of discredited gang rape allegations|work=Washington Post|accessdate=8 February 2015|first=T. Rees|last=Shapiro|date=14 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
===Key discrepancies according to ''The Philadelphia Inquirer''=== | |||
One month after the publication of the ''Rolling Stone'' article, the Rector of the University of Virginia, George Keith Martin, accused the magazine of "drive-by journalism" when he stated, "Like a neighborhood thrown into chaos by drive-by violence, our tightly knit community has experienced the full fury of drive-by journalism in the 21st century."<ref>{{cite news|last=Anderson |first=Nick |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-board-leader-denounces-drive-by-journalism-of-rolling-stone/2014/12/19/47980410-87b7-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html |title=U-Va. board leader denounces 'drive-by journalism' of Rolling Stone's rape article |publisher=Washingtonpost.com |date=2014-12-19 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> | |||
'']'' media columnist ] recounted that when he interviewed Erdely about the story on ] radio, she told him: "I talked to all of her friends, all the people that she confided in along the way." But as Smerconish wrote, "he did not talk to all of Jackie's friends. In fact, her failure to speak to the three friends in whom Jackie supposedly confided immediately after the alleged incident was perhaps the most egregious of a string of journalistic failures."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150412_The_Pulse__Red_flags_on_piece_were_there.html|title=The Pulse: Red flags on piece were there|date=April 12, 2015|work=Philly.com|access-date=April 13, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150416023442/http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150412_The_Pulse__Red_flags_on_piece_were_there.html|archive-date=April 16, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
==Investigations== | |||
According to the Columbia report, "Allen W. Groves, the University dean of students, and Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean of students, separately wrote to the authors of this report that the story's account of their actions was inaccurate." Columbia published Grove's letter, where he contrasts video<ref>{{cite av media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppd_pX5Zy44|title=BOV Student Affairs & Athletics Committee with Full Board – September 12, 2014|date=16 September 2014|work=YouTube}}</ref> of his statements to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors in September 2014 with the text of Erderly's published article, which differ significantly,<ref>{{cite web|last1=Ross|first1=Chuck|title=How Deep Is This Education Official's Involvement In The Rolling Stone Hoax?|url=http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/08/how-deep-is-this-education-officials-involvement-in-the-rolling-stone-hoax/|website=dailycaller.com|publisher=]|accessdate=April 9, 2015|date=April 8, 2015}}</ref> and concludes that Erderly's article contains "bias and malice".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UAuEqoequKWEMyV1JlUFRqdjA/view?pli=1|title=Dean Coll and Dean Coronel Ltr from AW Groves March 6, 2015-2.pdf|work=Google Docs}}</ref> Erderly furthermore reported that ] Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon called Grove's statements at the meeting (as misreported by Erderly) "deliberate and irresponsible". | |||
===Police investigation=== | |||
On January 12, 2015, the University of Virginia reinstated the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity after the police investigation concluded that no incident had occurred at the fraternity. According to Charlottesville Police Capt. Gary Pleasants, Phi Kappa Psi has been cleared; "We found no basis to believe that an incident occurred at that fraternity, so there's no reason to keep them suspended."<ref name=wapo20150112/><ref> | |||
{{cite web|url=https://news.virginia.edu/content/phi-kappa-psi-reinstated-university-virginia|title=Phi Kappa Psi Reinstated at the University of Virginia|work=UVA Today|date=January 12, 2015|access-date=February 8, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150120101659/http://news.virginia.edu/content/phi-kappa-psi-reinstated-university-virginia|archive-date=January 20, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite web |url=http://www.businessinsider.com/police-investigation-clears-uva-phi-psi-fraternity-2015-1 |title=Police Investigation Clears UVA Phi Psi Fraternity |publisher=Businessinsider.com |date=January 12, 2015 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150115094805/http://www.businessinsider.com/police-investigation-clears-uva-phi-psi-fraternity-2015-1 |archive-date=January 15, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
On March 23, 2015, police noted that Jackie refused to cooperate with law enforcement during the investigation. Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo explained, "We would've loved to have had Jackie come in ... and tell us what happened so we can obtain justice ... even if the facts were different."<ref>], " {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305123354/http://news.yahoo.com/police-press-conference-on-uva-rolling-stone-rape-investigation-covered-live-by-katie-couric-205013344.html |date=March 5, 2016 }}", '']'', March 23, 2014 | |||
</ref> | |||
Over the course of 4 months, the Charlottesville Police spoke to 70 people, including Jackie's friends, Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, and employees at the UVA Aquatic Center, where Jackie worked. No one supplied evidence to corroborate Jackie's accusations of a gang rape happening or that the accused rapist, supposedly named "Drew" or "Haven Monahan", even existed. The police were also unable to corroborate Jackie's allegations that two other sexual assaults had taken place at the fraternity house or that she had been assaulted and struck to the face with a bottle in a separate incident. Therefore, the criminal investigation was suspended on March 23.<ref> | |||
On January 30, 2015, ], the President of the University of Virginia, acknowledged that the ''Rolling Stone'' story was "discredited" in her State of the University Address.<ref>{{cite press release |date=January 30, 2015 |title=Prepared Remarks for Presidential Address on the University |url=http://www.virginia.edu/president/speeches/message150130.html |publisher=University of Virginia |accessdate=January 30, 2015}}</ref> In her remarks, she said, "Before the Rolling Stone story was discredited, it seemed to resonate with some people simply because it confirmed their darkest suspicions about universities—that administrations are corrupt; that today's students are reckless and irresponsible; that fraternities are hot-beds of deviant behavior. Working together, we have soundly refuted those suspicions through our actions over the past two months. ... The story unfairly maligned UVA and many members of our community."<ref>{{cite news |last=Ross |first=Chuck |date=January 30, 2015 |title=UVA President Admits Rolling Stone Gang Rape Article Is 'Discredited' |url=http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/30/uva-president-admits-rolling-stone-gang-rape-article-is-discredited/ |newspaper=] |accessdate=January 30, 2015}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/us/police-to-release-results-of-uva-rape-inquiry.html|title=Police Find No Evidence of Rape at UVA Fraternity|last1=Robinson|first1=Owen|last2=Stolberg|first2=Sheryl|access-date=March 23, 2015|newspaper=]|date=March 23, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150324203042/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/us/police-to-release-results-of-uva-rape-inquiry.html|archive-date=March 24, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/investigation-prompted-alleged-rape-story-released-29835224 |title=Police: No Evidence of Gang-Rape at University of Virginia |author=Larry O'Dell |date=March 23, 2015 |work=] |access-date=March 23, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402204403/http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/investigation-prompted-alleged-rape-story-released-29835224 |archive-date=April 2, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
===Columbia University School of Journalism's investigation=== | |||
The ''Rolling Stone'' article had a negative effect on applications to the University of Virginia. For the first time since 2002, applications to the University dropped. Prior to the publication of the story, Early Action applications were up 7.5 percent with 16,187 applicants. However overall applications were down 0.7 percent to 31,107 in the aftermath of the publication.<ref>{{cite news|last=Staiti |first=Chris |url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-15/uva-applications-drop-in-wake-of-now-discredited-gang-rape-story.html |title=UVA Applications Drop in Wake of Discredited Gang-Rape Story – Bloomberg Business |publisher=Bloomberg.com |date=2015-01-15 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> | |||
After the details in "A Rape on Campus" began to unravel, ''Rolling Stone's'' publisher ] commissioned ]'s ] to investigate the failures behind the publication of the article.<ref name="wemplereview">{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/22/rolling-stone-farms-out-review-of-u-va-rape-story-to-columbia-journalism-school/|title=Rolling Stone farms out review of U-Va. rape story to Columbia Journalism School|last=Wemple|first=Erik|date=December 22, 2014|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141223012338/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/22/rolling-stone-farms-out-review-of-u-va-rape-story-to-columbia-journalism-school/|archive-date=December 23, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> On April 5, 2015, Columbia's 12,000-word review of "A Rape on Campus" was published on both ''Rolling Stone's'' and the journalism school's websites. It was prepared by Steve Coll, the dean of Columbia's journalism school; Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs; and Derek Kravitz, a graduate school researcher.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=https://www.vox.com/2015/4/5/8347011/uva-rolling-stone-report |title=Rolling Stone retracts story on alleged UVA rape |author=Libby Nelson |date=April 5, 2015 |publisher=Vox |access-date=April 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150406092016/http://www.vox.com/2015/4/5/8347011/uva-rolling-stone-report |archive-date=April 6, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> The ''Columbia'' report stated that "At Rolling Stone, every story is assigned to a fact-checker."<ref name="cjrmore"> | |||
{{cite web |url=https://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php |title=Rolling Stone's investigation: 'A failure that was avoidable' - Columbia Journalism Review |website=Cjr.org |access-date=November 5, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161108013227/https://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php |archive-date=November 8, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Assistant editor Elisabeth Garber-Paul provided fact-checking.<ref> | |||
{{cite news|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/rolling-stone-uva-emails_n_6358034.html|title=Rolling Stone Fact-Checker Didn't Ask About Alleged Rape Victim in Emails With UVA Officials|work=The Huffington Post|access-date=December 23, 2014|date=December 19, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141222021547/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/rolling-stone-uva-emails_n_6358034.html|archive-date=December 22, 2014|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref><ref name="Wemple EMAILS"> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Wemple|first1=Erik|title=U-Va.-Rolling Stone e-mails highlight university's attempt to correct magazine|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/19/u-va-rolling-stone-e-mails-highlight-universitys-attempt-to-correct-magazine/|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=April 9, 2015|date=December 19, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150509224303/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/19/u-va-rolling-stone-e-mails-highlight-universitys-attempt-to-correct-magazine/|archive-date=May 9, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
The fact-checker concluded that Ryan – "Randall" under pseudonym – had not been interviewed, but that the article had pretended he had been. The Columbia report cited the fact-checker: "I pushed. ... They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable" with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan.<ref name="cjrmore" /><ref name="washingtonpost1" /> Ultimately, the report determined that ''Rolling Stone'' had exhibited ] and failed to perform basic fact checking by relying excessively on the accuser's account without verifying it through other means.<ref name="somaiya" /><ref name="columbiareport" /> | |||
National sorority leaders ordered UVA sororities to not interact with fraternities during Boys Bid Night when fraternities admit new pledges. Virginia sorority members called the restrictions "unnecessary and patronizing".<ref>{{cite news |title=Party Ban Is Patronizing, U.Va. Sorority Women Say |url=http://news.mpbn.net/post/uva-sorority-women-say-party-ban-patronizing |date=January 30, 2015|publisher=MPBN News |accessdate=January 31, 2015}}</ref> | |||
The Columbia report also found a failure in journalistic standards by either not making contact with the people they were publishing derogatory information about, or when they did, by not providing enough context for people to be able to offer a meaningful response.<ref name="columbiareport" /> The report also states that the article misled readers with quotes where attribution was unclear and used ] inappropriately as a way to address these shortcomings.<ref name="columbiareport" /> | |||
==Legal and social consequences of story== | |||
Due to increased social skepticism about the prevalence of sexual assault created by the unraveling of Erdely's ''Rolling Stone'' report, the ] will be "much harder" to enact, according to ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Carlson|first=Margaret|date=9 December 2014 |title=Rolling Stone may have crushed anti-rape bill | |||
|url=http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/12/09/rolling-stone-may-crushed-anti-rape-bill/20148205/ |newspaper=News Journal |location= |accessdate=9 December 2014 }}</ref> ] said that female rape victims will probably be less likely to report sexual assaults for fear of being questioned by "some teenage ]ner"<ref>{{cite news |last=West |first=Lindy |date=9 December 2014 |title=Rolling Stone threw a rape victim to the misogynist horde |url=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/09/rolling-stone-threw-a-rape-victim-to-the-misogynist-horde |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=9 December 2014 }}</ref> ] issued a call for media outlets to begin to publicly name rape accusers, explaining that "reporters and editors should expand their sensitivities to include the reputations of those accused, not always justly."<ref>{{cite news |last=Harrop |first=Froma |date=9 December 2014 |title=Make rape identities public |url=http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/12/10/make-rape-identities-public/20137249/ |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=9 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
The report concluded, "''Rolling Stone's'' repudiation of the main narrative in "A Rape on Campus" is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine's editors to reconsider publishing Jackie's narrative so prominently, if at all. The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine's reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/06/rolling-stone-isnt-firing-anyone-thats-terrible-for-journalism/ |title=Rolling Stone isn't firing anyone. That's terrible for journalism |author=Chris Cillizza |date=April 6, 2015 |newspaper=] |access-date=April 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150407073308/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/06/rolling-stone-isnt-firing-anyone-thats-terrible-for-journalism/ |archive-date=April 7, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
Several commentators observed that allegations of rape against ], which surfaced at the same time as the publication of "A Rape on Campus", would be less damaging to the comedian as a result of the seeming collapse of the ''Rolling Stone'' story. When ] spoke about the rape allegations against her husband Bill Cosby, she said, "We all followed the story of the article in the ''Rolling Stone'' concerning allegations of rape at the University of Virginia. The story was heart-breaking, but ultimately appears to be proved untrue. Many in the media were quick to link that story to stories about my husband – until that story unwound."<ref>{{cite news |last=Moraski|first=Lauren|date=December 15, 2014|title=Bill Cosby's Wife Camille Speaks Up|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-cosbys-wife-camille-speaks-up/|newspaper=]|accessdate=January 22, 2015 }}</ref> Writing for Bloomberg, Zara Kessler observed that, "suddenly, every Cosby accuser is a potential 'Jackie'—although we don't yet know precisely what it means to be a 'Jackie.' How honest are the intentions of Cosby's accusers?"<ref>{{cite news |last=Kessler |first=Zara |date=8 December 2014 |title=Bill Cosby Should Thank Rolling Stone |url=http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-08/bill-cosby-is-grateful-for-rolling-stones-problems |newspaper=Bloomberg |location= |accessdate=10 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
