Rolling Stone and the UVA rape
[UPDATE 12/5 at 4 PM: The UVA rape story appears to have unraveled. See this.]
Rolling Stone has gotten a lot of publicity recently with a sensational article about a rape in 2012 at the University of Virginia, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely and featuring some harrowing and disturbing details. The victim was identified only as “Jackie.”
Almost as soon as the story was published, doubts arose about its veracity, or at least about the journalistic standards of its author, who did not manage to interview the alleged perpetrators even though it would seem there were ways to have contacted them. Even worse, Erdely hasn’t been forthcoming about the extent of her efforts to find them, and did not include any mention of any of her efforts or failures in the article.
I’ve read many articles pro and con, including of course the original Rolling Stone piece in question (warning: it’s long), and I’ve got my own opinion, which is that not only did Erdely demonstrate abysmal journalistic standards, but that the story itself is quite possibly a fabrication by the alleged victim.
This could be wrong, of course; there’s no way to know at this point. But it seems that Erdely did not fact check it properly, and neither did Rolling Stone. Their excuses seem inadequate, self-serving, and obfuscating.
When I read Erdely’s piece, it seemed to me that its style resembled a romance novel gone bad. And what did the much-criticized UVA adminstration do wrong, actually? They outlined all of Jackie’s choices, and left it to her to decide what to do. Also, Jackie had only come forward to the administration about a year after the event supposedly occurred, and it’s not clear whether she named names to them. But here’s what is purported to have occurred when she did report it to the official in charge of such incidents:
When Jackie finished talking, Eramo comforted her, then calmly laid out her options. If Jackie wished, she could file a criminal complaint with police. Or, if Jackie preferred to keep the matter within the university, she had two choices. She could file a complaint with the school’s Sexual Misconduct Board, to be decided in a “formal resolution” with a jury of students and faculty, and a dean as judge. Or Jackie could choose an “informal resolution,” in which Jackie could simply face her attackers in Eramo’s presence and tell them how she felt; Eramo could then issue a directive to the men, such as suggesting counseling. Eramo presented each option to Jackie neutrally, giving each equal weight. She assured Jackie there was no pressure ”“ whatever happened next was entirely her choice.
Like many schools, UVA has taken to emphasizing that in matters of sexual assault, it caters to victim choice. “If students feel that we are forcing them into a criminal or disciplinary process that they don’t want to be part of, frankly, we’d be concerned that we would get fewer reports,” says associate VP for student affairs Susan Davis. Which in theory makes sense: Being forced into an unwanted choice is a sensitive point for the victims. But in practice, that utter lack of guidance can be counterproductive to a 19-year-old so traumatized as Jackie was that she was contemplating suicide. Setting aside for a moment the absurdity of a school offering to handle the investigation and adjudication of a felony sex crime ”“ something Title IX requires, but which no university on Earth is equipped to do ”“ the sheer menu of choices, paired with the reassurance that any choice is the right one, often has the end result of coddling the victim into doing nothing.
So a university is between a rock and a hard place. Give the student autonomy, sympathy, and information. But if the student doesn’t take responsibility and go further with the reporting process, then the university somehow should have been much more heavy-handed in telling the student what to do. I also agree, however, that this should be a criminal matter, rather than being left to the university, which does not feature the same protections for the accused.
No one has a clue whether Jackie is telling the truth, but her story doesn’t ring true in so many ways (you have to read it to understand my references here): her silence for so long despite the extreme seriousness of her allegations (premeditated gang rape of a violent nature), the advice her friends gave her to keep quiet in the face of such heinous accusations, the fact that if such rape is a widespread initiation rite for this fraternity (as alleged, involving large groups of men) it would have required the silence and acquiescence of many many more people over the years, Jackie’s lack of wounds or going for medical help despite her allegations of being pressed down onto cut glass for three hours, and the fact that Erdely had originally gone looking on many elite campuses for just such a story and searched until she found one.
