Maligned UVA dean sues Rolling Stone and Sabrina Erdely
Nicole Eramo is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages from Rolling Stone; its parent company, Wenner Media; and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville.
Eramo, who is the university’s chief administrator dealing with sexual assaults, argues in the lawsuit that the article destroyed her credibility, permanently damaged her reputation and caused her emotional distress. She assailed the account as containing numerous falsehoods that the magazine could have avoided if it had worked to verify the story of its main subject, a student named Jackie who alleged she was gang-raped in 2012 and that the university mishandled her case.
“Rolling Stone and Erdely’s highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court. “They were the result of a wanton journalist who was more concerned with writing an article that fulfilled her preconceived narrative about the victimization of women on American college campuses, and a malicious publisher who was more concerned about selling magazines to boost the economic bottom line for its faltering magazine, than they were about discovering the truth or actual facts.”
Preach it sister, preach it!
You can find many of my previous posts on the UVA Rolling Stone story here. In my opinion, both the periodical and reporter Erderly were guilty of everything Eramo’s suit alleges, and more. I am very glad (in case you hadn’t noticed) to see that lawsuits are forthcoming. Perhaps—perhaps—this will have a chilling affect on the next publication that tries to stir up public opinion and outrage with such an obviously suspect story, if the penalties end up being high enough.
One can dream, anyway.
I stand by my original position that universities shouldn’t be investigating rape allegations anyway and that the police should be in control. If the allegations don’t constitute a crime or a possible one, the university not become a kangaroo court. Of course, the universities still would have to figure out what to do with an accused student in the meantime, but in the “Jackie” case there was no actual accused student, there was an entire fraternity.
I also don’t think universities can or should patrol the bedroom negotiations of its students. If students want to be treated like modern-day adults and be allowed the freedom to screw around as they wish, then they should have to act like adults and take responsibility for it. I am very serious, and seriously libertarian, about this. In my day students were protected from some of these complexities—certainly not all of them!—by stricter rules about being in each others’ dorm rooms or the bedroom floors of fraternities or sororities. Now that those rules are gone, and students want complete freedom, they should be prepared to deal with it, and let the police handle the serious problems when they arise.
“Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville.”
“Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of FAKE sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville.”
Fixed it for you.
‘Of course, the universities still would have to figure out what to do with an accused student in the meantime, but in the “Jackie” case there was no actual accused student, there was an entire fraternity.’
What about what to do with the accuser? How is it that everyone but her is being dragged through the coals? Let’s start with patient zero shall we?
I wonder what the limits of Rolling Stone’s policy. With the coming frat lawsuit, I would love to see Jann Wenner’s equity wiped out in bankruptcy. Debt (even unsecured creditors) comes before equity unless it is the Obama reorg of GM.
(In a whining voice); ‘but, but the journalist Erdely and Rolling Stone meant well’… (then the righteous justification) ‘they were just trying to advance women’s rights against the patriarchy’!
Justice demands nothing less than jail for ‘Jackie’ the liar bearing false witness.
And while we’re at it, jail for Erdely and the Rolling Stone Editor as well. The charge; ‘willful misrepresentation, that if accepted, would reasonably be expected to lead to the imprisonment of the accused’. To prevent justice from becoming a meaningless platitude, consequence must be proportional to the offense.
The primary reason Universities got involved is because they were pushed into it by the Feds.
I’m waiting to see who the fraternity members sue. The members of the Duke lacrosse team sued the university and got millions. It was too bad Mike Nifong was just disbarred and didn’t get some jail time.
What about what to do with the accuser? How is it that everyone but her is being dragged through the coals? Let’s start with patient zero shall we?
She is a liar and an honor code violator. She should be expelled. The only reason she “defended” Erasmo after the publication is because she would have been expelled for lying about staff and other students. She almost certainly lied about the dean to Erdely (she only wanted to tell her story!) to get the angle that the school was heartless and enabled fraternity rapists and wouldn’t help her. She also lied and libeled her friends, roommates, etc. She lied to her mother (she had a bad experience at a party her mother told the academic dean) also and refused to let the police she her records at UVA. Not dismissing her from school makes a mockery of their honor code.