</ref> It points out that ''Rolling Stone'' staff were initially unwilling to recognize these deficiencies and denied a need for policy changes.<ref name="columbiareport" /> | |||
===Reactions to investigations=== | |||
Other individuals and organizations have begun to reference the discredited ''Rolling Stone'' article when they want to disprove a claim or accusation. For example, when ] announced that it was producing "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief", a documentary critical of the ], church leaders called the film "a Rolling Stone/UVA Redux".<ref>{{cite news |last=Cieply|first=Michael|date=January 15, 2015|title=Documentary Draws Ire From the Church of Scientology|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/business/media/documentary-draws-ire-from-the-church-of-scientology.html|newspaper=]|accessdate=January 22, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
====''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s reaction==== | |||
''Rolling Stone'' fully retracted "A Rape on Campus" and removed the article from its website.<ref name="somaiya"/><ref name="columbiareport"> | |||
{{cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405|title=Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia School of Journalism Report|last=Coronel|first=Sheila|magazine=Rollingstone.com|access-date=April 6, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150406000123/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405|archive-date=April 6, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> However, Coco McPherson, who is in charge of ''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s fact-checking operation, said, "I one-hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed."<ref name="washingtonpost1"> | |||
{{cite news |last=Wemple |first=Erik |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/04/05/columbia-journalism-school-report-blasts-rolling-stone/ |title=Columbia Journalism School report blasts Rolling Stone |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=March 18, 2015 |access-date=April 6, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150407051152/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/04/05/columbia-journalism-school-report-blasts-rolling-stone/ |archive-date=April 7, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> ''Rolling Stone'' managing editor Will Dana was also cited on the Columbia report: "It's not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don't think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things."<ref name="washingtonpost1"/> | |||
Jill Geisler in the '']'' reacted to Dana's statement by saying, "At a time when humility should guide a leader's comments, that quote carries the aroma of arrogance."<ref name="cjrfirings">{{cite news |url=https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/firing_rolling_stone.php |title=Should there have been firings at Rolling Stone? |author=Jill Geisler |date=April 6, 2015 |work=] |access-date=April 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923204633/https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/firing_rolling_stone.php |archive-date=September 23, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
Jann Wenner added that "Will Dana, the magazine's managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs." Sabrina Erdely would also continue to write for ''Rolling Stone''.<ref name="somaiya"> | |||
In ], street artist Sabo papered ] with posters styled like a ''Rolling Stone'' cover featuring the headline "Rape Fantasies and Why We Perpetuate Them". The poster featured an image of ], whose own allegations of rape had recently come under scrutiny, and included a sidebar reference to "A Rape on Campus" that read "Our UVA Rape Apology: Ooops, we did it AGAIN!!!"<ref>{{cite news |last=Dount |first=Tina |date=8 December 2014 |title=Street Artist Sabo Blasts Lena Dunham, Bill Clinton in Fake Rolling Stone Covers |url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/street-artist-sabo-blasts-lena-754819 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=10 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/rolling-stone-retracts-article-on-rape-at-university-of-virginia.html |title=Rolling Stone Article on Rape at University of Virginia Failed All Basics, Report Says |first=Ravi|last=Somaiya |date=April 5, 2015 |newspaper=] |access-date=March 7, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150407005401/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/rolling-stone-retracts-article-on-rape-at-university-of-virginia.html |archive-date=April 7, 2015 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Wenner laid blame for the magazine's failures on Jackie. In an interview with ''The New York Times'', he called her, "a really expert fabulist storyteller", and added, "obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep."<ref> | |||
{{cite magazine |url=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rolling-stone-publisher-u.va.-accuser-an-expert-fabulist-storyteller/article/2562569 |title=Rolling Stone publisher: U.Va. accuser an 'expert fabulist storyteller' |author=Ashe Schow |date=April 5, 2015 |magazine=] |access-date=April 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150412135754/http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rolling-stone-publisher-u.va.-accuser-an-expert-fabulist-storyteller/article/2562569 |archive-date=April 12, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
In response to these statements, ] wrote in ''Bloomberg View'', "''Rolling Stone'' can't even apologize right."<ref> | |||
'']'' featured an episode titled "Devastating Story" in its 16th season whose plot was based on ''Rolling Stone's'' "A Rape on Campus" article. It featured a fictional protagonist named "Heather Manning" who was based on Jackie. In the episode, Heather fabricated a gang rape at a fraternity.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/law-order-svu-airs-university-virginia-rape-article-1.2171570 |title='Law & Order: SVU' airs take on University of Virginia frat house rape case |author=Melissa Chan |date=April 2, 2015 |work= |publisher=]'' |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-06/rolling-stone-can-t-even-apologize-right |title=Rolling Stone Can't Even Apologize Right |author=Megan McArdle |date=April 6, 2015 |publisher=Bloomberg View |access-date=April 11, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150410094429/http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-06/rolling-stone-can-t-even-apologize-right |archive-date=April 10, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
''Rolling Stone'' announced that Will Dana would leave his job at the magazine, effective August 7, 2015. When asked if Dana's departure was influenced by the debacle surrounding Erdely's article, the magazine's publisher responded that "many factors go into a decision like this".<ref> | |||
The North American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Council, meanwhile, have announced they have retained the services of ] to lobby the ] to take action to ensure that Greek-letter organizations are protected from future accusations of the kind leveled in Erdely's article.<ref>{{cite news |last=Severns |first=Maggie |date=7 December 2014 |title=Greek leaders go on the offensive at UVA|url=http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/uva-greek-system-rolling-stone-113385.html |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=8 December 2014 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |title=Will Dana, Rolling Stone's Managing Editor, to Depart |first=Ravi |last=Somaiya |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/media/will-dana-rolling-stones-managing-editor-to-depart.html |newspaper=] |date=July 29, 2015 |access-date=July 31, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150730160326/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/media/will-dana-rolling-stones-managing-editor-to-depart.html |archive-date=July 30, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> ] of '']'' called Dana's departure "four months too late".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |title=Editor who oversaw Rolling Stone's rape story departs magazine, four months too late |first=Erik |last=Wemple |author-link=Erik Wemple |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/07/30/editor-who-oversaw-rolling-stones-u-va-story-departs-magazine-four-months-too-late/ |newspaper=] |date=July 30, 2015 |access-date=July 31, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150909204125/https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/07/30/editor-who-oversaw-rolling-stones-u-va-story-departs-magazine-four-months-too-late/ |archive-date=September 9, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Dana was replaced by Jason Fine, the managing editor of '']''.<ref> | |||
{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/business/media/rolling-stone-appoints-a-new-managing-editor.html | work=The New York Times | first=Ravi | last=Somaiya | title=Rolling Stone Appoints a New Managing Editor | date=August 2, 2015 | access-date=March 1, 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161221191411/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/business/media/rolling-stone-appoints-a-new-managing-editor.html | archive-date=December 21, 2016 | url-status=live | df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
====Phi Kappa Psi's reaction==== | |||
''Washington Post'' media critic Erik Wemple stated that everyone connected to this story at ''Rolling Stone'' should be fired.<ref name="wapo ROLLING STONE'S DISASTROUS"/> After the Charlottesville Police made their official report, Wemple exclaimed, "What is left of the Rolling Stone piece? Very little. There's some reporting on the university's culture, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police; there's some reporting on the university leadership's approach to the issue, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police."<ref name="Erik Wemple"/> | |||
After the Charlottesville Police concluded that there was no evidence of a crime having occurred at Phi Kappa Psi during their press conference on March 23, 2015, Stephen Scipione, the president of Phi Kappa Psi's UVA chapter, announced that his fraternity is "exploring its legal options to address the extensive damage caused by ''Rolling Stone''".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://aig.alumni.virginia.edu/phipsi/2015/05/26/press-release-march-23-2015/|title=UVA's Phi Psi Responds to Cleared Rape Allegations|website=aig.alumni.virginia.edu|date=May 26, 2015|access-date=June 25, 2020|archive-date=August 5, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200805100754/https://aig.alumni.virginia.edu/phipsi/2015/05/26/press-release-march-23-2015/|url-status=live}}</ref> He added, "False accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://time.com/3755781/uva-fraternity-rolling-stone/|title=UVA Fraternity Considers Legal Action Over Rolling Stone Article|magazine=Time|date=March 24, 2015|last=Berenson|first=Tessa|access-date=June 25, 2020|archive-date=May 25, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240525021855/https://time.com/3755781/uva-fraternity-rolling-stone/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/uva-fraternity-exploring-legal-options-address-extensive-damage/story?id=29848573|title=UVA Fraternity Exploring Legal Options to Address 'Extensive Damage Caused by Rolling Stone'|work=ABC News|date=March 23, 2015|last1=Faulders|first1=Katherine|last2=Shapiro|first2=Emily|access-date=June 25, 2020|archive-date=November 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108090022/https://abcnews.go.com/US/uva-fraternity-exploring-legal-options-address-extensive-damage/story?id=29848573|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
Phi Kappa Psi's national headquarters released the following statement: "That ''Rolling Stone'' sought to turn fiction into fact is shameful...The discredited article has done significant damage to the ability of the chapter's members to succeed in their educational pursuits and besmirched the character of undergraduate students at the University of Virginia who did not deserve the spotlight of the media." They went on to call for ''Rolling Stone'' to "fully and unconditionally retract its story and immediately remove the story from its website".<ref> | |||
Media sources and commentators discussed the UVa allegations in the context of the reported "]" or a rampant sexual assault epidemic that activists had claimed existed on US college campuses. The media commentators noted that the claims of a rape culture's existence on campuses was not supported by US government statistics or other measures.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/gateway-to-dc/campus-sexual-assault-under-fresh-scrutiny-after-new-survey-shows/article_8ea64e9d-5dbc-532f-b04d-39465ee20aa5.html |title=Campus sexual assault under fresh scrutiny after new survey shows lower incidence : News |publisher=Stltoday.com |date=2014-12-26 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21635500-folly-letting-amateurs-handle-serious-crimes-professors-judges |title=Sex crimes on campus: Professors as judges |publisher=Economist.com |date=2014-12-06 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|author= |url=http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/14/campus-rape-uva-crisis-rolling-stone-politics-column/20397277/ |title=The great campus rape hoax: Column |publisher=Usatoday.com |date=2014-12-15 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> ] in the '']'' referenced the ''Rolling Stone'' article in opining that the college sexual assault "scare" follows a long tradition of runaway, exaggerated social epidemics that "have ruined innocent lives and corrupted justice. A return to sanity is called for before more wreckage occurs."<ref>{{cite web|author= |url=http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/20/the-new-panic-campus-sex-assaults/0X0a9RoCySmrLUMFQ73kWM/story.html |title=The new panic: campus sex assaults – Opinion |publisher=Bostonglobe.com |date=2015-02-20 |accessdate=2015-03-14}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/23/rolling-stone-rape-virginia/70327244/ |title=Police unable to verify 'Rolling Stone' rape story |author=John Bacon & Marison Bello |date=March 23, 2015 |newspaper=] |access-date=March 24, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150323223421/http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/23/rolling-stone-rape-virginia/70327244/ |archive-date=March 23, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> Phi Kappa Psi's national president Scott Noble stated that they were "now pursuing serious legal action toward ''Rolling Stone'', the author and editor, and even Jackie".{{citation needed|date=May 2021}} | |||
====University of Virginia's reaction==== | |||
'']'' columnist ] has called for Phi Kappa Psi to sue ''Rolling Stone'', while at least one legal expert has opined there is a high likelihood of "civil lawsuits by the fraternity members or by the fraternity itself against the magazine and maybe even some university officials."<ref>{{cite news |last=Goldberg|first=Jonah |date=5 December 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Crumbles |url=http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/394084/rolling-stone-crumbles-jonah-goldberg |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=|first=|date=5 December 2014 |title=Civil, Criminal Lawsuits: Possible Outcomes of ''Rolling Stone'' Expose |url=http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/CBS19-Legal-Analyst-Discusses-Legal-Ramifications-of-Rolling-Stone-Discrepancies-284934851.html?ref=851 |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> ABC News has reported the accuser, Jackie, herself might be sued.<ref name="ABC" /> By December 5, 2014, Christopher Pivik, a former member of Phi Kappa Psi at the University of Virginia, had retained attorney Andrew Miltenberg.<ref>{{cite news |last=|first=|date=5 December 2014 |title=Former UVA Fraternity Member Hires Lawyer Who Specializes in Sex Assault Cases|url=http://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/former-uva-fraternity-member-hires-lawyer-for-accused-men |newspaper=] |location= |accessdate=5 December 2014 }}</ref> According to Miltenberg, he specializes in "defamation and complex internet and First Amendment issues."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nmllplaw.com/Attorneys/Andrew-T-Miltenberg.shtml |title=Andrew T. Miltenberg |last1= |first1= |last2= |first2= |date= |website=Nielsonoff & Miltenberg |publisher= |accessdate=8 December 2014}}</ref> | |||