Here’s more about why the story reads the way it does:
Both Erdely and Woods have said that they decided to tell the story mostly from Jackie’s point of view. As Woods told the Post, “We were telling Jackie’s story. It’s her story.”
In that same Post piece, Erdely seems protective of Jackie. She said that she did not identify the men in the article “by Jackie’s request. She asked me not to name the individuals because she’s so fearful of them. That was something we agreed on.” Erdely would not say, however, whether she knew who they were. “I can’t answer that,” she told the Post. “This was a topic that made Jackie extremely uncomfortable.”…
[Erdely] must know the basic rules of reporting a story like this: You try very, very hard to reach anyone you’re accusing of something. You use any method you can think of, including the jerk reporter move of making a surprise, in-person confrontation. (Sarah Koenig, the host of the Serial podcast, provides a good example of reporter due diligence.) You try especially hard if you are writing about something as serious as a gang rape accusation. Sometimes, what results is a more layered version of the truth. Sometimes, the answer you get makes the accused seem even guiltier…
If you fail to reach the person, you write a sentence explaining that you tried””and explaining how you tried””as a way to assure your readers that you gave the person a chance to defend themselves. We’re not sure why Rolling Stone didn’t think that was necessary.
I’m pretty sure I know. The article’s message was one the editors liked and with which they sympathized (a university winking at widespread campus sexual predators of the male variety), and they didn’t want to dilute it with any sort of disclaimer, and they thought they could get away with it.
A lot of people buy the line, “the woman always tells the truth.” But that’s poppycock. Women sometimes lie. What a shockeroo. So do men. Welcome to the world of humans.
People lie for a lot of reasons, especially to get attention or sympathy or money, or to implicate someone with whom they are angry, or sometimes because they just like to make up stories. Sometimes they even get paid for it—Stephen Glass, for example, whom Rolling Stone published long ago. Journalistic standards have only fallen since then, not risen. Whatever its truth or falsehood, Erdely’s article should have been sent back for much more work and better verification before it was ever published.
[NOTE: Here’s a long piece I wrote on the subject of campus sexual assault, after the Duke case was revealed to have been a hoax.]
[NOTE II: Here’s another good in-depth analysis of the Rolling Stone article.]
[NOTE III: If you check out the comments here, you’ll find that Erdely also can’t seem to reveal the provenance of the salacious school song lyrics she published in the article. No one but Erdely seems to have ever heard of them before. For example:
I believe Sabrina Erdely fabricated those additonal “Rugby Road” lyrics. The ones that nobody, not the president of the Glee Club and the Virginia Gentlemen, per an article, or any other alumni and students who have left comments in these threads has ever heard of until they read that Rolling Stone article.
That, or she’s the victim of a practical joker.
In addition, before the dam burst, the students profiled have been speaking to anyone who will listen that they were lied about. They even brought up those “Rugby Road” lyrics in a newspaper interview as being unbelievable.
When asked for comment about what the students said, about her reporting and those lyrics, Erdely hit back strongly, even accusing these student activists of being in denial. Importantly, she brought up why those lyrics were so crucial to the story, but didn’t explain what her source for them was.
The comment didn’t provide a link to that article in the newspaper, although I’d like to see it.
Now, of course, the song has been banned by the UVA glee club.]
This isn’t about Erdly’s accusation of rape or UVA’s ‘culpability’, this is about maintaining the campaign of attacks against the male gender, especially the white male gender.
It’s just the latest broadside. After all, all males are rapists.
“A lot of people buy the line, “the woman always tells the truth.” But that’s poppycock.”
Thanks. Kind of reminds me of the Artful Dodger’s insightful comments on the Thanksgiving Thread about how women in general like to get together to commiserate and complain about things or people.
I am greatly amused by…
falling dominos.
The Democrats’ so-called “War on Women,” which the rape culture accusations are just a part of, is really a war on men, and it’s been astroturfed for the Hillary! campaign.
