Rolling
Stone has admitted that Sabrina Rubin
Erdely’s story,
“A Rape on Campus,” contains enough inaccuracies to render the
narrative‘s central allegation
effectively false. The editor‘s note that
precedes the article is now more than 600 words long; it
concedes—over and over again—that
Jackie‘s narrative as printed in the
story is untrue, that key players and events either don’t exist or
didn’t take place, and that multiple on-record sources dispute
Erdely’s reporting.
Why on earth has the story not been fully retracted yet?
Here is what the editor’s note—which is constantly evolving to
provide an up-to-date record of the story’s thorough debunking—now
claims:
Last month, Rolling Stone published a
story entitled A Rape on Campus, which described a brutal gang rape
of a woman named Jackie during a party at a University of
Virginia fraternity house, the
University‘s failure to respond to this
alleged assault – and the school‘s
troubling history of indifference to many other instances of
alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines
and much soul-searching at UVA.
University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation
and also to examine the way the school investigates sexual assault
allegations.Because of the sensitive nature of
Jackie‘s story, we decided to honor her request not to
contact the man who she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor
any of the men who she claimed participated in the attack for fear
of retaliation against her. In the months Sabrina Rubin
Erdely reported the story, Jackie said or did nothing
that made her, or Rolling
Stone‘s editors and fact-checkers,
question her credibility. Jackie’s friends and rape activists on
campus strongly supported her account. She had spoken of the
assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local
branch and the national leadership of Phi Psi, the fraternity where
Jackie said she was attacked. They responded
that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but that
they had questions about the evidence.In the face of new information reported by
the Washington Post and other news outlets,
there now appear to be discrepancies
in Jackie’s account. The fraternity has issued a
formal statement denying the assault and asserting that
there was no “date function or formal event” on the night in
question. Jackie herself is now unsure if the man she says
lured her into the room where the rape occurred, identified in the
story as “Drew,” was a Phi Psi brother. According to
the Washington Post, “Drew” actually belongs to a
different fraternity and when contacted by the paper, he denied
knowing Jackie. Jackie told Rolling Stone that
after she was assaulted, she ran into “Drew” at a
UVA pool where they both worked as
lifeguards. In its statement, Phi Psi says none of its members
worked at the pool in the fall of 2012. A friend of
Jackie’s (who we were told would not speak
to Rolling Stone) told
the Washington Post that he
found Jackie that night a mile from the school’s
fraternities. She did not appear to be “physically
injured at the time” but was shaken. She told him that that she had
been forced to have oral sex with a group of
men at a fraternity party, but he does not remember her identifying
a specific house. Other friends of Jackie’s told
the Washington Post that they now have doubts
about her narrative, but Jackie told the Washington
Post that she firmly stands by the account she gave to
Erdely.We published the article with the firm belief that it was
accurate. Given all of these reports, however, we have
come to the conclusion that we were mistaken in honoring
Jackie‘s request to not contact the
alleged assaulters to get their account.
In trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many
women feel after a sexual assault, we made a judgment – the kind of
judgment reporters and editors make every day. We should have
not made this agreement with Jackie and we should have worked
harder to convince her that the truth would have been better served
by getting the other side of the story. These mistakes are
on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie. We apologize to
anyone who was affected by the story and we will continue to
investigate the events of that evening.
Emphasis added to highlight the latest of Rolling
Stone‘s admitted sins.
Erdely originally reported that
Jackie‘s friends—the ones who urged her
not to go to the police, worried about how their social lives would
be impacted, and wondered why she didn’t enjoy being with “hot Phi
Psi guys”—declined to be interviewed. But those same friends have
now given multiple media interviews in which they claimed that they
would have gladly told their story to
Erdely if given the chance. The above
admission in the editor‘s note suggests
that Erdely did not actually try to
contact the friends at all, perhaps taking
Jackie‘s word for it that they were
unwilling to talk.
These friends have, of course, contradicted virtually all of
Jackie’s claims, from the details of the alleged crime (coerced
vaginal sex and with nine perpetrators vs. coerced oral sex with
five perpetrators) to Jackie’s state immediately after (battered
and bloodied vs. shaken but not bleeding) to the argument over
whether to call the police (Jackie said her friends talked her out
of it, the friends say they were dialing 911 when Jackie
stopped them.) The friends have also questioned Jackie’s odd
behavior prior to the alleged crimes, and have put forth a credible
narrative—backed up by the The Washington Post—suggesting
that she went to great lengths to invent a fictional suitor. As
I explained on CNN’s Michael
Smerconish show on Saturday, these
developments support a “catfishing”
explanation.
Rolling Stone is apparently re-reporting the story,
according to
WaPost‘s
Erik Wemple. Presumably,
that entails doing all the work its staff should have done before
publishing such incredible—and, as it turns out, demonstrably
false—claims. The magazine has given little reason for anyone to
believe it’s capable of such feats of competent journalism, but
should begin by penning what everyone else has already realized is
necessary: a full retraction. No more mealy-mouthed statements like
“our trust was misplaced” in Jackie (as the editors initially
claimed), or “we were mistaken” in reporting details
pursuant to Jackie’s demands (as they now
claim).
More from Reason on this subject
here.
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