Overview

"A Rape on Campus" is an investigative article written by American journalist Sabrina Erdely that reported on a group sexual assault of a female student, only identified as Jackie, by a group of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity students at the University of Virginia (UVA) in September 2012. Upon its publication by Rolling Stone in November 2014, the validity of the victim's claims as cited in the article soon came under intense scrutiny following the discovery of factual discrepancies and conflicting details in the accounts provided by the accuser and the fraternity.

Notable Developments

On November 19th, 2014, Rolling Stone^[1] published a feature investigative article titled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA" by staff reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which alleged that seven Phi Kappa Psi brothers at the University of Virginia brutally gang raped a female freshman student, who is only identified by her first name as “Jackie,” during a social gathering at their fraternity house held on the night of September 28th, 2012.

University of Virginia's Response

On November 20th, the University of Virginia Interfraternity Council^[7] (IFC) released a statement noting that an IFC officer had been interviewed by the Rolling Stone but that "the reporter elected not to include any of the information from the interview in her article." On November 22nd, University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan announced that the University was suspending all fraternities on campus until January 9th, 2014.^[6]

Criticism

On November 24th, Worth magazine editor in chief Richard Bradley^[4] published a blog post titled "Is the Rolling Stone Story True?", which questioned the story's authenticity and comparing it to the 2006 Duke lacrosse case.^[3] On November 27th, Slate^[5] published an interview with Erdely, in which she claimed she was unable to contact the accused men for the story due to the fraternity's "outdated" contact page. On December 2nd, Slate published an article titled "The Missing Men," noting that Erdely refused to answer follow-up questions about the story. That day, The Washington Post^[8] published an article titled "Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape," which rejected Erdely's excuse for not contacting the accused men:

"The charge in this piece, however, is gang rape, and so requires every possible step to reach out and interview them, including e-mails, phone calls, certified letters, FedEx letters, UPS letters and, if all of that fails, a knock on the door. No effort short of all that qualifies as journalism."

Phi Kappa Psi's Response

On December 5th, the Virginia chapter of Phi Kappa Psi issued a press release, which claimed no fraternity member matched the description of the lifeguard in the story, denied having a social event during the weekend of September 28th, 2012 and revealed that their pledging and initiation periods took place during the spring semester (shown below).

Rolling Stone's Apology

On December 5th, 2014, Will Dana, the managing editor of Rolling Stone,^[2] issued an official response in an article titled “A Note to Our Readers, in which Dana apologized to the readers on behalf of the magazine for their admitted oversight on fact-checking and failure to include any account or statement from the alleged assaulters (shown below). On December 7th, Rolling Stone updated the apology letter with a full acknowledgment of their mistake by stating “these mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.”

"In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced… Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone‘s editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility."

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites published articles criticizing Rolling Stone for its poor journalistic practices and for blaming a source for their own errors, including Fortune,^[9] Washington Post,^[10] The New Yorker,^[11] Fox News^[12] and The Daily Mail.^[13]

The Columbia Journalism Review Report

On April 5th, 2015, Columbia Journalism Review^[17] published an investigative report commissioned by Rolling Stone’s editorial board, which concluded that the magazine did not perform “basic, even routine journalistic practice” to validate the authenticity of the UVA rape allegations story.

Co-authored by the dean of Columbia Journalism School, Steve Coll, along with the school’s dean of academic affairs Sheila Coronel and postgraduate research scholar Derek Kravitz, the three-months long review of the case described the Rolling Stone article as “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable” at numerous levels, mainly in reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. In addition, the report suggested that Rolling Stone’s story “may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations.”

“The editors invested Rolling Stone’s reputation in a single source.”

Formal Redaction

That same day, Rolling Stone^[15] formally retracted the story and the freelance author of the article issued a formal apology to the readers, her editors and victims of sexual assault, in a statement published by the New York Times^[16]:

"Over my 20 years of working as an investigative journalist -- including at Rolling Stone, a magazine I grew up loving and am honored to work for -- I have often dealt with sensitive topics and sources. In writing each of these stories I must weigh my compassion against my journalistic duty to find the truth. However, in the case of Jackie and her account of her traumatic rape, I did not go far enough to verify her story. I allowed my concern for Jackie’s well-being, my fear of re-traumatizing her, and my confidence in her credibility to take the place of more questioning and more facts. These are mistakes I will not make again. Reporting on rape has unique challenges, but the journalist still has the responsibility to get it right. I hope that my mistakes in reporting this story do not silence the voices of victims that need to be heard."

In response to the report, President of the University of Virginia Teresa Sullvan also released a formal statement criticizing the Rolling Stone article as a poor work of journalism that “unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individual at the University of Virginia.” On April 5th, The New York Times^[19] reported that while the publication fully acknowledged its errors, no staff member would be reprimanded or fired as a result of the report, citing the publisher Jann Wenner’s view that the mistakes were “unintentional and purposefully deceitful.” Meanwhile, according to The Washington Post^[18], the UVA chapter of Phi Kappa Psi is in the process of “exploring legal options” against Rolling Stone.

Impact

Following the formal redaction of the article, several defamation lawsuits were filed by the accused parties, namely the University of Virginia, Phi Kappa Psi and three students who were accused of being the attackers.

Defamation Lawsuits

• On May 12th, 2015, University of Virginia's associate dean Nicole Eramo filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Sabrina Erdely in state court, "[seeking] redress for the wanton destruction caused to Phi Kappa Psi by Rolling Stone's intentional, reckless, and unethical behavior." On November 4th, 2016, after over 20 hours of deliberation in Charlottesville Circuit Court, a jury consisting of eight women and two men delivered a verdict in favor of University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo, which found the defendants liable for damages and committing actual malice. The argument for damages is scheduled to begin on November 7th.

• On July 29th, 2015, three former members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity who had been named and shamed online after the publication of the story filed a defamation suit against Rolling Stone, which claimed that the article failed to preserve the accused party's anonymity by providing enough details for readers to identify them. On June 28th, 2016, the United States federal judge Kevin Castel dismissed the case after determining that the details about the attackers in the article were "too vague and remote" to link the story to the plaintiffs.

• On November 9th, 2015, Phi Kappa Psi filed a lawsuit against Rolling Stone in state court "to seek redress for the wanton destruction caused to Phi Kappa Psi by Rolling Stone's intentional, reckless, and unethical behavior."

Search Interest

External References