In a now-infamous Nov. 19 story in Rolling Stone, disgraced journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely asserted that at least five members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity gang-raped a freshman named Jackie at a frat house party, then left her in a bloodstained dress to exit via a conveniently vacant side staircase.
The Washington Post’s reporting now suggests that Jackie fabricated huge swathes of her gory rape tale, and that Erdely failed to properly investigate it. (RELATED: Students Come Forward To Poke More Holes In Virginia Co-Ed’s Gang Rape Story)
Erdely’s career is rapidly disintegrating with each freshly revealed fabrication, as it becomes more and more evident that no rape occurred. (RELATED: Disgraced Journalist Behind UVA Rape Story Sanctimoniously Criticized FALSE REPORTING)
Why did Erdely commit career suicide? Writing at Slate, Hanna Rosin provides the likely answer: Erdely hoped her wildly implausible 9,000-word, agenda-driven excuse for journalism would emphasize “the larger theme of a university culture and social scene indifferent even to the most brutalized victims of rape.”
This motive explains why Erdely went to such great pains to present Jackie’s friends weighing whether to rush a gang-rape victim to the hospital. Sure, it might be good for Jackie, but would such a move devastate their social reputations on frat row?
Whatever Erdely’s motive, her discredited piece raises the question: Is it remotely true that American college administrators and college students are indifferent to the allegations of rape victims? What about the exponential growth of rape activism on campus? What about the routine occurrence of “take back the night” vigils?
Could this perceived indifference actually be warranted skepticism? In fact, the number of completely fraudulent rape allegations made by women on American college campuses is far from trivial.
With very little effort at all, The Daily Caller has found eight twisted, totally false and especially astonishing rape hoaxes proffered over the years by female college students.
In each case, the cruel hoaxes were initially accepted as true. In some cases, real lives were ruined.
Note the eerie similarities among these fake rape cases with the tale spun at the University of Virginia by Jackie and by Erdely, her willing Rolling Stone accomplice.
1
In February 2013, Morgan Triplett, 20, visited the University of California, Santa Cruz for a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender conference. While there, she claimed that she had been raped in broad daylight on the Santa Cruz campus.
Triplett’s story was a hoax. The bizarre truth is that she successfully used Craigslist to locate a stranger who agreed to beat her up in exchange for sex. In a failed ad, which found no takers, sought somebody to shoot her in the shoulder. A second ad, seeking someone willing to “punch, kick and bruise her” panned out. (RELATED: Student Sought Man To Beat Her Up And Have Sex, Then Reported It As Rape)
Triplett met her unnamed mangler in Santa Cruz. He beat her up. They had sex. She used a cellphone screen reflection as a mirror to see if the injuries were sufficient. She then directed him to pummel her some more.
With fresh bruises to substantiate her sick tale, Triplett then informed 911 that a mysterious assailant had raped and battered her while she was walking on a path looking for banana slugs — the UCSC mascot.
2
In November 2004, Desiree Nall, a student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. told police that two men raped her in a bathroom on campus. Nall was the president of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women and it was during Sexual Assault Awareness Week.
The allegations caused police to warn student at the tiny school to stay inside as much as possible to avoid a team of rapists on the loose.
Police became skeptical of Nall’s claims after she couldn’t keep her story straight and was unable to provide descriptions of the two men, according to Fox News.
Also, an examination of Nall at a sexual assault treatment center showed no evidence of any sexual assault.
Nall, 23, eventually recanted her fake rape allegations. Police suggested that Nall could have been attempting to “make a statement” about sexual assault.
Local police ultimately spent $50,000 investigating Nall’s imaginary claims.
After the hoax was exposed, Nall was charged for making a false statement to police. Her husband defended her. He said cops targeted her not because of her lies but because “she is a women’s-rights activist.”
3
Back in April 1991, Princeton University student Mindy Brickman falsely accused a fellow Princeton student of raping her, according to The Daily Princetonian. She libeled the student by spreading “her claim through conversations around campus.” She also repeated the smear at a campus “take back the night” rally. Interestingly, however, like Jackie at the University of Virginia, she chose not to press criminal charges.
Once Brickman’s claim fell apart, she wrote an apology in the pages of the Princetonian newspaper.
“I never intended for anyone to be hurt by my statements,” she swore. Instead, she explained, her deceitful claim was intended to “raise awareness for the plight of the campus rape victims.”
“A certain individual has been accused and is being pursued for a crime he did not commit,” Brickman added in a wonderful use of the passive voice. She noted she had actually never once even talked to this man.
Brickman appears to have later attended Tulane University Law School and passed the ethics portion of a state bar exam. According to LinkedIn, a 1991 Princeton graduate named Mindy Brickman is now a partner at Christovich & Kearney in New Orleans, La.