After both the Charlottesville Police press conference and Columbia University's investigative report, UVA President Teresa Sullivan released the following statement: | |||
{{blockquote|''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s story, 'A Rape on Campus', did nothing to combat sexual violence, and it damaged serious efforts to address the issue. Irresponsible journalism unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia. Rolling Stone falsely accused some University of Virginia students of heinous, criminal acts, and falsely depicted others as indifferent to the suffering of their classmate. The story portrayed University staff members as manipulative and callous toward victims of sexual assault. Such false depictions reinforce the reluctance sexual assault victims already feel about reporting their experience, lest they be doubted or ignored. | |||
===Police investigation=== | |||
On January 12, 2015, the University of Virginia reinstated the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity after the police investigation concluded that no incident had occurred at the fraternity. According to Charlottesville Police Capt. Gary Pleasants, Phi Kappa Psi has been cleared; "We found no basis to believe that an incident occurred at that fraternity, so there's no reason to keep them suspended."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/phi-kappa-psi-fraternity-reinstated-at-university-of-virginia/2015/01/12/1b6ddd50-9a69-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html|title=Police clear U-Va. fraternity, say rape did not happen there|work=Washington Post|accessdate=23 March 2015|first=T. Rees|last=Shapiro|date=12 January 2015}}</ref> On March 23, 2015, police noted that Jackie refused to cooperate with law enforcement during the investigation. Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo explained, "We would've loved to have had Jackie come in ... and tell us what happened so we can obtain justice ... even if the facts were different."<ref>], "", '']'', 23 March 2014</ref> | |||
The Charlottesville Police Department investigation confirms that far from being callous, our staff members are diligent and devoted in supporting and caring for students. I offer our community's genuine gratitude for their devotion and perseverance in their service.<ref> | |||
Over the course of 4 months, the Charlottesville Police spoke to 70 people, including Jackie's friends, Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, and employees at the UVa Aquatic Center, where Jackie worked. No one supplied evidence to corroborate Jackie's accusations of a gang rape happening or that the accused rapist, supposedly named "Drew" or "Haven Monahan", even existed. The police were also unable to corraborate Jackie's allegations that two other sexual assaults had taken place at the fraternity house or that she had been assaulted and hit in the face by a bottle in a separate incident. Therefore, the criminal investigation was suspended.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/investigation-prompted-alleged-rape-story-released-29835224 |title=Police: No Evidence of Gang-Rape at University of Virginia |author=Larry O'Dell |date=March 23, 2015 |work= |publisher=] |accessdate=March 23, 2015}}</ref><ref name="No Evidence"/> | |||
{{cite news |url=http://news.virginia.edu/content/president-teresa-sullivan-statement-regarding-columbia-university-graduate-school-journalism |title=President Teresa A. Sullivan Statement Regarding Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report |date=April 5, 2015 |publisher=UVA Today |access-date=April 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150408145359/http://news.virginia.edu/content/president-teresa-sullivan-statement-regarding-columbia-university-graduate-school-journalism |archive-date=April 8, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref>}} | |||
==Consequences== | |||
===Columbia University School of Journalism's investigation=== | |||
'']'' reported that the members of Phi Kappa Psi "went into hiding for weeks after their home was vandalized with spray paint calling them rapists and bricks that broke their windows", and had to escape to hotels. The report indicated the college students suffered disgust, emotion, and confusion. Some students "actually had to leave the room while they were reading because they were so upset." A former student who graduated in 2013 said "the day came out was the most emotionally grueling of my life."<ref> | |||
After the details in "A Rape on Campus" began to unravel, ''Rolling Stone's'' publisher ] commissioned ]'s School of Journalism to investigate the failures behind the publication of the article. On April 5, 2015, Columbia's 12,000-word review of "A Rape on Campus" was published on both ''Rolling Stone's'' and the journalism school's websites. It was prepared by Steve Coll, the dean of Columbia's journalism school; Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs; and Derek Kravitz, a graduate school researcher.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.vox.com/2015/4/5/8347011/uva-rolling-stone-report |title=Rolling Stone retracts story on alleged UVA rape |author=Libby Nelson |date=April 5, 2015 |work= |publisher=''Vox'' |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> The report stated, "''Rolling Stone's'' repudiation of the main narrative in "A Rape on Campus" is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine's editors to reconsider publishing Jackie's narrative so prominently, if at all. The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine's reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/06/rolling-stone-isnt-firing-anyone-thats-terrible-for-journalism/ |title=Rolling Stone isn't firing anyone. That's terrible for journalism |author=Chris Cillizza |date=April 6, 2015 |work= |publisher='']'' |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-phi-kappa-psi-members-speak-about-impact-of-discredited-gang-rape-allegations/2015/01/14/d781ad90-9c04-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html|title=U-Va. Phi Psi members speak about impact of discredited gang rape allegations|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=February 8, 2015|first=T. Rees|last=Shapiro|date=January 14, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150121071304/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-phi-kappa-psi-members-speak-about-impact-of-discredited-gang-rape-allegations/2015/01/14/d781ad90-9c04-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html|archive-date=January 21, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> Phi Kappa Psi members received death threats and the president of the university postponed all events related to its fraternities and sororities until mid-January 2015.<ref> | |||
{{cite news|last1=Zurcher|first1=Anthony|title=Rolling Stone apologises for Virginia rape story|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30355922|access-date=November 5, 2016|work=BBC News|date=December 5, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161105163939/http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30355922|archive-date=November 5, 2016|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
One month after the publication of the ''Rolling Stone'' article, the Rector of the University of Virginia, George Keith Martin, accused the magazine of "drive-by journalism" when he stated, "Like a neighborhood thrown into chaos by drive-by violence, our tightly knit community has experienced the full fury of drive-by journalism in the 21st century."<ref> | |||
===''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s reaction to the investigations=== | |||
{{cite news |last=Anderson |first=Nick |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-board-leader-denounces-drive-by-journalism-of-rolling-stone/2014/12/19/47980410-87b7-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html |title=U-Va. board leader denounces 'drive-by journalism' of Rolling Stone's rape article |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=December 19, 2014 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141229212359/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-board-leader-denounces-drive-by-journalism-of-rolling-stone/2014/12/19/47980410-87b7-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html |archive-date=December 29, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
''Rolling Stone'' fully retracted "A Rape on Campus" and removed the article from its website. However, Coco McPherson, who is in charge of ''Rolling Stone's'' fact-checking operation, said, "I one-hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed."<ref name="washingtonpost1">{{cite news|last=Wemple |first=Erik |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/04/05/columbia-journalism-school-report-blasts-rolling-stone/ |title=Columbia Journalism School report blasts Rolling Stone |publisher=Washingtonpost.com |date=2015-03-18 |accessdate=2015-04-06}}</ref> ''Rolling Stone'' managing editor Will Dana was also cited on the Columbia report: "It's not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don't think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things."<ref name="washingtonpost1"/> Jill Geisler in the '']'' reacted to Dana's statement by saying, "At a time when humility should guide a leader's comments, that quote carries the aroma of arrogance."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/firing_rolling_stone.php |title=Should there have been firings at Rolling Stone? |author=Jill Geisler |date=April 6, 2015 |work=] |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
</ref> | |||
According to the Columbia report, "Allen W. Groves, the University dean of students, and Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean of students, separately wrote to the authors of this report that the story's account of their actions was inaccurate." Columbia published Groves' letter, where he contrasts video<ref>{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppd_pX5Zy44|title=BOV Student Affairs & Athletics Committee with Full Board – September 12, 2014|date=September 16, 2014|publisher=University of Virginia|access-date=April 9, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141130032447/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppd_pX5Zy44|archive-date=November 30, 2014|via=]|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
Jann Wenner added that "Will Dana, the magazine's managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs." Sabrina Erdely would also continue to write for ''Rolling Stone''.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/rolling-stone-retracts-article-on-rape-at-university-of-virginia.html |title=Rolling Stone Article on Rape at University of Virginia Failed All Basics, Report Says |author=Ravi Somaiya |date=April 5, 2015 |work= |publisher='']'' |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> Wenner laid blame for the magazine's failures on Jackie. In an interview with the ''New York Times'', he called her, "a really expert fabulist storyteller", and added, "obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rolling-stone-publisher-u.va.-accuser-an-expert-fabulist-storyteller/article/2562569 |title=Rolling Stone publisher: U.Va. accuser an 'expert fabulist storyteller' |author=Ashe Schow |date=April 5, 2015 |work= |publisher=] |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
</ref> of his statements to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors in September 2014 with the text of Erdely's published article, which differ significantly,{{citation needed|date=October 2019}} and concludes that Erdely's article contains "bias and malice".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UAuEqoequKWEMyV1JlUFRqdjA/view?pli=1|title=Dean Coll and Dean Coronel Ltr from AW Groves March 6, 2015-2.pdf|work=Google Docs|access-date=April 9, 2015|archive-date=April 19, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150419075632/https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UAuEqoequKWEMyV1JlUFRqdjA/view?pli=1|url-status=live}}</ref> Erdely furthermore reported that ] Assistant Secretary ] called Grove's statements at the meeting "deliberate and irresponsible".<ref> | |||
{{cite web|url=http://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-rolling-story-about-rape-at-uva-got-right-2014-12|last=Jacobs|first=Peter|title=Here Are Some Big Things The Rolling Stone Story About Rape At UVA Got Right|website=]|date=December 8, 2014|access-date=August 14, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170815101433/http://www.businessinsider.com/what-the-rolling-story-about-rape-at-uva-got-right-2014-12|archive-date=August 15, 2017|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
</ref> | |||
On January 30, 2015, ], the President of the University of Virginia, acknowledged that the ''Rolling Stone'' story was "discredited" in her State of the University Address. In her remarks, she said, "Before the ''Rolling Stone'' story was discredited, it seemed to resonate with some people simply because it confirmed their darkest suspicions about universities—that administrations are corrupt; that today's students are reckless and irresponsible; that fraternities are hot-beds of deviant behavior."<ref>{{cite press release |date=January 30, 2015 |title=Prepared Remarks for Presidential Address on the University |url=http://www.virginia.edu/president/speeches/message150130.html |publisher=University of Virginia |access-date=January 30, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150131151849/http://www.virginia.edu/president/speeches/message150130.html |archive-date=January 31, 2015 |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref> | |||
In response to these statements, ] wrote in ''Bloomberg View'', "Rolling Stone can't even apologize right."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-06/rolling-stone-can-t-even-apologize-right |title=Rolling Stone Can't Even Apologize Right |author=Megan McArdle |date=April 6, 2015 |work= |publisher=''Bloomberg View'' |accessdate=April 11, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Schow |first=Ashe |date=January 30, 2015 |title=U.Va. president admits rape story was false; keeps restrictions on fraternities |url=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/u.va.-president-admits-rape-story-was-false-keeps-restrictions-on-frats/article/2559584 |newspaper=] |access-date=January 31, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150131113813/http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/u.va.-president-admits-rape-story-was-false-keeps-restrictions-on-frats/article/2559584 |archive-date=January 31, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/UVa-President-School-to-Be-National-Leader-on-Campus-Safety-290399841.html|title=U.Va. President: School to Be National Leader on Campus Safety|publisher=NBC|date=January 30, 2015|last=Vergakis|first=Brock|access-date=June 25, 2020|archive-date=October 11, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191011235649/https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/UVa-President-School-to-Be-National-Leader-on-Campus-Safety-290399841.html|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
The ''Rolling Stone'' article had a negative effect on applications to the University of Virginia. For the first time since 2002, applications to the university dropped. Prior to the publication of the story, early-action applications were up 7.5 percent with 16,187 applicants. However overall applications were down 0.7 percent to 31,107 in the aftermath of the publication.<ref> | |||
''Rolling Stone'' announced that Will Dana will leave his job at the magazine, effective August 7, 2015. When asked if Dana's departure was influenced by the debacle surrounding Erdely's article, the magazine's publisher responded that "many factors go into a decision like this".<ref>{{cite news |title=Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s Managing Editor, to Depart |first=Ravi |last=Somaiya |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/media/will-dana-rolling-stones-managing-editor-to-depart.html |newspaper=] |date=July 29, 2015 |accessdate=July 31, 2015}}</ref> ] of '']'' called Dana's departure "four months too late".<ref>{{cite news |title=Editor who oversaw Rolling Stone’s rape story departs magazine, four months too late |first=Erik |last=Wemple |authorlink=Erik Wemple |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/07/30/editor-who-oversaw-rolling-stones-u-va-story-departs-magazine-four-months-too-late/ |newspaper=] |date=July 30, 2015 |accessdate=July 31, 2015}}</ref> Dana was replaced by Jason Fine, the managing editor of '']''.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/business/media/rolling-stone-appoints-a-new-managing-editor.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&hp | work=The New York Times | first=Ravi | last=Somaiya | title=Rolling Stone Appoints a New Managing Editor | date=2 August 2015}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Staiti |first=Chris |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-15/uva-applications-drop-in-wake-of-now-discredited-gang-rape-story.html |title=UVA Applications Drop in Wake of Discredited Gang-Rape Story – Bloomberg Business |publisher=Bloomberg.com |date=January 15, 2015 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150122034849/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-15/uva-applications-drop-in-wake-of-now-discredited-gang-rape-story.html |archive-date=January 22, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
