It looks like Rolling Stone may have something much more foul smelling than mud on its face as the pilloried UVA fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, rebuts many of the key details of the story of gang rape told by "Jackie" to Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely who apparently never bothered to fact check her story - perhaps out of eagerness to "break a big story." Andrew Sullivan correctly notes:
How an editor ran this piece without even speaking to its author is beyond me; how fact-checkers did not discover some of these obvious discrepancies immediately is also astounding. I guess when you’re on a crusade, “fake but true” will do.
Whatever their motivation, "Jackie" and Erdely have harmed the cause of the right of women to safety on campus by making officials more likely to question rape allegations than before "the big story." Something about the story never rang true with me after attending UVA as both an undergraduate and as a law student not to mention having numerous family members who are graduates. If there is to be justice, I hope that Phi Kappa Psi aggressively goes after "Jackie" who seems to have played many into making jack asses of themselves. Oh, and perhaps Jackie needs to be charged with an Honor Code violation and brought before the UVA Honor Council for bald face lying (if found guilty, expulsion from the University is the sanction). Here are details from the Washington Post on the rapidly collapsing Rolling Stone story:
Several key aspects of the account of a gang rape offered by a University of Virginia student in Rolling Stone magazine have been cast into doubt, including the date of the alleged attack and details about an alleged attacker, according to interviews and a statement from the magazine backing away from the article.
The U-Va. fraternity chapter where the alleged attack on a student named Jackie was said to have occurred in September 2012 released a statement Friday afternoon denying that such an assault took place in its house. Phi Kappa Psi said it has been working with police to determine whether the account of a brutal rape at a party there was true. The fraternity members say that several important elements of the allegations were false.
A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.
Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he did work at the Aquatic and Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie’s name. He said, however, that he had never met Jackie in person and had never taken her on a date. He also said that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.
Phi Kappa Psi said it did not host “a date function or social event” during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012, the night that Jackie alleges she was invited to a date party, lured into an upstairs room and was then ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.
The fraternity also said that it has reviewed the roster of employees at the university’s Aquatic and Fitness Center for 2012 and found that it does not list a member of the fraternity — a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post — and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account. The statement also said that the house does not have pledges during the fall semester.
Alex Pinkleton, a close friend of Jackie’s who survived a rape and an attempted rape during her first two years on campus, said in an interview that she has had numerous conversations with Jackie in recent days and now feels misled. . . . . Pinkleton said she is concerned that sexual assault awareness advocacy groups will suffer as a result of the conflicting details of the Rolling Stone allegations.
Earlier this week, Jackie revealed to friends for the first time the full name of her alleged attacker, a name she had never disclosed to anyone. But after looking into that person’s background, the group that had been among her closest supporters quickly began to raise suspicions about her account. The friends determined that the student that Jackie had named was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi and that other details about his background did not match up with information Jackie had disclosed earlier about her perpetrator.
“An advocate is not supposed to be an investigator, a judge or an adjudicator,” said Renda, a 2014 graduate who works for the university as a sexual violence awareness specialist. But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”
Soltis said Jackie did not tell her about the alleged sexual assault until January 2013. Soltis said she did not notice any apparent wounds on Jackie’s body at the time that might have indicated a brutal attack.
Sexual violence on campuses needs to be eradicated. Period. By telling lies and believing a self-announced "victim" without ever bothering to corroborate the facts is no better than lynch mob behavior in the Old South. Jackie and Erdely have harmed the cause they claim to support and one has to wonder how many real victims will now be disbelieved because of this apparently fabricated story.
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