Neo,
I recommend http://www.cotwa.info/ as a niche/boutique/specialist source on the subject.
I have been following the story but haven’t read the initial yet. Seeing the stated actions of the university, I am baffled as to why they are being treated as callous! This is something that was reported a year after it is supposed to have occurred, so it isn’t as if she came to the university bleeding and traumatized. She had a year to think about it. If she was suicidal, she should have talked to a counselor. I wound amazed if they aren’t readily available on a college campus.
The university calmly gave her several options for prosecution, including the police. What on earth is wrong with that???
No risk for the Rolling Stone in getting it wrong. Look what happened in the Duke Rape Case,
How many faculty at Duke signed that original petition essentially declaring the lacrosse players, “GUILTY”?
It was something like 82 or 83…
The only one who was criticized or brought to account for that cluster-_____ was the prosecutor.
Al Sharpton? He’s Teflon.
The scores of faculty? They slithered away to organize their next agenda-driven assault.
The Stripper? Hmmm…vaguely recall she had another, unrelated run-in with the law. Oh, and Jesse Jackson offered to pay her college costs. Nice reward.
This UVA story? I am hoping that young lady was not made to endure the horrific event told in the story. Yeeeeesh…
Rolling Stone’s risk is further reduced because the article doesn’t name any names. Because the identities of the wrong-doers are hidden, it’s much harder to find grounds for a libel suit.
War of the gender politicos? The first alien invasion was broadcast over radio. The world has yet to recover from that encounter.
I thought generational feminists lost the war to dehumanize males (and the women who love them) in order to elevate their position in the hierarchy of society, civilization, and humanity. I wonder if “modern” men, and women, will allow these crude generalizations and character defamation to pass without consequences. Perhaps the absurdity of the universal claims does not merit a rational and thoughtful response.
Ban heterosexual males or something. Perhaps progressive morality has revolutionary consequences. I predict a renewed tribalism anchored by families with a shared religion or moral consensus.
Some weird stuff is going on in the “unannounced” (is it unannounced?) war between females and males. Let’s see. There is GamerGate, then the fuss about the t-shirt worn by that scientist, then the spate of sometimes very dubious rape accusations mae against young male writers and editors in the Alt-Lit world, which certainly tarnished if not destroyed the career of Tao Lin for one a little more than a month ago. (I just sent you, neo, a link to a triumphalist feminist post on this.) “No males allowed.” That’s the new tagline for online literature.
I’m not sure what to think about all this at this point. One’s first reaction is just to duck. Hit the ground. See then if you can wait it out.
I know some of the males who’ve been hit hardest, I’ve had dealings with them, and they’re jerks. Stephen Tully Dierks, the editor of Pop Serial, was really an asshole. But the rape charge which drove him to shut down his online mag and more or less go on the run is kind of… well, funky. Some aspiring female writer struck up an email friendship with him, and talked about how much she’d like to live in New York. He said, Come stay with me, I have plenty o room. So she traveled, from Ohio or Indiana or somewhere, and pretty soon found he expected to join her in bed if she was living in his apartment. She didn’t want to have sex with him particularly, but she wanted to stay in New York.
But now, looked at retrospectively, what seems like it may have have been a sordid quid pro quo is now rape.
In Tao Lin’s case, he was 22 and his girlfriend, Erin Kennedy, was 16. He published her book of poetry. Now she’s in the midst of a sex change, calls “himself” E.R. Kennedy, and somehow the sex with Tao Lin is now being called rape. Statutory? I don’t know the details by now. His novel “Richard Yates” (which he first considered entitling “Philip Roth”) allegedly details some of their romance, and E.R. now says he wrote a good portion of it, or his/her emails were used without permission, something like that.
HTMLGiant, the online Alt-Lit journal associated with Tao Lin and many others in this world, has also shut down. I’m not sure exactly why, unless the drama simply overwhelmed them.