National sorority leaders ordered UVA sororities to not interact with fraternities during Boys Bid Night when fraternities admit new pledges. Virginia sorority members called the restrictions "unnecessary and patronizing".<ref> | |||
===Phi Kappa Psi's reaction to the investigations=== | |||
{{cite news |title=Party Ban Is Patronizing, U.Va. Sorority Women Say |url=http://news.mpbn.net/post/uva-sorority-women-say-party-ban-patronizing |date=January 30, 2015 |publisher=MPBN News |access-date=January 31, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150201011027/http://news.mpbn.net/post/uva-sorority-women-say-party-ban-patronizing |archive-date=February 1, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
After the Charlottesville Police concluded that there was no evidence of a crime having occurred at Phi Kappa Psi during their press conference on March 23, 2015, Stephen Scipione, the president of Phi Kappa Psi's UVa chapter, announced that his fraternity is "exploring its legal options to address the extensive damage caused by ''Rolling Stone''",<ref>Ross, Chuck, "", ']'', 23 March 2015</ref> He added, "False accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault."<ref name="No Evidence">{{cite news |url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3007382/Investigation-prompted-alleged-rape-story-released.html |title=Fraternity set to sue after police suspend UVA rape investigation because there is NO evidence of a crime and the member victim 'Jackie' named does not seem to exist at all |author=Ashley Collman |date=March 23, 2015 |work= |publisher='']'' |accessdate=March 24, 2015 |location=London}}</ref> | |||
</ref> | |||
===Sexual assault skepticism=== | |||
Phi Kappa Psi's national headquarters released the following statement. "That Rolling Stone sought to turn fiction into fact is shameful...The discredited article has done significant damage to the ability of the chapter's members to succeed in their educational pursuits and besmirched the character of undergraduate students at the University of Virginia who did not deserve the spotlight of the media." They went on to call for ''Rolling Stone'' to "fully and unconditionally retract its story and immediately remove the story from its website".<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/23/rolling-stone-rape-virginia/70327244/ |title=Police unable to verify 'Rolling Stone' rape story |author=John Bacon & Marison Bello |date=March 23, 2015 |work= |publisher='']'' |accessdate=March 24, 2015 }}</ref> Phi Kappa Psi's national president Scott Noble stated that they are "now pursuing serious legal action toward ''Rolling Stone'', the author and editor, and even Jackie". | |||
Due to increased social skepticism about the prevalence of sexual assault created by the unraveling of Erdely's ''Rolling Stone'' report, the ] would be "much harder" to enact, according to ],<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Carlson |first=Margaret |date=December 9, 2014 |title=Rolling Stone may have crushed anti-rape bill |url=http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/12/09/rolling-stone-may-crushed-anti-rape-bill/20148205/ |newspaper=News Journal |access-date=December 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141216180928/http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/12/09/rolling-stone-may-crushed-anti-rape-bill/20148205/ |archive-date=December 16, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> and ultimately did not pass in that congressional session. ] said that female rape victims will probably be less likely to report sexual assaults for fear of being questioned by "some teenage ]ner".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=West |first=Lindy |date=December 9, 2014 |title=Rolling Stone threw a rape victim to the misogynist horde |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/09/rolling-stone-threw-a-rape-victim-to-the-misogynist-horde |newspaper=] |access-date=December 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141209194132/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/09/rolling-stone-threw-a-rape-victim-to-the-misogynist-horde |archive-date=December 9, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> ] issued a call for media outlets to begin to publicly name rape accusers, explaining that "reporters and editors should expand their sensitivities to include the reputations of those accused, not always justly".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Harrop |first=Froma |date=December 9, 2014 |title=Make rape identities public |url=http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/12/10/make-rape-identities-public/20137249/ |newspaper=] |access-date=December 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171009093851/http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/12/10/make-rape-identities-public/20137249/ |archive-date=October 9, 2017 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
Several commentators hypothesized that ], which surfaced at the same time as the publication of "A Rape on Campus", would be less damaging to the comedian as a result of the seeming collapse of the ''Rolling Stone'' story. When ] spoke about the rape allegations against her husband Bill, she said: "We all followed the story of the article in the ''Rolling Stone'' concerning allegations of rape at the University of Virginia. The story was heart-breaking, but ultimately appears to be proved untrue. Many in the media were quick to link that story to stories about my husband – until that story unwound."<ref> | |||
===University of Virginia's reaction to the investigations=== | |||
{{cite news|last=Moraski|first=Lauren|date=December 15, 2014|title=Bill Cosby's Wife Camille Speaks Up|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-cosbys-wife-camille-speaks-up/|newspaper=]|access-date=January 22, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150122010602/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-cosbys-wife-camille-speaks-up/|archive-date=January 22, 2015|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
After both the Charlottesville Police press conference and Columbia University's investigative report, UVa President Teresa Sullivan released the following statement: | |||
</ref> Writing for Bloomberg, Zara Kessler observed that, "suddenly, every Cosby accuser is a potential 'Jackie'—although we don't yet know precisely what it means to be a 'Jackie.' How honest are the intentions of Cosby's accusers?"<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Kessler |first=Zara |date=December 8, 2014 |title=Bill Cosby Should Thank Rolling Stone |url=http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-08/bill-cosby-is-grateful-for-rolling-stones-problems |newspaper=Bloomberg |access-date=December 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141211122304/http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-08/bill-cosby-is-grateful-for-rolling-stones-problems |archive-date=December 11, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
The North American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Council, meanwhile, announced that they had retained the services of ] to lobby the ] to take action to ensure that Greek-letter organizations are protected from future accusations of the kind leveled in Erdely's article.<ref> | |||
"Rolling Stone's story, 'A Rape on Campus', did nothing to combat sexual violence, and it damaged serious efforts to address the issue. Irresponsible journalism unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia. Rolling Stone falsely accused some University of Virginia students of heinous, criminal acts, and falsely depicted others as indifferent to the suffering of their classmate. The story portrayed University staff members as manipulative and callous toward victims of sexual assault. Such false depictions reinforce the reluctance sexual assault victims already feel about reporting their experience, lest they be doubted or ignored. | |||
{{cite news |last=Severns |first=Maggie |date=December 7, 2014 |title=Greek leaders go on the offensive at UVA |url=http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/uva-greek-system-rolling-stone-113385.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141226152423/http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/uva-greek-system-rolling-stone-113385.html |archive-date=December 26, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
Media sources and commentators discussed the allegations in the context of the reported "]" or a rampant sexual assault epidemic that activists had claimed existed on U.S. college campuses. The media commentators noted that the claims of a rape culture's existence on campuses was not supported by U.S. government statistics or other measures.<ref> | |||
"The Charlottesville Police Department investigation confirms that far from being callous, our staff members are diligent and devoted in supporting and caring for students. I offer our community's genuine gratitude for their devotion and perseverance in their service."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.virginia.edu/content/president-teresa-sullivan-statement-regarding-columbia-university-graduate-school-journalism |title=President Teresa A. Sullivan Statement Regarding Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report |author= |date=April 5, 2015 |work= |publisher=''UVA Today'' |accessdate=April 7, 2015 }}</ref> | |||
{{cite web |url=https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/gateway-to-dc/campus-sexual-assault-under-fresh-scrutiny-after-new-survey-shows/article_8ea64e9d-5dbc-532f-b04d-39465ee20aa5.html |title=Campus sexual assault under fresh scrutiny after new survey shows lower incidence : News |publisher=Stltoday.com |date=December 26, 2014 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160620100927/http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/gateway-to-dc/campus-sexual-assault-under-fresh-scrutiny-after-new-survey-shows/article_8ea64e9d-5dbc-532f-b04d-39465ee20aa5.html |archive-date=June 20, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21635500-folly-letting-amateurs-handle-serious-crimes-professors-judges |title=Sex crimes on campus: Professors as judges |publisher=Economist.com |date=December 6, 2014 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150330153629/http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21635500-folly-letting-amateurs-handle-serious-crimes-professors-judges |archive-date=March 30, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/14/campus-rape-uva-crisis-rolling-stone-politics-column/20397277/ |title=The great campus rape hoax: Column |work=USA Today |date=December 15, 2014 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150317003410/http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/14/campus-rape-uva-crisis-rolling-stone-politics-column/20397277/ |archive-date=March 17, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> ] in '']'' referenced the ''Rolling Stone'' article in opining that the college sexual assault "scare" follows a long tradition of runaway, exaggerated social epidemics that "have ruined innocent lives and corrupted justice. A return to sanity is called for before more wreckage occurs."<ref> | |||
{{cite web |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/20/the-new-panic-campus-sex-assaults/0X0a9RoCySmrLUMFQ73kWM/story.html |title=The new panic: campus sex assaults – Opinion |publisher=The Boston Globe |date=February 20, 2015 |access-date=March 14, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150312010301/http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/20/the-new-panic-campus-sex-assaults/0X0a9RoCySmrLUMFQ73kWM/story.html |archive-date=March 12, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
===Media criticism=== | |||
''The Washington Post'' media critic Erik Wemple stated that everyone connected to this story at ''Rolling Stone'' should be fired.<ref name=wapodisastrous/> | |||
After the Charlottesville Police made their official report, Wemple said: "What is left of the Rolling Stone piece? Very little. There's some reporting on the university's culture, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police; there's some reporting on the university leadership's approach to the issue, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police."<ref name="wemplecrock">{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/23/charlottesville-police-make-clear-that-rolling-stone-story-is-a-complete-crock/ |title=Charlottesville police make clear that Rolling Stone story is a complete crock |author=Erik Wemple |date=March 23, 2015 |newspaper=] |access-date=March 24, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150324040118/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/23/charlottesville-police-make-clear-that-rolling-stone-story-is-a-complete-crock/ |archive-date=March 24, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
'']'' columnist ] has called for Phi Kappa Psi to sue ''Rolling Stone'', while at least one legal expert has opined that there is a high likelihood of "civil lawsuits by the fraternity members or by the fraternity itself against the magazine and maybe even some university officials".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Goldberg |first=Jonah |date=December 5, 2014 |title=''Rolling Stone'' Crumbles |url=http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/394084/rolling-stone-crumbles-jonah-goldberg |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206023539/http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/394084/rolling-stone-crumbles-jonah-goldberg |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
{{cite news |date=December 5, 2014 |title=Civil, Criminal Lawsuits: Possible Outcomes of ''Rolling Stone'' Expose |url=http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/CBS19-Legal-Analyst-Discusses-Legal-Ramifications-of-Rolling-Stone-Discrepancies-284934851.html |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161005171757/http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/CBS19-Legal-Analyst-Discusses-Legal-Ramifications-of-Rolling-Stone-Discrepancies-284934851.html |archive-date=October 5, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> ABC News has reported that the accuser, Jackie, herself might be sued.<ref name="ABC" /> | |||
By December 5, 2014, Christopher Pivik, a former member of Phi Kappa Psi at the University of Virginia, had retained attorney Andrew Miltenberg.<ref>{{cite news |date=December 5, 2014 |title=Former UVA Fraternity Member Hires Lawyer Who Specializes in Sex Assault Cases |url=https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/former-uva-fraternity-member-hires-lawyer-for-accused-men |newspaper=] |access-date=December 5, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141206011517/http://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/former-uva-fraternity-member-hires-lawyer-for-accused-men |archive-date=December 6, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> According to Miltenberg, he specializes in "defamation and complex internet and First Amendment issues".<ref> | |||
{{cite web |url=http://www.nmllplaw.com/Attorneys/Andrew-T-Miltenberg.shtml |title=Andrew T. Miltenberg |website=Nielsonoff & Miltenberg |access-date=December 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141209034406/http://www.nmllplaw.com/Attorneys/Andrew-T-Miltenberg.shtml |archive-date=December 9, 2014 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
Columbia journalism professor Bill Grueskin called the story "a mess—thinly sourced, full of erroneous assumptions, and plagued by gaping holes in the reporting".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Campos |first=Paul F. |date=August 21, 2015 |title=Alice Goffman's Implausible Ethnography |url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/alice-goffmans-implausible-ethnography/ |url-access=registration |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801041712/https://www.chronicle.com/article/alice-goffmans-implausible-ethnography/ |archive-date=August 1, 2020 |website=The Chronicle of Higher Education}}</ref> The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' declared the story the winner of "this year's media-fail sweepstakes".<ref name="cjrworst">{{cite news|url=https://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/the_worst_journalism_of_2014.php|title=The worst journalism of 2014|last=Uberti|first=David|date=December 22, 2014|newspaper=]|access-date=December 23, 2014|archive-date=December 24, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141224064052/http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/the_worst_journalism_of_2014.php|url-status=live}}</ref> The ] named the story the "Error of the Year" in journalism.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/306801/the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections-2014/|title=The year in media errors and corrections 2014|publisher=Poynter.org|access-date=March 14, 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150315015756/http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/306801/the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections-2014/|archive-date=March 15, 2015|df=mdy-all}}</ref> | |||