A lot of universities have “real” police departments — with law enforcement officers trained much as those at city, county, or other public agencies. They are expected to meet the same sorry of requirements to maintain their status and advance through the ranks. I work for a university that has a “real” police force. They work closely with the state, county, and city law enforcement agencies, and of course VERY closely with the DA and when it comes up, with the state AG. I’ve seen them in action collaborating with the city cops — there’s a good relationship. (They was a gun shot victim dumped on our campus; we have a hospital.) I suspect if there were an allegation of tape on campus, the initial law enforcement team would be the campus public safety. We’d be unlikely to get any of these false accusations of a morning after regret — there are no dorms; all students live “off campus” under city or county jurisdiction. But you never know what could happen in an office or a closet. Or an empty conference room. Something like that would come under campus public safety. If additional resources were needed, they’d call in the city cops. (Like crime scene forensics; or SANE assistance, though they would be capable of working that — the medical staff comprises the forensic part of the SANE team.)
Anyhow, not all campus police are JUST traffic/parking cops or Barney Fifes.
Rolling Stone’s nefarious behavior reaches well beyond the impact on one individual, one fraternity, or one University. Of course, the President of UVA was a collaborator in the smearing of her own University.
Today, there was a report that the leftist, female Attorney General of California would collaborate with U. of Cal President, Janet Napolitano (who needs no introduction), on an initiative to combat campus sexual assaults. The LA TV reporter who carried the story even repeated the fictional figure that 20% of Coeds are victims of sexual assault. Look out guys in California. Someone will pay the price to make this collaboration look meaningful.
“Now that those rules are gone, and students want complete freedom, they should be prepared to deal with it,” says Neo.
I disagree emphatically.
Restore the rules. That solution is obvious. Who got rid of the rules in the first place? The student radicals of the 1960s.
Students want “Complete freedom” so they should just have it? Students write their own rules? Nutty.
Fact: The left lies and ruins lives, families and society.
If I had a son, I would HIGHLY recommend to him that he: A) Not go to college and consider instead a nice respectable career as a plumber or an electrician; B) If he insisted on going to college, I would HIGHLY recommend that he not sleep with ANY body at all, and avoid being alone with anyone. And have him watch “Oleanna” over and over and over again…
Suing, the lawsuit, only benefits the Left.
Who pays the damages? And who gets the money? The Left gets the money, for the most part.
The idea that lawyers or courts or the lawsuit, can sue back damages and thus deter the Left, when the Left is getting the money from the damages, is rather naive an idea.
If the suit fails, the Left wins via university power. If the suit succeeds, lawyers gain a tighter grip and can fund more operations using the money. The Left wins. The Left’s strategy is far greater than the myopic attempts of the peons in resistance.
frank:
You misunderstand my point.
I’m not advocating complete freedom. I’m pointing out that if students want it and get it, they are hypocritical and contradictory to ask for protection from it. In other words, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, but if you demand heat, be ready to protect yourself against it.
I’m pointing out that if students want it and get it, they are hypocritical and contradictory to ask for protection from it.
If they weren’t the ones who wrote the rules, merely the ones who inherited this current state of rules from the Left, then that would make them slaves who thought they were free. Thus I’m not sure if it can be said that they wanted it. They would have had to know what they wanted to begin with, and usually that’s not something slaves are asked for nor are they allowed to pursue their wishes.
This network of contradictions is much like a Gordian Knot. It is a device of the Left.
Neo:
In principle I agree, but keep in mind also that they simply got stuck inside a system that had *already* changed the rules by the time they came, without them personally having “asked” for anything. Now they find it impossible to advocate going back to previous regulations, as any such voices are actively contrasted from all sides in the name of the current ideology (which is attempting to bring the whole of society, not only dorms, to the state of practical sexual indifferentiation).