Not all that long ago, famed agent Nat Sobel said that females now buy 75% of all hardback books. He said that the young male coming-of-age novel is dead, and that males were best advised to stick to genre fiction if they wanted to be published these days.
60% of those attending college are now females, and it’s during college years that most people form their literary/aesthetic tastes for a lifetime.
Maybe none of this is connected. Maybe nothing is.
If one takes anything in the rolling stone seriously, you are so 60s as to be an embarrassment to yourself.
” . . . there’s no way to know at this point. But it seems that Erdely did not fact check it properly, and neither did Rolling Stone.”
As Alan Dershowitz said in criticizing the lack of due process in campus rape policies, campus rape is such a heinous crime that even innocence is no defense.
Why is no one highlighting the universities’ complicity in the development of libertine campuses?
In the 1970s when I was a grad student in my twenties, even we lived in sex-segregated dorms. The draconian visitation rights of the previous generation still existed, but weren’t stringently enforced.
Then we saw university residences move to alternate sex floors; a floor for women, a floor for men alternating in the high-rise.
After that, male and female students were intermixed on the same floor, and by the time my son graduated in 2006, a checkerboard pattern was in place so that the door opposite each room in the hallway was a room for the opposite sex.
The universities themselves encouraged the environment that they now decry. It is my hope that unjustly accused students sue these self-righteous administrative windbags so thoroughly that their endowments run dry.
It’s interesting that Erdely, in a very long and detailed article that reveals the names of precisely zero people, explicitly names the Fraternity in the opening paragraph. This is a potentially major misstep, especially if the story turns out to be critically flawed or an outright hoax. It also opens an avenue of motive if it is, indeed, a hoax.
Neo
As someone who has been in law enforcement 20 years. I would like to second your opinion that it is my belief that this story is a fabrication. I have heard plenty of both false and true rape allegations. Many of the false ones fall apart when shown to be inconsistent and highly improbable. These are many times recanted to avoid being prosecuted.
The false allegations tend to differ in two ways from the true and prosecutable ones. False allegations tend to be extremely vague in many areas. Especially when it comes to anything that may identify the perpetrators. Either the accusers claim to not remember details of who raped them. Or the details are so ill-defined that they apply to nearly everyone.
Conversely the details of WHAT happened will be highly specific. In this case the broken glass etc. Many of these details will be fantastic and hard to believe to most who hear the story. But the accusers tend to want the sympathy that accompanies being thought of as a victim. And there are many people more than willing to rush uncritically to apply it.
This current rape culture idea reminds me of the whole “satanic” cult phenomenon of the 80’s and 90’s. Plenty of people who wish to draw attention to themselves. And the media,politicians, and activist groups who have their own agenda for pushing this idea.
Erdely did not fact check it properly
Hilarious. Since when do Goebbels-level propagandists fact-check their Big Lies? OK, maybe not Goebbes-level. Streicher-level?
It’s all of a piece with Lena Dunham spinning a long yarn about being raped by an Oberlin campus Republican named Barry with a big mustache – and a lot of other superficially detailed characteristics. Only hasn’t John Nolte at Breitbart done extensive sleuthing at Oberlin trying to find this Barry?
There was a senior named Barry around at the time she was there, but nothing else fits, and apparently that Barry is a good family man and good citizen, who is freaked out about what might happen if he is identified by the Media Slime Machine as that Barry in Dunham’s book.