===Lawsuits=== | ===Lawsuits=== | ||
On May 12, 2015, UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, chief administrator for handling sexual assault issues at the school, filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit in Charlottesville Circuit Court against ''Rolling Stone'' and Erdely, claiming damage to her reputation and emotional distress. |
On May 12, 2015, UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, chief administrator for handling sexual assault issues at the school, filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit in Charlottesville Circuit Court against ''Rolling Stone'' and Erdely, claiming damage to her reputation and emotional distress. Said the filing: "''Rolling Stone'' and Erdely's highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake. They were the result of a wanton journalist who was more concerned with writing an article that fulfilled her preconceived narrative about the victimization of women on American college campuses, and a malicious publisher who was more concerned about selling magazines to boost the economic bottom line for its faltering magazine, than they were about discovering the truth or actual facts."<ref> | ||
{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=T. Rees |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-dean-sues-rolling-stone-for-false-portrayal-in-retracted-rape-story/2015/05/12/2128a84a-f862-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html |title=U-Va. Dean Sues Rolling Stone for 'False' Portrayal in Retracted Rape Story |newspaper=] |date=May 12, 2015 |access-date=August 23, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150513080410/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-dean-sues-rolling-stone-for-false-portrayal-in-retracted-rape-story/2015/05/12/2128a84a-f862-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html |archive-date=May 13, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> In February 2016, the judge in the lawsuit ordered Jackie to appear at a deposition on April 5, 2016.<ref>{{cite web |last=Wofford |first=Taylor |url=https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/%e2%80%98rolling-stone-magazine%e2%80%99s-jackie-to-appear-in-court/ar-BBpK9YP?li=BBnb7Kz |title='Rolling Stone' Magazine's 'Jackie' to Appear in Court |work=MSN/Newsweekl |date=February 21, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160331075415/http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/%E2%80%98rolling-stone-magazine%E2%80%99s-jackie-to-appear-in-court/ar-BBpK9YP?li=BBnb7Kz |archive-date=March 31, 2016 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> On March 30, 2016, ''The Washington Post'' reported that Jackie's lawyers requested the April deposition be cancelled, to avoid having her "revisit her sexual assault".<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last1=Shapiro |first1=T. Rees |title=Attorneys for 'Jackie' in Rolling Stone Lawsuit Protest Under-Oath Deposition, Say It Could 'Re-Traumatize' Her |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/30/lawyers-for-jackie-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-protest-under-oath-deposition-say-it-could-re-traumatize-her/ |access-date=March 31, 2016 |newspaper=] |date=March 30, 2016 |quote="Forcing her to revisit her sexual assault, and then the re-victimization that took place after the Rolling Stone article came out, will inevitably lead to a worsening of her symptoms and current mental health," Jackie's attorneys wrote, citing "extensive support in the medical literature" that shows "sexual assault victims will experience trauma if they are forced to revisit the details of their assault." |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160830112343/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/30/lawyers-for-jackie-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit-protest-under-oath-deposition-say-it-could-re-traumatize-her/ |archive-date=August 30, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> However, on April 2, 2016, the judge denied the motions and ordered Jackie to appear for a deposition on April 6, to be held at a secret location.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |title=Former U-va. Student 'Jackie' to Sit for Deposition in Rolling Stone Lawsuit |first=T. Rees |last=Shapiro |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/05/former-u-va-student-jackie-to-sit-for-deposition-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit/ |newspaper=] |date=April 5, 2016 |access-date=April 6, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161211160819/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/05/former-u-va-student-jackie-to-sit-for-deposition-in-rolling-stone-lawsuit/ |archive-date=December 11, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> On November 4, 2016, after 20 hours of deliberation,<ref> | |||
{{cite web |last=Berg |first=Lauren |url=http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/rolling-stone-defendants-liable-for-defamation/article_89a5c93e-a2b6-11e6-84b2-2f2e7789ea55.html |title=Jury says Rolling Stone article defamed UVa administrator | Local |website=Dailyprogress.com |date=October 31, 2016 |access-date=November 5, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060902102236/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10224178/our_1000th_issue |archive-date=September 2, 2006 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> a jury consisting of eight women and two men found ''Rolling Stone'', the magazine's publisher and Erdely liable for defaming Eramo.<ref> | |||
{{cite web |last=Horowitz |first=Julia |url=https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/media/uva-rolling-stone-defamation-jury/index.html |title=Rolling Stone trial: Jury finds magazine liable for defamation for discredited rape story – Nov. 4, 2016 |website=Money.cnn.com |date=November 4, 2016 |access-date=November 5, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161105032143/https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/media/uva-rolling-stone-defamation-jury/index.html |archive-date=November 5, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> On November 7, 2016, the jury decided that ''Rolling Stone'' and Erdely were liable for $3 million in damages to Eramo.<ref name="Spencer Sisario 2016"> | |||
{{cite news | last1=Spencer | first1=Hawes | last2=Sisario | first2=Ben | title=In Rolling Stone Defamation Case, Magazine and Reporter Ordered to Pay $3 Million | newspaper=The New York Times | date=November 7, 2016 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/in-rolling-stone-defamation-case-magazine-and-reporter-ordered-to-pay-3-million.html | access-date=November 8, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161108124239/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/in-rolling-stone-defamation-case-magazine-and-reporter-ordered-to-pay-3-million.html | archive-date=November 8, 2016 | url-status=live | df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> The lawsuit was settled on April 11, 2017.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McCallister |first=Doreen |date=2017-04-12 |title='Rolling Stone' Settles Defamation Case With Former U.Va. Associate Dean |language=en |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/12/523527227/rolling-stone-settles-defamation-case-with-former-u-va-associate-dean |access-date=2022-05-29}}</ref> | |||
On November 9, 2015, Phi Kappa Psi filed a $25 million lawsuit against ''Rolling Stone'' in state court "to seek redress for the wanton destruction caused to Phi Kappa Psi by ''Rolling Stone''{{'}}s intentional, reckless, and unethical behavior".<ref> | |||
On July 29, 2015, three individual members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity who had been named and shamed online after the publication of the story, filed a defamation suit against the magazine in New York City, stating that the published story, while not explicitly naming them, provided enough details for people to identify them.<ref>{{cite news |title=Rolling Stone to face false campus rape article lawsuit |author= |url=http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33714479 |publisher=BBC News |date=July 30, 2015 |accessdate=July 30, 2015}}</ref> The following December, attorneys for ''Rolling Stone'' filed a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed, stating that the article “cannot reasonably be read as accusing all members of these groups of committing rape.”<ref>{{cite news|title=Rolling Stone urges court to throw out UVa grads’ lawsuit|url=http://wavy.com/2015/12/24/rolling-stone-urges-court-to-throw-out-uva-grads-lawsuit/|accessdate=26 December 2015|work=]|date=24 December 2015}}</ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Shapiro |first=T. Rees |title=U-Va. Fraternity Files $25 Million Lawsuit Against Rolling Stone |newspaper=] |date=November 9, 2015 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/11/09/phi-psi-chapter-at-u-va-files-25-million-lawsuit-against-rolling-stone/ |access-date=July 3, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160601154120/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/11/09/phi-psi-chapter-at-u-va-files-25-million-lawsuit-against-rolling-stone/ |archive-date=June 1, 2016 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref><ref> | |||
Complaint, Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity v. Rolling Stone LLC, No. CL15-479 (Charlottesville, Va. Circuit Court filed November 9, 2015), ''available at'' {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170902103316/http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/local/u-va-fraternitys-rolling-stone-lawsuit/1867/ |date=September 2, 2017 }}. | |||
</ref> In September 2016, the magazine sought to have the lawsuit dismissed; however, a circuit court judge ruled that the suit could proceed.<ref>{{cite news|last=Higgins |first=Anna |title=Lawsuits Against Rolling Stone Move Forward Despite Objection |date=September 6, 2016 |work=] |url=http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/09/lawsuits-against-rolling-stone-move-forward-despite-objection |access-date=September 13, 2016 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20160914034253/http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/09/lawsuits-against-rolling-stone-move-forward-despite-objection |archive-date=September 14, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref> On June 13, 2017, the lawsuit was settled for $1.65 million.<ref> | |||
{{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829075807/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/fraternity-chapter-at-u-va-to-settle-suit-against-rolling-stone-for-165-million/2017/06/13/35012b46-503d-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html |date=August 29, 2017 }}. | |||
</ref> | |||
A further lawsuit by a number of members of the fraternity was greenlighted by a court of appeals on September 19, 2017, after originally being dismissed by a lower court in June 2016.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-rollingstone-lawsuit/lawsuit-over-debunked-rolling-stone-rape-article-revived-on-appeal-idUSKCN1BU1WC|title=Lawsuit over debunked Rolling Stone rape article revived on appeal|publisher=Reuters|date=September 21, 2017|last=Stempel|first=Jonathan|access-date=June 25, 2020|archive-date=January 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200120192256/https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-rollingstone-lawsuit/lawsuit-over-debunked-rolling-stone-rape-article-revived-on-appeal-idUSKCN1BU1WC|url-status=live}}</ref> The lawsuit was settled on December 21, 2017.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/rolling-stone-settles-last-remaining-lawsuit-uva-rape-story-1069880|title=Rolling Stone Settles Last Remaining Lawsuit Over UVA Rape Story|website=]|date=December 21, 2017|access-date=May 16, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180517152808/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/rolling-stone-settles-last-remaining-lawsuit-uva-rape-story-1069880|archive-date=May 17, 2018|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}} | |||
Phi Kappa Psi filed a $25 million lawsuit against ''Rolling Stone'' on November 9, 2015 on behalf of 54 undergraduates who were members of the fraternity at the time of the story's printing. The complaint reads, in part, "This defamation action is brought to seek redress for the wanton destruction caused to Phi Kappa Psi by Rolling Stone’s intentional, reckless, and unethical behavior."<ref>Shapiro, T. Rees, "", '']'', November 9, 2015</ref> | |||
</ref> | |||
===In popular culture=== | |||
Street artist ] papered ] with posters styled like a ''Rolling Stone'' cover featuring the headline "Rape Fantasies and Why We Perpetuate Them". The poster featured an image of ], ] had recently come under scrutiny, and included a sidebar reference to "A Rape on Campus" that read "Our UVA Rape Apology: Ooops, we did it AGAIN!!!"<ref> | |||
{{cite news |last=Dount |first=Tina |date=December 8, 2014 |title=Street Artist Sabo Blasts Lena Dunham, Bill Clinton in Fake Rolling Stone Covers |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/street-artist-sabo-blasts-lena-754819 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150111114520/http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/street-artist-sabo-blasts-lena-754819 |archive-date=January 11, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
'']'' featured an episode titled "Devastating Story" in ] whose plot was based on the UVA case. It features a fictional character named Heather Manning who was based on Jackie. In the episode, Heather fabricates a gang rape at a fraternity.<ref> | |||
{{cite news |url=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/law-order-svu-airs-university-virginia-rape-article-1.2171570 |title='Law & Order: SVU' airs take on University of Virginia frat house rape case |author=Melissa Chan |date=April 2, 2015 |work=] |access-date=April 7, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150405003436/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/law-order-svu-airs-university-virginia-rape-article-1.2171570 |archive-date=April 5, 2015 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }} | |||
</ref> | |||
In May 2022, an ] play adapted from the UVA case and resulting legal battles titled ''Retraction'' premiered in New York City at Theatre Four at ].<ref>{{cite web | last=Cristi | first=A.A. | title=RETRACTION by David Gutierrez Opens On Theatre Row | website=BroadwayWorld.com | date=April 28, 2022 | url=https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/RETRACTIONby-DavidGutierrez-Opens-On-Theatre-Row-20220428 | access-date=June 27, 2022 | archive-date=June 3, 2022 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220603023416/https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/RETRACTIONby-DavidGutierrez-Opens-On-Theatre-Row-20220428 | url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=A lawyer takes to the stage to state his case. | website=Arts Independent | date=May 7, 2022 | url=https://artsindependent.com/2022/05/07/a-laywer-takes-to-the-stage-to-styate-his-case/ | access-date=June 27, 2022 | archive-date=June 3, 2022 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220603023417/https://artsindependent.com/2022/05/07/a-laywer-takes-to-the-stage-to-styate-his-case/ | url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
*] | * ] | ||
*] |
* ], a widely reported 2006 case of a false accusation of rape at ] | ||
*] | * ] | ||
==Notes== | ==Notes== | ||
{{notelist}} | |||
{{Reflist|group="Note"}} | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||
{{Reflist| |
{{Reflist|30em}} | ||
==External links== | |||
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rape on Campus, A}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Rape on Campus, A}} | ||
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Latest revision as of 03:05, 14 December 2024
Retracted 2014 Rolling Stone article
Author | Sabrina Rubin Erdely |
---|---|
Subject | An alleged gang rape at a college fraternity |
Set in | University of Virginia |
Publisher | Rolling Stone |
Publication date |
|
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Magazine article |
"A Rape on Campus" is a retracted, defamatory Rolling Stone magazine article written by Sabrina Erdely and originally published on November 19, 2014, that describes a purported group sexual assault at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rolling Stone retracted the story in its entirety on April 5, 2015. The article claimed that UVA student Jackie Coakley had been taken to a party hosted by UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity by a fellow student and led to a bedroom to be gang raped by several fraternity members as part of a fraternity initiation ritual.
