Rolling Stone’s UVA Rape Story Just Took Another Massive Hit

The
Washington Post just published another investigative
report on the University of Virginia gang rape allegations—and
whatever credibility Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling
Stone had left is totally obliterated.

WaPost spoke with the three friends who rescued Jackie
after her alleged gang rape on September 28, 2012. The details they
provided depart significantly from Jackie’s narrative as reported
by Erdely. The friends told WaPost that Jackie did not
appear battered or bloodied and gave a description of the attack
significantly different than what was later published in
Rolling Stone. They also clarified that it was Jackie
who didn’t want to go to the police, not them:

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. The account alleged that the students worried
about the effect it might have on their social status, how it might
reflect on Jackie during the rest of her collegiate career, and how
they suggested not reporting it. It set up the article’s theme:
That U-Va. has a culture that is indifferent to rape.

“It didn’t happen that way at all,” Andy said.

Instead, the friends remember being shocked. Though 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. They went with her — two of them said they
spent the night — seeking to comfort Jackie in what appeared to be
a moment of extreme turmoil.

Erdely portrayed Jackie’s friends as popularity-obsessed
sociopaths who deterred her from reporting the assault. They say
that’s not true; it was Jackie who didn’t want to report it.

That may seem damning, but it’s just the beginning. According to
the friends, Jackie did name her attacker, but no one by
that name attended UVA. Pictures of the attacker—the man Jackie
claimed was a UVA junior who had asked her out on a date—that she
provided to the friends were actually pictures of a former
high school classmate who never attended UVA and “hasn’t been to
Charlottesville in at least six years.” His name is not the one
Jackie gave her friends. These details were all verified by
WaPost.

Here’s the timeline, according to the friends:

The three friends said that Jackie soon began talking about a
handsome junior from chemistry class who had a crush on her and had
been asking her out on dates.

Intrigued, Jackie’s friends got his phone number from her and
began exchanging text messages with the mysterious upperclassman.
He then raved to them about “this super smart hot,” freshman who
shared his love of the band Coheed and Cambria, according to the
texts, which were provided to The Post. …

Jackie told her three friends that she accepted the
upperclassman’s invitation for a dinner date on Friday Sept. 28,
2012.

Curious about Jackie’s date, the friends said that they failed
to locate the student on a U-Va. database and social media. Andy,
Cindy and Randall all said they never met the student in person.
Before Jackie’s date, the friends said that they became suspicious
that perhaps they hadn’t really been in contact with the chemistry
student at all.

U-Va. officials told The Post that no student by the name Jackie
provided to her friends as her date and attacker in 2012 had ever
enrolled at the university. Randall provided The Post with pictures
that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in
2012.

The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that
his name does not match the one Jackie provided to friends in 2012.
In an interview, the man said that he was Jackie’s high school
classmate but that he “never really spoke to her.”

The man said that he was never a U-Va. student and is not a
member of any fraternity. Additionally, the man said that he had
not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was
in another state participating in an athletic event during the
weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.

If the friends’ narrative is accurate, it seems doubtful that
“Drew” exists at all, and is instead the product of some kind of
catfishing
situation. Compare that with Rolling Stone editor Sean
Woods’
initial claim that “I’m satisfied that [the perpetrators] exist
and are real. We knew who they were.”

One of the friends, “Randall,” also told WaPost that
Erdely lied when she wrote that he declined to be interviewed
because of “loyalty to his own frat.” Randall said he would have
gladly given an interview but was never contacted.

The friends quoted in the latest article still say Jackie’s
changed behavior that first semester is evidence of some trauma she
sustained. That may be true, although it is difficult to say what,
exactly, that might have entailed. There is not a shred of evidence
to suggest such a trauma bears any resemblance to the incredible
story told by Rolling Stone.

Lest anyone think that this debacle is solely the fault of
someone who falsely claimed rape, keep in mind that these
fraudulent charges were put forth by a national magazine that made
no effort to verify them, and ignored every red flag in its haste
to publish the story of the century—even when Jackie refused to
name her attackers and attempted to withdraw her story. Whatever
the truth is—whatever the excellent reporters at WaPost
manage to uncover next—the fact remains that Rolling Stone
and Erdely should have known better.

The degree to which everyone involved in this travesty of
journalism failed at their jobs is almost unbelievable. But unlike
the story of a gang rape at UVA, we now have incontrovertible proof
of it.

More from me on this subject
here.