A lot of people buy the line, “the woman always tells the truth.” But that’s poppycock. Women sometimes lie. What a shockeroo. So do men. Welcome to the world of humans.
and in a feminist society they tend to lie MORE because there is little punishment or problem with doing so, and there is so much of an upside to them and the cause that its rampant… the tthree biggies being rape and racism and homosexual hate…
Duke university (Crystal Gail Mangum), Lena Dunham, Tawana Brawly (now Maryam Muhammad), Trinity International University (three anonymous letters), Arizona State University (Ahmad Saad Nasim), Left-wing academic Kerri Dunn, Floyd Elliot of Independence MO, Hercules Middle/High School, Joe Williams, Andrea Brazier, Genesis Hernandez, Danya Morales, Toni Christina Jenkins, Dylan Bleier and Matt Alden, Meg Lanker-Simons, Olander Cuthrell, Charlie Rogers, Sharmeka Moffitt, Joseph Baken, Alexandra Pennell, Aimee Whitchurch and Christel Conklin, Quinn Matney, Aubriana Banks, Sarah Marshak, Floyd Elliot, Kerri Dunn, Leah Miller
and if your not famous, well, the lying can be worse as there is no defense.
at one time i was accused of murder.. i lost my job, career, reputation, home, child, and more… then the corpse walked in… no punushment, no reparations, no apology, nothing… just a destroyed life and no repurcussions…
another time, a friend taped a girl who did something, and then played the tape for the police, which got me out of a world of trouble, as the girl said on the tape she “set me up to teach me not to mess with a modern woman”…
now, i have no family, no friends, cant do business, went bankrupt, and so had my life completely destroyed, and there is nothing i can do, not even get help from others… as the ones willing are impotent.
Geoffrey Britain Says: “It’s just the latest broadside. After all, all males are rapists.”
US Birth Rate Hits All-Time Low
http://www.livescience.com/48995-us-birth-rate-hits-all-time-low.html
its about eugenics… if you destroy the love between the woman and the man of certain races, their birth rate plummets to below replacement. which then leads to extermination by other means than ovens. currently, one population has gone from 80-90% of the population to a minority in 1.5 generations…
(note that jewish males are also white males).
Here in America, white, college-educated women–a good proxy for the middle class–have a fertility rate of 1.6
replacement is above 2.1
so, feminism exterminates the group that follows it. the women are turned in to selfish haters of their own mates, and then proceed to exterminate their billion year unbroken life histories…
then they get more militant… blaming that after they destroy the men, there are “no good men to marry”.
when the men who are not part of it seek alternatives, they then get attacked for that too… the crap i get for having an asian wife is incredible..
‘Yellow fever’ fetish: Why do so many white men want to date a Chinese woman?
Chinese writer Yuan Ren lifts the lid on so-called ‘yellow fever’: a well-peddled myth that Asian women make better sexual lovers than other women, while at the same time, having no meaningful presence in politics and popular culture
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10935508/Yellow-fever-fetish-Why-do-so-many-white-men-want-to-date-a-Chinese-woman.html
These 9 Images Will Make You Think Differently About ‘Yellow Fever’
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/yellow-fever-donna-choi-asian-fetish-series_n_4454541.html
Stop fetishizing me: Why being an Asian woman in the dating world has never been harder
As our culture continues to normalize the idea of “yellow fever,” I’m pretty tired of dealing with it
Salon
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/05/stop_fetishizing_me_why_being_an_asian_woman_in_the_dating_world_has_never_been_harder/
every day feminism
Yellow Fever: Dating As an Asian Woman
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/dating-as-an-asian-woman/
Because People Still Don’t Get It, Here’s What’s Wrong With Having A “Preference” for Asian Women
http://www.xojane.com/sex/only-you-can-prevent-yellow-fever
9 Wack Things White Guys Say to Deny their Asian Fetish
When I ask, “What’s up with your long history of dating so many Asian women?” these are the nine stupid answers I get.
http://www.xojane.com/issues/asian-fetish
the truth is that they thought that the men would just give up and die out.. instead, they ended up abandoning the harridens and feminist raised women (even if not feminist they still follow stuff), and have sought life companions who have more traditional ideas of living. ie. children, family, religion, etc.
