Rolling Stone’s UVA Rape Story Continues to Fall Apart

Additional reporting over the weekend revealed
even more discrepancies in
Rolling Stone’s rapidly disintegrating story about an
alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia frat
house.

In the original 9,000-word piece, author Sabrina Rubin
Erdely describes the friends Jackie talks to the night she is
allegedly raped in a way that makes them come across as almost
cartoonishly callous. Erdely’s story says that Jackie was wounded,
with blood on her dress after a multi-hour assault on a bed of
broken glass.

But in Erdely’s telling of the story, the three friends Jackie
speaks with—a man and two women—end up debating whether it’s a good
idea to take her to the hospital, because a trip to the emergency
room would harm her social reputation. “Her reputation will
be shot for the next four years,” says “Cindy,”
(not her real name), another one of the friends. “She’s gonna be
the girl who cried ‘rape,’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat
party again.”

But when the Post spoke to two of the friends, they
said that that’s not what happened. One, the man identified in the
Rolling Stone story as “Andy,” said that Jackie did call
him and two additional friends one night. According to “Andy,”
Jackie said she was very upset and “really shaken up.”
Here’s what he recalls happening:

“Andy” said Jackie said she had been at a fraternity party and
had been forced to perform oral sex on a group of men, but he does
not remember her identifying a specific house. He said he did not
notice any injuries or blood but said the group offered to get her
help. She, instead, wanted to return to her dorm, and he and the
friends spent the night with her to comfort her at her request.

Cindy’s recollection, as
reported by the Post, is similar:

“Cindy” said that Jackie appeared distraught that night but was
not hurt physically and was not bleeding. The student said Jackie
made no claims of a gang rape and did not identify the fraternity
where she said she had partied. “Cindy” said Jackie told one of the
friends there that a group of men had forced her to perform oral
sex.

The student said there was never any discussion among Jackie and
the group involving how their reputations or social status might be
affected by seeking help.

Notably, even though both “Andy” and “Cindy” are quoted in the
story, both say Rolling Stone never interviewed either of
them. Cindy says that Rolling Stone never even contacted
her. 

They aren’t the only friends of Jackie to suggest problems with
the Rolling Stone story. The Post also
reports that Emily Renda, who works for the university on
responding to sexual violence, and who introduced Jackie to Erdely,
now says that the number of attackers present in Jackie’s story has
changed over time. 

At this point you have to ask: Did Rolling Stone do
anything to corroborate or verify the details of Jackie’s
sensational story of organized gang rape at a university
fraternity, which provided the horrific opening anecdote to
Erdely’s story? Increasingly it appears as if the answer is no. A
New York Times
report on the story contains this line: “In an interview on
Friday, Mr. Dana said that Rolling Stone had not sought to
corroborate her account after she asked the magazine not to speak
to her attackers.”