Most of those kids have very little by way of *personal* blame for how things are. They inherited a certain system, for the good and for the bad, and they have limited resources and energies for opposing it in the name of future good. Most of them have woefully underdeveloped intellectual defenses against the kind of propaganda they are exposed to – some of that is normal, in function of age, but some of that is a direct result of the fact that they were cheated out of a “real” education before college. Even from a European point of view – and things ARE bad here – most American colleges at the undergrad level look like remedial institutions.
So between the disproportionate political activism and non-academic social focus (sports culture etc.), being away from home probably for the first time and trying out the pseudo-independence of those isolated campus bubbles, being of an already “problematic” age and not being educated properly at that, they are LOST – lost as to who they are, what they want, and what is good for them. All of the would-be reference adults have hypocritically abandoned them in the name of that “independence”, and then when things go wrong they react with GLEE and belated moralisms of “them spoiled brats who now got what they asked for”. The hypocrisy lies not only with the kids, although their choices are certainly a part of the problem.
For us it was different, but there is something very different in the air in most Western European countries. I cannot really put my finger on it, but for some reason the attempted infantilization of the college-age young people does not really work (yet). There is no analogous campus culture, and I think that is the primary difference – the lack of isolation inside a little bubble, the fact that college-age students live normally integrated in the larger city, so as a consequence there is no “paralegal” campus system to deal with – but there is also something to be said about a stronger intellectual culture which allows for better defenses.
I ended up writing an essay again instead of a short response :D, but I think it is misguided to attribute all of the fault for the present mess (not saying you are doing this, but in general) to their half-informed choices without considering these additional factors. Also, it really is a dangerous age, it just manifests differently with different people, and the more objectively I can look at it – with a distance of a couple of years – the more it seems to me that in a campus setting they really need adults to put their foot down as regards basic safety and propriety, BECAUSE they are so isolated from any real life and prone to underestimating the consequences of their behaviors. Imposing single-sex dorms again, as “liberticidal” as it sounds at first, might be the least bad solution.
A post mentioned this issue of separate police forces a couple of days ago on the blog Second City Cop. They complained that the various crime stats of colleges and universities were not recorded as part of the City total which distorts the true picture of Chicago crime.
Props to the campus cops though – they work with a lot of the same criminal element that the regular cops do since there are no walls between the universities and the rest of the City.
Anna:
You are absolutely correct that parents, and teachers and the educational system, as well as adult society as a whole have failed the college age kids—failed to teach them, failed to set examples, and knuckled under to their demands (or earlier generations’ demands) to throw out the rules that would have helped to keep them safe during those vulnerable years.
At some point, though, it has to be pointed out to them that what goes along with freedom is responsibility. The “them” in that sentence is just about everybody.
The indoctrination was successful. If they failed, they failed to make their good intentions into good results. They succeeded at doing what they set out to do, indoctrinate a whole new generation in Speaking Power to Truth.
Imposing single-sex dorms again, as “liberticidal” as it sounds at first, might be the least bad solution.
The Left is the problem. So long as the Left isn’t killed, there are no such things as “solutions”.
Gary Says:
May 13th, 2015 at 12:57 pm
“Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville.”..
Did a cursory Googling look into that critter.
A nasty piece of work she is:
“Billy Doe” is the pseudonym for a former altar boy from Philadelphia who claimed he was raped at St. Jerome Parish by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher….
Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, wrote both stories….
…There’s more. When she wrote her story, Erdely quoted from the church’s “secret archive files” that documented sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over four decades. The files, pried loose with search warrants, documented the crimes of 169 priests, who raped and abused hundreds of children.
But those files contradict Billy’s story…
Engelhardt, died in prison on November 15, a couple weeks after his lawyers were in appeals court, arguing that he deserved a new trial. The priest, according to his superior, Father James J. Greenfield, spent his last hours handcuffed to a hospital bed guarded by two armed corrections officers…. Claiming his innocence.
Nice.