so the left which supposedly hates caucasian men, is now pushing no race mixing…
the articles are very insulting, and tell you what i think and why i have an asian wife, while arguing against itself and winning…
so rather than i love my wife for loving me, being kind, and being someone i can be kind in return and love – its just a fetish
meanwhile… those women who followed feminism are mostly barren, alone except for other women and their gay male friends, and pissed off… (their moms and pops are not too happy that they exterminated the family either)
if you read the mens sites you figure out real quickly that what was going on was the idea of the girl trading sex for lots o fun when younger, then settling for the nicer guy who has a job and money and having a baby with him (though he was not acceptable as part of the adventure, come time to pay for things, he is the sucker to go to) – then divorce take half the proceeds and raise the kid the way you want (as he has little rights).
problem with this theory is that all thes asian immigrant women looked over and noticed that the best men to have companionship, children, and family, were available… while the losers in the biker jacket, and exciting, were all taken by the feminist women getting their rocks off…
so come time to give up the younger days of no children and hookups, there is no one there, as the asian girls poached their plan. the articles cant explain that, so they attack the men in hopes that asian women would believe the bs… for the most part, they dont… yeah, those raised here and not asian except in morphology believe that, and are annoyed that they are approached… but those from other places who are not feminist, want children, a home, connections to family, dont read that pap.
To be honest, I haven’t been following this story very closely, nor the Garner choking, because I no longer trust these little activists and their stories that fit their narrative a little too perfectly. I saw the distortions of the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin cases.
After reading how Erdley shopped colleges for a rape case that fit the narrative AND happened at a school lacking a sufficiently strong feminist activist presence I figured out she’s just Sandra Fluke 2.0. Fluke shopped law schools to find one whose health plan didn’t cover birth control just so that she could engage in her activism while getting her degree. These women really aren’t doing their gender any favors.
Pingback:Stupid Liberals | Blogs For Victory
What I find hilarious about this is the UVA president’s response. She closed down the fraternities and sororities. It’s the angela merkel response. There was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan that caused a power plant reactor meltdown so Merkel closed all the nuclear power plants in Germany as a precaution. You never know when there might be a tsunami in Germany.
Artful Dodger,
You have some thought-provoking comments. Thanks for sharing.
Typical reaction from the local far left:
http://fcnp.com/2014/12/03/editorial-should-uva-even-exist/
As AoSHQ just said: Well, well, well..
RS Caves.
I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet anyone here $50 that the WAPO has binders full of UVA-grad employees,,,
Rolling Stone now backtracking on their story.
No surprise. They got what they were after, free publicity, a lot of attention.
Journalism
Largely populated with graduates from Liberal-infused institutions. Educated with Leftist and Liberal ideals, concepts, perceptions.
And methods.
Politically Progressive methods of telling “stories”.
Tactics motivated by driving agendas.
Americans have little trust for journalists.
Americans have little trust in politicians.
Americans have little trust in police.
Americans have little trust in capitalism.
Americans have little trust in corporations.
Americans have little trust in the one percent.
Just the way Progressives and Leftists want it.
Divide and conquer. Chaos.
Wow that fell apart even faster than I thought it would. Its now very convenient that the woman in the center of this has not had her name disclosed. Now Rolling Stone can fall back on the “protecting their sources” routine. And the left wins again. They keep millions believing in their bogus story. RS avoid a lawsuit. And now RS will be the victims when they get attacked for being political hacks.
This kind of thing has become increasingly commonplace. The story will now live on an used ad-nauseum to attack anyone against the entire agenda. And it only works because the media in this country are as Insty would say “democratic operatives with bylines”.
I have a new post up about the unraveling of the story.
I hope that Rolling Stone, the supposed “investigative reporter,” and the woman who apparently made up this gang rape allegation are all sued for everything they are worth.
Neo and people, I found this “gem” while on another site:
http://goldrushapple.blogspot.com/2014/12/whoa-whoa-uva-sexual-case-apparently.html
(If you haven’t noticed I am GoldRush Apple, hence GRA.)