4
In April 2013, University of Wyoming student Meg Lanker-Simons, then 28, anonymously posted a rape threat directed at herself on a Facebook page called UW Crushes. (RELATED: Police Say 28-Year-Old Undergrad Threatened Herself With Rape In Facebook Hoax)
The vile post by Lanker-Simons read:
“I want to hatefuck Meg Lanker Simons so hard. That chick runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it. I think its so hot and makes me angry. One night with me and shes gonna be a good Republican bitch.”
A ruckus followed. There was a big feminist rally. A school official denounced “rape culture.”
Police investigated the incident, quickly determining that Lanker-Simons posted the message on her computer while it was in her possession. She eventually pled no contest to a misdemeanor charge of interfering with a peace officer and paid a small fine.
Later, Lanker-Simons — who seems to have changed her name to Meg Simons — added a later removed entry to her cat-filled blog suggesting that she attends Gonzaga University School of Law. (RELATED: Wyoming ‘Hate-F***’ Hoaxer Adds To Checkered Criminal Past, Now Attends Law School)
5
In the fall of 2009, Hofstra University Danmell Ndonye voluntarily had sex with no fewer than five men in a dormitory bathroom.
Ndonye, 18, accused the men of gang rape after her boyfriend found her with no shoes on, looking “like she just finished hot sex,” according to the New York Post.
The boyfriend demanded that she contact police.
“Oh, you know, no, it’s OK,” she told him, but he was incredulous.
“How could it be OK that you just got raped?” he said in amazement.
As a result of Ndonye’s lies, four innocent men were arrested and jailed. (A fifth remained on the lam.)
One of those men, Jesus Ortiz, sought protective custody because inmates called him a rapist and threatened him.
The four men were only saved because someone had filmed the orgy on a mobile phone. Ndonye’s story crumbled because the video showed that the sex was consensual.
“Unfortunately, everything doesn’t stop because the DA says go home and drops the charges,” the father of one of the men told the Post.
Meanwhile, Ndonye went into hiding.
6
In April 2013, former University of Florida student Tanya Borachi lied to police about getting bound and gagged in a Gainesville apartment complex parking lot.
Borachi, 22, said a man dressed in black and wearing a black mask and gloves brutally tied her hands and gagged her while she was getting out of her car, according to The Gainesville Sun.
She only got away, she claimed, by kicking the man in the groin and fleeing — still tied and gagged. Her roommate, who fell for her story, unbound her.
Boarchi initially defended her fabricated story by saying that she was trying to teach the world “a lesson to women in the area that an attack could happen to them.”
Police told the Sun that the ex-student was likely under some psychological pressure because “her family was expecting her to graduate” from the University of Florida later in the spring, and that wasn’t going to happen.
Police charged Boarchi with filing a false police report.
7
Back in 1993, at Oberlin College, where privileged Obama-supporting white kids perpetrated a cruel race hoax just last year, a “take back the night” group posted a number of signs on campus labeling an apparently randomly-chosen, innocent freshman as “Rapist of the Month.”
The 18-year-old male student, a philosophy major, was retrieving his mail when he first saw the signs calling him a rapist, according to the Toledo Blade.
“My initial reaction was complete shock, complete disbelief,” the unidentified student said.
He had to deny the allegation to his friends. He tore down the sign, which many people saw. He also ripped down several other signs all over the Oberlin campus.
“I haven’t even dated at Oberlin,” the student told the Blade. “I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I couldn’t have gotten myself in that kind of situation.”
A friend described him as “almost boring.”
Another student at Oberlin, sophomore Emily Lloyd, suggested that critics of the incredible falsehood were missing the “take back the night” group’s larger point.
“So many women get their lives totally ruined by being assaulted and not saying anything,” Lloyd explained. “So if one guy gets his life ruined, maybe it balances out.”
8
In 1990, Mariam Kashani, then a sophomore at George Washington University, weaved a giant, racist fiction about a campus rape.
Kashani, who was a rape counselor and worked for a rape crisis hotline, told the school newspaper about a white woman who was raped by two black men on campus. The men held the woman at knifepoint, she swore. She also felt compelled to add that the men had “particularly bad body odor,” according to The New York Times.
Once the two men had finished having their way with the female student, Kashani lied, they laughed at her and told her she was “pretty good for a white girl.”
Incredibly, Kashani even managed to coordinate having someone impersonate a policeman who confirmed the story by telephone.
When her story crumbled, Kashani said she was really sorry and insisted that she “had hoped the story, as reported, would highlight the problems of safety for women.”
Rozelle Moore, a black senior George Washington, told the Times: “She definitely owes the campus an apology, and she owes an apology to black males.”
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