Court Documents Show Rolling Stone Ignored Multiple Warning Signs in UVA Rape Story

  1. Home
  2. Culture Wars
By Emily Zanotti | 12:19 pm, July 5, 2016
Read More

Rolling Stone‘s contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely had plenty of reasons not to believe UVA’s now-infamous false rape accuser, “Jackie,” but continued on with the story anyway, newly released court documents show.

According to Erdely’s affidavits, reporter’s notes, and records — submitted Friday in the defamation case against Rolling Stone brought by UVA dean Nicole Eramo — her investigation of Jackie’s accusations against a UVA fraternity that she said gang raped her as part of an initiation, was, at best, shoddy. The documents show interviews full of inconsistencies, a complete lack of evidence, a reporter with an agenda, and a victim with a bizarre and uncorroborated story that few people bothered to check — chief among them Erdely and the editors of Rolling Stone.

Most notably, the documents show that Erdely decided that she would write the story to expose campus “rape culture” even before she knew whether such a culture existed at UVA — and believed an “anti-rape activist,” Emily Renda, sight unseen.

Renda, the documents show, was trying to build her own case against the UVA fraternity Jackie accused of gang rape. Essentially, Erdely signed on as a co-investigator.

But as Erdely dug deeper into the story, she came across lots of missing evidence and uncooperative interviewees, but pressed on with Jackie’s full version of the story, anyway.

Jackie was bizarrely unable to put Erdely in contact with students that Jackie supposedly saw every day.

Jackie’s mother, who supposedly had possession of a bloody dress from the night in question (which, of course, never materialized)? Weirdly out of contact.

Jackie, who claimed to have received extensive injuries from being sexually assaulted atop a pane of broken glass, had no scars.

And aside from Jackie — whom Erdely used to corroborate Jackie’s own story — the only other person Erdely talked to was a campus activist, also interested in exposing UVA’s supposed “rape culture.”

Despite repeated and obvious evidence that Jackie was, at least, exaggerating her claims against the fraternity, the Rolling Stone reporter continued to believe her. Erdely’s excuse? Jackie seemed traumatized and that made her, in Erdely’s eyes, credible.

There’s no doubt from the documents that Jackie was experiencing some kind of mental anguish, and Erdely wrote off the inconsistencies in Jackie’s story as typical of survivors of sexual assault — an argument about survivors that Erdely’s activist friends reinforced.

But even with these two anecdotal bits of evidence weighing in Jackie’s favor, the testimony appears to show that Erdely could have dug much deeper — and deliberately didn’t, even when Jackie failed to respond to request after request to produce documentation, witnesses or anything, really, to show she was telling the truth.

Erdely ended her submission with an apology to the court:

I cannot stress enough that at the time the Article was published, and until the early morning of December 5, I firmly believed that everything in it was true. It was never my intention to cause harm, and I feel nothing but sorrow and regret over the entire experience. If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie’s credibility as a source, I would not have published it.

Erdely also says that, had she discovered Jackie’s story was false earlier, she would have written the same story — just with a different subject. So while she claims to be sorry, “Jackie” may have only prevented another college from receiving the same treatment.

Rolling Stone has submitted a motion for Summary Judgment to the court, asking for the defamation case to be dismissed. The court will likely respond this week.

Advertisement

Related

New Revelations Rolling Stone's Botched UVA Rape Story Was Driven by Ideology

UVA: Rape Reporter's Rolling Stone Contract: $43,000 Per Story

Also ...