Jackie's account generated much media attention, and UVA President Teresa Sullivan suspended all fraternities. After other journalists investigated the article's claims and found significant discrepancies, Rolling Stone issued multiple apologies for the story. It has since been reported that Jackie may have invented portions of the story in an unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a fellow student in whom she had a romantic interest. In a deposition given in 2016, Jackie stated that she believed her story at the time.
On January 12, 2015, Charlottesville Police officials told UVA that an investigation had failed to find any evidence confirming the events in the Rolling Stone article. UVA President Teresa Sullivan acknowledged that the story was discredited. Charlottesville Police officially suspended their four-month investigation on March 23, 2015, based on lack of credible evidence. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism audited the editorial processes that culminated in the article being published. On April 5, 2015, Rolling Stone retracted the article and published the independent report on the publication's history.
UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and several fraternity members later filed lawsuits against Erdely and Rolling Stone. Eramo was awarded $3 million by a jury who concluded that Rolling Stone defamed her with actual malice, and Rolling Stone settled the lawsuit with the fraternity for $1.65 million.
Story
On November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone published the now retracted article by Sabrina Erdely titled "A Rape on Campus" about an alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia (UVA) student, Jackie Coakley. The UVA student, identified only as "Jackie" by the magazine, had been taken to a party by a fellow student, hosted at UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity during 2012. At the chapter house party, Jackie alleged in the article, her date led her to a bedroom where she was gang raped by several fraternity members as part of their initiation ritual. For anonymity, Erdely only used Jackie's first name and gave pseudonyms to other students discussed in the story.
According to Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg's summary of the story, on September 28, 2012, Jackie, a freshman at UVA, had a date with a Phi Kappa Psi member "Drew", a junior at UVA. After the date, they allegedly went to a party at his fraternity house, where he brought her to a dark bedroom upstairs and "a heavy person jumps on top of her. A hand covers her mouth. Someone gets between her legs. Someone else kneels on her hair. And for the next three hours she's brutally raped and beaten, with Drew and another upperclassman supposedly shouting out instructions to the pledges, referring to Jackie as 'it'." According to Goldberg, "It is an account of a sober, well-planned gang rape by seven fraternity pledges at the direction of two members." After leaving the party around 3 a.m., allegedly with bruises and blood stained clothes, Jackie called her three best friends, "Andy", "Randall" and "Cindy", for support. In Rolling Stone's version, Jackie's friends discouraged her from going to the hospital to protect her reputation and because Andy and Randall planned to rush fraternities and worried their association with Jackie might hurt their chances if she reported it. Erdely wrote that Randall was no longer friends with Jackie and, "citing his loyalty to his own frat, declined to be interviewed".
Jackie's academic performance reportedly declined, and she became socially withdrawn due to emotional distress. In May 2013, Jackie reported the sexual assault to dean and head of UVA's Sexual Misconduct Board, Nicole Eramo, who, according to a recap in New York magazine, offered three options: "file a criminal complaint with the police, file a complaint with the school, or face her attackers with Eramo present to tell them how she feels". The university would not take further action unless Jackie disclosed the names of the individuals or the fraternity involved. In September 2013, Eramo connected Jackie with Emily Renda, a UVA staff member, recent graduate and leader in the college's sexual assault support group One Less. Two years later, in search of a college student to feature in a story about sexual assaults that occur at a prestigious university, Erdely interviewed Renda, who suggested Jackie for the story and made the introduction.
Initial response from UVA community
Within hours of the article's publication, UVA president Teresa Sullivan had called the governor's chief of staff and the Charlottesville police chief to start preparing a response. She said her initial reaction was surprise and "a certain air of disbelief" because during her 44-minute interview for the story, Erdely never brought up Jackie or asked about any of the allegations made in the article. Sullivan said: "I was plainly not prepared for what the story looked like. Nor do I think her characterization of my interview was fair."
The next day, Phi Kappa Psi voluntarily suspended chapter activities at UVA for the duration of the investigation. A few days later, President Sullivan suspended all Greek organizations until January 9, 2015.
UVA's student newspaper The Cavalier Daily described mixed reactions from the student body, stating: "For some, the piece is an unfounded attack on our school; for others, it is a recognition of a harsh reality; and for what I suspect is a large majority of us, it falls somewhere in between."
Also within the first day following publication, Phi Kappa Psi's fraternity house at UVA was vandalized with spray-painted graffiti that read "suspend us", "UVA Center for Rape Studies", and "Stop raping people". In addition, several windows were broken with bottles and cinder blocks, and police officials said that the group received "disparaging messages" on social media. A few hours after the incident, several news groups received an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the vandalism and demanding that the university implement harsher consequences for sexual assault (mandatory expulsion), conduct a review of all fraternities on campus, the resignation of Nicole Eramo, and the implementation of harm reduction policies at fraternity parties. A few days later, hundreds of people participated in a protest and march organized by UVA faculty as "part of a series of responses to the recently published Rolling Stone article". A student quoted in The Daily Progress said that men at a nearby bar were "quick to yell 'insults and slurs' at the protesters as they walked by". A local business owner expressed support of non-violent demonstrations and told The Cavalier Daily that "The only way thing change is if you talk about what's happening." The march ended outside of the Phi Kappa Psi house where protesters challenged a perceived "culture of sexual assault at the University". Community members offered suggestions for immediate steps administration could take to implement preventive measures and address safety concerns regarding sexual assault. One student protester told The Cavalier Daily: "I really hope the University takes this article and the protest movement as a sign that they need to be more transparent about the way they deal with sexual assault." Four participants who were sitting on the steps to the Phi Kappa Psi house were arrested on trespassing charges for refusing to move when police officers asked them to leave.
The Interfraternity Council (IFC) at UVA released a statement on its website in response to the article that said: "an IFC officer was interviewed by Rolling Stone regarding the culture of sexual violence at the University. Although the discussion was lengthy, the reporter elected not to include any of the information from the interview in her article."
Story's veracity
Questions emerge
Richard Bradley, editor-in-chief of Worth magazine, was among the first mainstream journalists to question the Rolling Stone article, in a blog entry written on November 24, 2014. Recalling his experience with Stephen Glass before he was exposed for journalism fraud, Bradley argued the article relied heavily on confirmation bias. He also faulted Erdely for not interviewing Jackie's alleged assailants or the three friends who tried to dissuade her from going to the police. After an interview Erdely gave to Slate, in which she was questioned about the way she investigated the piece, some commentators escalated their questioning of the veracity of the article. It was later revealed Erdely had not interviewed any of the men accused of the rape. Erdely defended her decision not to interview the accused by saying that the contact page on the fraternity's website "was pretty outdated". The Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple rejected Erdely's statement, saying that the severity of the accusations she was reporting required "every possible step to reach out and interview them, including e-mails, phone calls, certified letters, FedEx letters, UPS letters and, if all of that fails, a knock on the door. No effort short of all that qualifies as journalism."
Fraternity officials, who rejected the published allegations, noted a number of discrepancies in the story: there was no party held on the night that Jackie was allegedly raped, no fraternity member matched the description in the story of the "ringleader" of the rape, and details about the layout of the fraternity house provided by the accuser were wrong. Fraternity officials also noted that, prior to the Rolling Stone story, there had never been a criminal investigation or allegation of sexual assault against an undergraduate member of the chapter. Fraternity officials further disputed a claim in Erdely's piece that said the rape had occurred as part of a pledging ritual by observing that pledging on the UVA campus occurs in spring, not autumn as the story stated. They said that no pledges were resident in the fraternity at the time Erdely claimed.
The Washington Post reporters later interviewed the accuser at the center of Erdely's story and two of the friends that Rolling Stone said she had met on the night of the incident. The accuser told the Post that she had felt "manipulated" by Erdely, and claimed she asked Erdely not to quote her in the article, a request the journalist denied. Jackie requested that her assailants not be contacted, and Rolling Stone agreed.
Bruce Shapiro of Columbia University said that an engaged and empathetic reporter will be concerned about inflicting new trauma on the victim: "I do think that when the emotional valence of a story is this high, you really have to verify it." He also explained that experienced reporters often work only with women who feel strong enough to deal with the due diligence required to bring the article to publication.
The two friends confirmed to the Post that they remembered meeting Jackie on the night of the incident, that she was distraught but not visibly injured or bloodied, and that details she provided then were different from those in the Rolling Stone article. One friend, Ryan Duffin (called "Randall" in the Rolling Stone article), told The Washington Post that he had never spoken to any reporter from Rolling Stone, although Erdely had claimed him as a source to corroborate the accuser's story. Sandra Menendez, a student who claimed to have been interviewed by Erdely but who was not directly quoted in the article, told CNN that she and others became uncomfortable after speaking with Erdely, concluding she had "an agenda".
Existence of "Drew"
The article uses the pseudonym "Drew" to refer to a third-year student at the University of Virginia who takes Jackie to the fraternity party where the alleged rape takes place. "Drew" gives "instruction and encouragement" to the seven rapists. Jackie's friends in the story have provided evidence since then that the man Rolling Stone calls "Drew" was electronically introduced to them as "Haven Monahan." Jackie forwarded messages from "Monahan", and "Monahan" exchanged messages with Jackie's friends, including sending a picture of "himself" directly to Ryan Duffin. However, media investigations have determined that no student named "Haven Monahan" has attended the University of Virginia; the portrait of "Haven Monahan" is an image of a classmate of Jackie's in high school, who has never attended the University of Virginia; the three telephone numbers through which "Haven Monahan" contacted Jackie's friends are registered "internet telephone numbers" that "enable the user to make calls or send SMS text messages to telephones from a computer or iPad while creating the appearance that they are coming from a real phone" and love letters written by Jackie and forwarded by "Haven Monahan" to Ryan Duffin are largely plagiarized from scripts of the TV series Dawson's Creek and Scrubs.
Per records released by Yahoo under subpoena in 2016, Haven Monahan's e-mail account was created from inside the University of Virginia "only one day before that same account sent an email to Jackie's friend Ryan Duffin" in 2012. The same account was accessed on March 18, 2016, from inside ALTG, Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone LLP, Jackie's legal firm. After initially refusing to answer whether Jackie had access to or created the Haven Monahan email account, on May 31, 2016, Jackie's law firm filed court papers acknowledging they had recently accessed "Haven Monahan's" e-mail account for the purpose "of confirming that documents Eramo requested for the lawsuit were no longer in Jackie's possession."
"Haven Monahan", as reported by T. Rees Shapiro, "ultimately appeared to be a combination of names belonging to people Jackie interacted with while in high school in Northern Virginia. Both of those people—who attend different colleges and bear no resemblance to the description Jackie gave of her attacker—said in interviews that they knew of Jackie but did not know her well and did not have contact with her after she left for the University of Virginia." According to news articles covering lawsuits resulting from the Rolling Stone article, Jackie concocted the Haven Monahan persona in a catfishing scheme directed at Duffin, who had not responded to romantic overtures that Jackie had directed at him.
Rolling Stone apologizes
Initially, Erdely stood by her story, stating: "I am convinced that it could not have been done any other way, or any better." But on December 5, 2014, Rolling Stone published an online apology, stating that there appeared to be "discrepancies" in the accounts of Erdely's sources and that their trust in the accuser was misplaced. A subsequent tweet sent by Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana offered further comment on Erdely's story: "e made a judgement—the kind of judgement reporters and editors make every day. And in this case, our judgement was wrong." On December 6, Rolling Stone updated the apology to say the mistakes in the article were the fault of Rolling Stone and not of its source, while noting that "there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account".
