The Rolling Stone story about a horrific gang-rape at the University of Virginia isn’t as much of a disaster as its critics have claimed. It’s far, far worse.
Kudos to T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post for doing the job Sabrina Erdely wouldn’t do: Telling the truth. He actually spoke to the three friends of the woman who allegedly made the claim of gang-rape at the UVA Phi Kappa Psi house:
In their first interviews about the events of that September 2012 night, the three friends [identified by the pseudonyms “Randall,” “Andy,” and “Cindy”] separately told The Post that their recollections of the encounter diverge from how Rolling Stone portrayed the incident in a story about Jackie’s alleged gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity…
The scene with her friends was pivotal in the article, as it alleged that the friends were callously apathetic about a beaten, bloodied, injured classmate reporting a brutal gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity…
“It didn’t happen that way at all,” Andy said…
Instead, the friends remember being shocked. Although they did not notice any blood or visible injuries, they said they immediately urged Jackie to speak to police and insisted that they find her help. Instead, they said, Jackie declined and asked to be taken back to her dorm room…
The students also expressed suspicions about Jackie’s allegations from that night. They said the name she provided as that of her date did not match anyone at the university, and U-Va. officials confirmed to The Post that no one by that name has attended the school.
It gets even stranger, and even worse for Rolling Stone, Sabrina Erdely, and the defenders of this hoax:
- Jackie created a fake boyfriend, using a picture of a high-school classmate that she texted to her friends. She told them she was going on a date with him the night of the purported gang-rape. Shapiro tracked him down, and he says he remembers her from high school but they’ve never met.
- Jackie didn’t say anything to the three that night about the Phi Psi house, and her description of “Drew,” the student who allegedly orchestrated the alleged gang-rape, was different than what she later told Erdely.
- “Drew” says he’s never met Jackie. In addition, the Phi Psis didn’t have a party that weekend.
- “Randall,” “Andy,” and “Cindy” all say that nobody at Rolling Stone contacted them before the story was published.
- In addition, “Randall” says that Erdely never requested an interview with him. She claims she did, but that he turned her down, “citing his loyalty to his own frat.”
- Erdely has refused all requests for comment. Her Twitter feed, which was very busy between the story’s publication and the first signs of trouble, has gone completely silent.
Other than that, the story holds up.
Something bad may or may not have happened to Jackie that night. All we know at this point is that she’s an unreliable narrator, and Rolling Stone‘s account is sloppy and wrong at best, willfully inaccurate at worst.
Rape is a very serious crime, which is all the more reason to make sure a rape claim has some basis in fact. All the more reason to make sure innocent people aren’t smeared with a false accusation. The horror of rape doesn’t excuse the abrogation of due process. Whether the charge is witchcraft, communism, or rape, the human impulse to treat an accusation as its own proof must always be resisted.
Now there’s nothing left to do but wait for the lawsuits. As a Phi Psi myself, I was ready to throw these guys under the bus for committing such an awful crime, disgracing themselves and our fraternity. That is, if it was true. But it’s not. They’ve been libeled, their house has been vandalized, and the entire Greek system at UVA has been suspended. They don’t deserve that, just because feminists hate fraternities almost as much as they hate facts.
I hope my UVA brothers have fun with Jann Wenner’s money.