The New York Observer stated that Rolling Stone deputy managing editor Sean Woods (the editor directly responsible for the article) tendered his resignation to the magazine's owner, Jann Wenner. Wenner, who was reportedly "furious" at Erdely's story, declined to accept the resignation. In the aftermath of the collapse of the story, Dana noted: "Right now, we're picking up the pieces."
Rolling Stone's lawyer told jurors in a 2016 trial that Rolling Stone was victim of a "hoax" and a "fraud", and added with regard to Jackie: "the magazine's editorial staff was no match for Jackie ... 'she deceived us, and we do know it was purposeful'."
Erdely apologizes
Erdely publicly apologized for the article on April 5, 2015, though her apology did not include specific mention of the fraternity or the members of the fraternity who were accused, instead mentioning only "the U.V.A. community". The Columbia Journalism Review called the apology "a grudging act of contrition".
Spokesmen for both Wenner and Dana said that Erdely would continue to write articles for Rolling Stone.
2016 comments by Jackie
On October 24, 2016, in a video deposition, Jackie said, "I stand by the account I gave Rolling Stone. I believed it to be true at the time." Around the same time, WCAV of Charlottesville, Virginia, published the audio of Jackie's 2014 statements to Erdely.
Debate
Media reaction
The Washington Post journalist Erik Wemple criticized the story's graphic details of the alleged crime and said that it was hard to believe due to the "diabolical" description. A number of commentators accused the magazine of setting rape victims "back decades", while The Washington Post described the Rolling Stone story as a "catastrophe for journalism". Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a columnist at The Intercept, said that Erdely's decision not to interview the accused fraternity members showed "a horrendous, hidden bias ... the premise that none of these guys would tell the truth if asked", while a staff editorial in The Wall Street Journal charged that "Ms. Erdely did not construct a story based on facts, but went looking for facts to fit her theory." Lauren Kling of the Poynter Institute criticized Rolling Stone for "blaming source" instead of taking ownership of their own errors. Anna Merlan, a writer for Jezebel, who had earlier called Reason columnist Robby Soave an "idiot" for expressing skepticism of the Rolling Stone story, declared: "I was dead fucking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize." Merlan had also labeled journalist Richard Bradley's doubts about the article a "giant ball of shit".
On December 6, The Washington Post's media critic Erik Wemple called for all Rolling Stone staff who were involved with the story to be fired. Wemple posited that the claims presented by the magazine were so incredible that editors should have called for further inquiry before publication. "Under the scenario cited by Erdely", Wemple wrote, "the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they're criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. If this allegation alone hadn't triggered an all-out scramble at Rolling Stone for more corroboration, nothing would have." An editorial in the Boston Herald declared: "a fifth-grader would've done some basic fact-checking before potentially ruining men's lives" before repeating the call for the firing of Rolling Stone staff involved in the story.
Journalist Caitlin Flanagan, who wrote an exposé in The Atlantic titled "The Dark Power of Fraternities: A yearlong investigation of Greek houses", told On the Media that she was concerned that Erdely's article could inhibit reforms of the Greek system. She said: "I think we've gone backwards 30 years. And I think the level of devastation that this Rolling Stone report that's now looking to go from a misremembered event to perhaps an actual hoax." Flanagan noted that "what Rolling Stone has pushed me into is that I have now become someone who is on the side of fraternities and defending fraternities."
Writing for Time, columnist Cathy Young said that the unraveling of Erdely's article "exposed the troubling zealotry of advocates for whom believing rape claims is somewhat akin to a matter of religious faith". Christina Hoff Sommers, being interviewed by John Stossel for Reason, commented that the story "proved to be a sort of gothic fantasy, a male-demonizing fantasy. It was absurd."
After two Vanderbilt University football players were convicted of rape on January 27, 2015, Richard Bradley, who was the first mainstream journalist to question the Rolling Stone story, wrote a blogpost titled "Why Didn't Sabrina Rubin Erdely Write about Vanderbilt?" In the post, he asked: "Is Vanderbilt just not as sexy a story as UVA?" Robby Soave in Reason's Hit & Run Blog responded to Bradley's query about why Erdely chose UVA over Vanderbilt, arguing:
At the end of the day, UVA's incredible story fit Erdely's narrative better than Vanderbilt's credible one. Erdely wanted to tell the story of a campus body and university administration behaving indifferently to an unspeakable crime. ... What distinguished the UVA story from anything else ever reported was that the assault did not involve drugs or alcohol, required elaborate planning, and involved so many people that the perps could not have reasonably expected to get away with it—a confluence of factors that caused the allegations to have substantially more in common with ones that ultimately proved to be false, like the Duke lacrosse case and Tawana Brawley incident.
Local reaction
Students at the University of Virginia expressed "bewilderment and anger" following Rolling Stone's apology for its story, with one female student declaring "Rolling Stone threw a bomb at us." Virginia Attorney-General Mark Herring said he found it "deeply troubling that Rolling Stone magazine is now publicly walking away from its central storyline in its bombshell report on the University of Virginia without correcting what errors its editors believe were made."
Emily Renda, the university's project coordinator for sexual misconduct, policy and prevention declared that "Rolling Stone played adjudicator, investigator and advocate and did a slipshod job at that." Sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, meanwhile, tweeted that "I was wrong to give it credence." Writing in Politico two days after the "story fell apart", Julia Horowitz, deputy editor of the university's campus newspaper, described the feeling among students: "The campus—relatively oversaturated with emotion after a semester of significant trauma—feels as if it is on stand-by, poised in anticipation of where the next torrent of news will take us."
Response of fraternity and sorority groups
Within days following the unraveling of the Rolling Stone story, the North American Interfraternity Conference, the National Panhellenic Council, and the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee demanded that the University of Virginia "immediately reinstate operations for all fraternity and sorority organizations on campus" and issue an apology to Greek students. On December 8, the University of Virginia restated their original decision that the suspensions would be lifted on the resumption of classes in the new term, on January 9.
After Phi Kappa Psi was reinstated at the start of the 2015 Spring semester, UVA Phi Psi President Stephen Scipione said, "We are pleased that the University and the Charlottesville Police Department have cleared our fraternity of any involvement in this case... In today's 24-hour news cycle, we all have a tendency to rush to judgment without having all of the facts in front of us. As a result, our fraternity was vandalized, our members ostracized based on false information."
Accuser scrutinized
On December 8, 2014, ABC News reported that the person quoted by Erdely as alleging a rape at Phi Kappa Psi had retained an attorney.
On December 10, 2014, The Washington Post published an updated account of its inquiry into the Rolling Stone article. Slate reported that the Post account strongly implied Jackie's tale of rape had been fabricated in an attempt to win over "Randall", who had previously rebuffed her romantic advances. Writing in Slate, Hannah Rosin described the new The Washington Post investigation as close "to calling the UVA gang rape story a fabrication". Emily Renda, who was a University of Virginia student at the time of the alleged attack and in whom Jackie also confided, said that she had become suspicious as to the veracity of Jackie's story prior to the Rolling Stone report, commenting to a The Washington Post editor: "I don't even know what I believe." In the aftermath, Jackie was characterized as "a really expert fabulist storyteller" by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner in an April 5, 2015 interview. At the subsequent trial, one of Jackie's friends the night of the alleged attack testified that their friendships eventually dwindled because of Jackie's "tendency to fabricate things".
Key discrepancies according to The Washington Times
In Erdely's story, Jackie is lured into an alleged seven-man rape by U. Va. upperclassman "Drew". Prior to the alleged event, Jackie provided evidence of her relationship with "Drew" to her friends by supplying a phone number for "Drew", with whom Jackie's friends subsequently exchanged messages. The Washington Times determined that "Drew"'s "telephone" and "Blackberry" numbers were in fact "Internet phone numbers that enable the user to make calls or send SMS text messages to telephones from a computer or iPad while creating the appearance that they are coming from a real phone". "Drew" eventually sent a photo of "himself" to Jackie's friends, but "the man depicted in that photograph never attended U. Va" and was a high-school classmate of Jackie.
Key discrepancies according to ABC News
In Erdely's story, Jackie sank into depression after the alleged rape and was holed up in her dorm room for a while. Her friends, however, told ABC News that she seemed fine after the alleged assault, contradicting Jackie's former roommate, Rachel Soltis, who claimed that Jackie "was depressed, withdrawn, and couldn't wake up in the mornings" following the alleged rape. In Erdely's story, Jackie tells her three friends the night of the alleged event that she was raped by seven men over a three-hour period while rolling on a mat of broken glass. The three friends disclosed to ABC News their actual names – Alex Stock's pseudonym was "Andy", Kathryn Hendley's was "Cindy", Ryan (Duffin) was "Randall" – and went on record that on the night of the alleged event Jackie told the two men that she was forced to fellate five men while a sixth stood by.
Key discrepancies according to The Washington Post
In Erdely's story, the rape was supposed to have occurred during a party at Phi Kappa Psi as part of a pledging ritual. Phi Kappa Psi countered by noting that there had been no party held on the night of the alleged attack and no pledges resided in the house at that time of year. In response to those revelations, Jackie's father declared that Phi Kappa Psi had been misidentified and the attack had occurred at a different fraternity, though he did not elaborate as to which one. However, that statement seemed to contradict an earlier assertion the accuser had made to The Washington Post, in which she stated: "I know it was Phi Psi, because a year afterward, my friend pointed out the building to me."
In Erdely's story, Jackie disclosed to friends Cindy, Andy, and Randall the identity of her date to the fraternity party and said that he was the ringleader of the rape. Later media analysis of photos Jackie showed her friends of her date demonstrated that they were pictures taken from the public social media profile of a former high-school classmate of Jackie, who was not a student of the University of Virginia, did not live in the Charlottesville area, and was out of state at an athletic competition the day of the alleged attack. Jackie's friends Cindy, Andy, and Randall had become suspicious as to whether Jackie's date to the fraternity party where she was allegedly raped was a real person. Prior to the date, they attempted to locate him in a student directory and were unable to find evidence that he existed. The trio also sent text messages to a phone number Jackie said was the mobile phone of her date and were surprised that the owner of the phone number responded primarily with flattering messages about Randall, whom Jackie was romantically interested in.
In 2012 Jackie told her friends that she had been accosted by five men, though she later testified to Erdely that she had been attacked by seven, with two more directing and encouraging the rape. Erdely said that Jackie regained consciousness alone in the fraternity after 3 a.m. and fled the building blood-spattered and bruised, phoning three friends for help. They arrived "minutes later" and found her on the corner next to the building. However, The Washington Post stated that the three friends reported getting called at 1 a.m. and meeting Jackie a mile away from the fraternities, and that they saw "no blood or visible injuries". The Post did report, however, that Jackie appeared distraught after the rape allegedly took place.
Key discrepancies according to The Philadelphia Inquirer
Inquirer media columnist Michael Smerconish recounted that when he interviewed Erdely about the story on Sirius XM radio, she told him: "I talked to all of her friends, all the people that she confided in along the way." But as Smerconish wrote, "he did not talk to all of Jackie's friends. In fact, her failure to speak to the three friends in whom Jackie supposedly confided immediately after the alleged incident was perhaps the most egregious of a string of journalistic failures."
Investigations
Police investigation
On January 12, 2015, the University of Virginia reinstated the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity after the police investigation concluded that no incident had occurred at the fraternity. According to Charlottesville Police Capt. Gary Pleasants, Phi Kappa Psi has been cleared; "We found no basis to believe that an incident occurred at that fraternity, so there's no reason to keep them suspended." On March 23, 2015, police noted that Jackie refused to cooperate with law enforcement during the investigation. Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo explained, "We would've loved to have had Jackie come in ... and tell us what happened so we can obtain justice ... even if the facts were different."
Over the course of 4 months, the Charlottesville Police spoke to 70 people, including Jackie's friends, Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, and employees at the UVA Aquatic Center, where Jackie worked. No one supplied evidence to corroborate Jackie's accusations of a gang rape happening or that the accused rapist, supposedly named "Drew" or "Haven Monahan", even existed. The police were also unable to corroborate Jackie's allegations that two other sexual assaults had taken place at the fraternity house or that she had been assaulted and struck to the face with a bottle in a separate incident. Therefore, the criminal investigation was suspended on March 23.
Columbia University School of Journalism's investigation
After the details in "A Rape on Campus" began to unravel, Rolling Stone's publisher Jann Wenner commissioned Columbia University's School of Journalism to investigate the failures behind the publication of the article. On April 5, 2015, Columbia's 12,000-word review of "A Rape on Campus" was published on both Rolling Stone's and the journalism school's websites. It was prepared by Steve Coll, the dean of Columbia's journalism school; Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs; and Derek Kravitz, a graduate school researcher. The Columbia report stated that "At Rolling Stone, every story is assigned to a fact-checker." Assistant editor Elisabeth Garber-Paul provided fact-checking.
The fact-checker concluded that Ryan – "Randall" under pseudonym – had not been interviewed, but that the article had pretended he had been. The Columbia report cited the fact-checker: "I pushed. ... They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable" with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan. Ultimately, the report determined that Rolling Stone had exhibited confirmation bias and failed to perform basic fact checking by relying excessively on the accuser's account without verifying it through other means.
The Columbia report also found a failure in journalistic standards by either not making contact with the people they were publishing derogatory information about, or when they did, by not providing enough context for people to be able to offer a meaningful response. The report also states that the article misled readers with quotes where attribution was unclear and used pseudonyms inappropriately as a way to address these shortcomings.
The report concluded, "Rolling Stone's repudiation of the main narrative in "A Rape on Campus" is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine's editors to reconsider publishing Jackie's narrative so prominently, if at all. The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine's reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from." It points out that Rolling Stone staff were initially unwilling to recognize these deficiencies and denied a need for policy changes.
Reactions to investigations
Rolling Stone's reaction
Rolling Stone fully retracted "A Rape on Campus" and removed the article from its website. However, Coco McPherson, who is in charge of Rolling Stone's fact-checking operation, said, "I one-hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed." Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana was also cited on the Columbia report: "It's not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don't think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things." Jill Geisler in the Columbia Journalism Review reacted to Dana's statement by saying, "At a time when humility should guide a leader's comments, that quote carries the aroma of arrogance."
Jann Wenner added that "Will Dana, the magazine's managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs." Sabrina Erdely would also continue to write for Rolling Stone. Wenner laid blame for the magazine's failures on Jackie. In an interview with The New York Times, he called her, "a really expert fabulist storyteller", and added, "obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep."
In response to these statements, Megan McArdle wrote in Bloomberg View, "Rolling Stone can't even apologize right."
Rolling Stone announced that Will Dana would leave his job at the magazine, effective August 7, 2015. When asked if Dana's departure was influenced by the debacle surrounding Erdely's article, the magazine's publisher responded that "many factors go into a decision like this". Erik Wemple of The Washington Post called Dana's departure "four months too late". Dana was replaced by Jason Fine, the managing editor of Men's Journal.
Phi Kappa Psi's reaction
After the Charlottesville Police concluded that there was no evidence of a crime having occurred at Phi Kappa Psi during their press conference on March 23, 2015, Stephen Scipione, the president of Phi Kappa Psi's UVA chapter, announced that his fraternity is "exploring its legal options to address the extensive damage caused by Rolling Stone". He added, "False accusations have been extremely damaging to our entire organization, but we can only begin to imagine the setback this must have dealt to survivors of sexual assault."
Phi Kappa Psi's national headquarters released the following statement: "That Rolling Stone sought to turn fiction into fact is shameful...The discredited article has done significant damage to the ability of the chapter's members to succeed in their educational pursuits and besmirched the character of undergraduate students at the University of Virginia who did not deserve the spotlight of the media." They went on to call for Rolling Stone to "fully and unconditionally retract its story and immediately remove the story from its website". Phi Kappa Psi's national president Scott Noble stated that they were "now pursuing serious legal action toward Rolling Stone, the author and editor, and even Jackie".
University of Virginia's reaction
After both the Charlottesville Police press conference and Columbia University's investigative report, UVA President Teresa Sullivan released the following statement:
Rolling Stone's story, 'A Rape on Campus', did nothing to combat sexual violence, and it damaged serious efforts to address the issue. Irresponsible journalism unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia. Rolling Stone falsely accused some University of Virginia students of heinous, criminal acts, and falsely depicted others as indifferent to the suffering of their classmate. The story portrayed University staff members as manipulative and callous toward victims of sexual assault. Such false depictions reinforce the reluctance sexual assault victims already feel about reporting their experience, lest they be doubted or ignored. The Charlottesville Police Department investigation confirms that far from being callous, our staff members are diligent and devoted in supporting and caring for students. I offer our community's genuine gratitude for their devotion and perseverance in their service.
Consequences
The Washington Post reported that the members of Phi Kappa Psi "went into hiding for weeks after their home was vandalized with spray paint calling them rapists and bricks that broke their windows", and had to escape to hotels. The report indicated the college students suffered disgust, emotion, and confusion. Some students "actually had to leave the room while they were reading because they were so upset." A former student who graduated in 2013 said "the day came out was the most emotionally grueling of my life." Phi Kappa Psi members received death threats and the president of the university postponed all events related to its fraternities and sororities until mid-January 2015.
One month after the publication of the Rolling Stone article, the Rector of the University of Virginia, George Keith Martin, accused the magazine of "drive-by journalism" when he stated, "Like a neighborhood thrown into chaos by drive-by violence, our tightly knit community has experienced the full fury of drive-by journalism in the 21st century."
According to the Columbia report, "Allen W. Groves, the University dean of students, and Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean of students, separately wrote to the authors of this report that the story's account of their actions was inaccurate." Columbia published Groves' letter, where he contrasts video of his statements to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors in September 2014 with the text of Erdely's published article, which differ significantly, and concludes that Erdely's article contains "bias and malice". Erdely furthermore reported that Office for Civil Rights Assistant Secretary Catherine E. Lhamon called Grove's statements at the meeting "deliberate and irresponsible".
On January 30, 2015, Teresa Sullivan, the President of the University of Virginia, acknowledged that the Rolling Stone story was "discredited" in her State of the University Address. In her remarks, she said, "Before the Rolling Stone story was discredited, it seemed to resonate with some people simply because it confirmed their darkest suspicions about universities—that administrations are corrupt; that today's students are reckless and irresponsible; that fraternities are hot-beds of deviant behavior."
The Rolling Stone article had a negative effect on applications to the University of Virginia. For the first time since 2002, applications to the university dropped. Prior to the publication of the story, early-action applications were up 7.5 percent with 16,187 applicants. However overall applications were down 0.7 percent to 31,107 in the aftermath of the publication.
National sorority leaders ordered UVA sororities to not interact with fraternities during Boys Bid Night when fraternities admit new pledges. Virginia sorority members called the restrictions "unnecessary and patronizing".
Sexual assault skepticism
Due to increased social skepticism about the prevalence of sexual assault created by the unraveling of Erdely's Rolling Stone report, the Military Justice Improvement Act would be "much harder" to enact, according to Margaret Carlson, and ultimately did not pass in that congressional session. Lindy West said that female rape victims will probably be less likely to report sexual assaults for fear of being questioned by "some teenage 4Channer". Froma Harrop issued a call for media outlets to begin to publicly name rape accusers, explaining that "reporters and editors should expand their sensitivities to include the reputations of those accused, not always justly".
Several commentators hypothesized that allegations of rape against Bill Cosby, which surfaced at the same time as the publication of "A Rape on Campus", would be less damaging to the comedian as a result of the seeming collapse of the Rolling Stone story. When Camille Cosby spoke about the rape allegations against her husband Bill, she said: "We all followed the story of the article in the Rolling Stone concerning allegations of rape at the University of Virginia. The story was heart-breaking, but ultimately appears to be proved untrue. Many in the media were quick to link that story to stories about my husband – until that story unwound." Writing for Bloomberg, Zara Kessler observed that, "suddenly, every Cosby accuser is a potential 'Jackie'—although we don't yet know precisely what it means to be a 'Jackie.' How honest are the intentions of Cosby's accusers?"
The North American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Council, meanwhile, announced that they had retained the services of Squire Patton Boggs to lobby the U.S. Congress to take action to ensure that Greek-letter organizations are protected from future accusations of the kind leveled in Erdely's article.
Media sources and commentators discussed the allegations in the context of the reported "rape culture" or a rampant sexual assault epidemic that activists had claimed existed on U.S. college campuses. The media commentators noted that the claims of a rape culture's existence on campuses was not supported by U.S. government statistics or other measures. Harvey A. Silverglate in The Boston Globe referenced the Rolling Stone article in opining that the college sexual assault "scare" follows a long tradition of runaway, exaggerated social epidemics that "have ruined innocent lives and corrupted justice. A return to sanity is called for before more wreckage occurs."
Media criticism
The Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple stated that everyone connected to this story at Rolling Stone should be fired. After the Charlottesville Police made their official report, Wemple said: "What is left of the Rolling Stone piece? Very little. There's some reporting on the university's culture, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police; there's some reporting on the university leadership's approach to the issue, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police."
National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg has called for Phi Kappa Psi to sue Rolling Stone, while at least one legal expert has opined that there is a high likelihood of "civil lawsuits by the fraternity members or by the fraternity itself against the magazine and maybe even some university officials". ABC News has reported that the accuser, Jackie, herself might be sued. By December 5, 2014, Christopher Pivik, a former member of Phi Kappa Psi at the University of Virginia, had retained attorney Andrew Miltenberg. According to Miltenberg, he specializes in "defamation and complex internet and First Amendment issues".
Columbia journalism professor Bill Grueskin called the story "a mess—thinly sourced, full of erroneous assumptions, and plagued by gaping holes in the reporting". The Columbia Journalism Review declared the story the winner of "this year's media-fail sweepstakes". The Poynter Institute named the story the "Error of the Year" in journalism.
Lawsuits
On May 12, 2015, UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, chief administrator for handling sexual assault issues at the school, filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit in Charlottesville Circuit Court against Rolling Stone and Erdely, claiming damage to her reputation and emotional distress. Said the filing: "Rolling Stone and Erdely's highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake. They were the result of a wanton journalist who was more concerned with writing an article that fulfilled her preconceived narrative about the victimization of women on American college campuses, and a malicious publisher who was more concerned about selling magazines to boost the economic bottom line for its faltering magazine, than they were about discovering the truth or actual facts." In February 2016, the judge in the lawsuit ordered Jackie to appear at a deposition on April 5, 2016. On March 30, 2016, The Washington Post reported that Jackie's lawyers requested the April deposition be cancelled, to avoid having her "revisit her sexual assault". However, on April 2, 2016, the judge denied the motions and ordered Jackie to appear for a deposition on April 6, to be held at a secret location. On November 4, 2016, after 20 hours of deliberation, a jury consisting of eight women and two men found Rolling Stone, the magazine's publisher and Erdely liable for defaming Eramo. On November 7, 2016, the jury decided that Rolling Stone and Erdely were liable for $3 million in damages to Eramo. The lawsuit was settled on April 11, 2017.
On November 9, 2015, Phi Kappa Psi filed a $25 million lawsuit against Rolling Stone in state court "to seek redress for the wanton destruction caused to Phi Kappa Psi by Rolling Stone's intentional, reckless, and unethical behavior". In September 2016, the magazine sought to have the lawsuit dismissed; however, a circuit court judge ruled that the suit could proceed. On June 13, 2017, the lawsuit was settled for $1.65 million.
A further lawsuit by a number of members of the fraternity was greenlighted by a court of appeals on September 19, 2017, after originally being dismissed by a lower court in June 2016. The lawsuit was settled on December 21, 2017.
In popular culture
Street artist Sabo papered Hollywood with posters styled like a Rolling Stone cover featuring the headline "Rape Fantasies and Why We Perpetuate Them". The poster featured an image of Lena Dunham, whose own allegations of rape had recently come under scrutiny, and included a sidebar reference to "A Rape on Campus" that read "Our UVA Rape Apology: Ooops, we did it AGAIN!!!"
Law & Order: SVU featured an episode titled "Devastating Story" in its 16th season whose plot was based on the UVA case. It features a fictional character named Heather Manning who was based on Jackie. In the episode, Heather fabricates a gang rape at a fraternity.
In May 2022, an off-Broadway play adapted from the UVA case and resulting legal battles titled Retraction premiered in New York City at Theatre Four at Theatre Row.
See also
- Campus sexual assault
- Duke lacrosse case, a widely reported 2006 case of a false accusation of rape at Duke University
- False accusation of rape
Notes
- The fact that Jackie had a romantic interest in Randall was also noted by other news media.
References
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"With , we are officially retracting 'A Rape on Campus.'
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A somewhat similar fake news story about rape was promulgated by Rolling Stone in a 9,000-word article ("A Rape on Campus") that supposedly detailed a savage gang rape in 2012 of a University of Virginia first year co-ed.
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The Rolling Stone story, which was eventually retracted in April 2015, centered on student Jackie Coakley and her falsified story of being gang raped
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Forcing her to revisit her sexual assault, and then the re-victimization that took place after the Rolling Stone article came out, will inevitably lead to a worsening of her symptoms and current mental health," Jackie's attorneys wrote, citing "extensive support in the medical literature" that shows "sexual assault victims will experience trauma if they are forced to revisit the details of their assault.
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- 2014 controversies in the United States
- 2014 documents
- 2014 hoaxes
- 2014 in Virginia
- 2015 controversies in the United States
- 2015 in Virginia
- Campus sexual assault
- Charlottesville, Virginia
- False allegations of sex crimes
- History of women in Virginia
- Hoaxes in the United States
- Journalistic scandals
- Mass media-related controversies in the United States
- Rolling Stone articles
- Sex scandals in the United States
- History of the University of Virginia
- Written fiction presented as fact
- Fraternity and sorority culture