Emails Show The Moment That Rolling Stone Reporter Realized The Source "Under the scenario cited by Erdely", Wemple wrote, "the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they're criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. [46] Slate reported that the Post account strongly implied Jackie's tale of rape had been fabricated in an attempt to win over "Randall", who had previously rebuffed her romantic advances. "[150], The Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple stated that everyone connected to this story at Rolling Stone should be fired. "[113] Assistant editor Elisabeth Garber-Paul provided fact-checking. [135], On January 30, 2015, Teresa Sullivan, the President of the University of Virginia, acknowledged that the Rolling Stone story was "discredited" in her State of the University Address. "[94], On December 8, 2014, ABC News reported that the person quoted by Erdely as alleging a rape at Phi Kappa Psi had retained an attorney. A hand covers her mouth. "[158] In February 2016, the judge in the lawsuit ordered Jackie to appear at a deposition on April 5, 2016. [48], Per records released by Yahoo under subpoena in 2016, Haven Monahan's e-mail account was created from inside the University of Virginia "only one day before that same account sent an email to Jackie's friend Ryan Duffin" in 2012. It was Nov. 19, 2014, when the world first learned about Jackie, a young woman who claimed in the pages of Rolling Stone that she had been gang-raped as part of a fraternity initiation. "[17] She began by elaborately concocting electronic evidence for a dream date suitor she called Haven Monahan to entrap a freshman boy named Ryan in a unwanted romantic relationship. Oh, the earth spun a little slower, or faster metaphors fail me when it comes to stuff like this.At any rate, you surely remember. As a result, our fraternity was vandalized, our members ostracized based on false information. [32][33] Erdely defended her decision not to interview the accused by saying that the contact page on the fraternity's website "was pretty outdated". [81], Journalist Caitlin Flanagan, who wrote an expos in The Atlantic titled "The Dark Power of Fraternities: A yearlong investigation of Greek houses", told On the Media that she was concerned that Erdely's article could inhibit reforms of the Greek system. We dont know where, Like what you read here? I offer our community's genuine gratitude for their devotion and perseverance in their service. It has since been reported that Jackie may have invented portions of the story in an unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a fellow student in whom she had a romantic interest. The revelations comes in a court filing made Friday by by attorneys representing UVA dean Nicole Eramo. [112] The Columbia report stated that "At Rolling Stone, every story is assigned to a fact-checker. Many in the media were quick to link that story to stories about my husband until that story unwound. The media should publish the name of the UVA rape hoax girl, Jackie [173], In May 2022, an off-Broadway play adapted from the UVA case and resulting legal battles titled Retraction premiered in New York City at Theatre Four at Theatre Row. [18] In Rolling Stone's version, Jackie's friends discouraged her from going to the hospital to protect her reputation and because Andy and Randall planned to rush fraternities and worried their association with Jackie might hurt their chances if she reported it. The march ended outside of the Phi Kappa Psi house where protesters challenged a perceived "culture of sexual assault at the University". "Drew" gives "instruction and encouragement" to the seven rapists. "Drew" eventually sent a photo of "himself" to Jackie's friends, but "the man depicted in that photograph never attended U. Va" and was a high-school classmate of Jackie. In New York federal court, Rolling Stone wrapped up the last remaining piece of litigation emanating from its retracted 2014 article about a rape [of proven liar Jackie Coakley] at a University of Virginia campus fraternity. "[121], Rolling Stone announced that Will Dana would leave his job at the magazine, effective August 7, 2015. In her remarks, she said, "Before the Rolling Stone story was discredited, it seemed to resonate with some people simply because it confirmed their darkest suspicions about universitiesthat administrations are corrupt; that today's students are reckless and irresponsible; that fraternities are hot-beds of deviant behavior. [101][102][a], In 2012 Jackie told her friends that she had been accosted by five men, though she later testified to Erdely that she had been attacked by seven, with two more directing and encouraging the rape. In response to those revelations, Jackie's father declared that Phi Kappa Psi had been misidentified and the attack had occurred at a different fraternity, though he did not elaborate as to which one. Virginia Attorney-General Mark Herring said he found it "deeply troubling that Rolling Stone magazine is now publicly walking away from its central storyline in its bombshell report on the University of Virginia without correcting what errors its editors believe were made. Well, she is married and is now "Jackie McGovern", living her life, la-la-la, scot-free. "[29], Richard Bradley, editor-in-chief of Worth magazine, was among the first mainstream journalists to question the Rolling Stone article, in a blog entry written on November 24, 2014. [25], UVA's student newspaper The Cavalier Daily described mixed reactions from the student body, stating: "For some, the piece is an unfounded attack on our school; for others, it is a recognition of a harsh reality; and for what I suspect is a large majority of us, it falls somewhere in between. UVA Dean Defamed In Rolling Stone Article Takes On NOW But I have a pretty good notion that she violated some serious criminal statutes; after all, participating in a fraud involving the mails (a magazine) or wire (somewhere along the line) is a Federal issue. [13][14] The UVA student, identified only as "Jackie" by the magazine, had been taken to a party by a fellow student, hosted at UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity during 2012. It was later revealed Erdely had not interviewed any of the men accused of the rape. UVA Jackie May Have Just Been Caught In Another Big Lie There's a Chick-fil-A by our office. The Columbia Journalism Review called the story "this year's media-fail sweepstakes" and the Poynter Institute named it as the "Error of the Year" in journalism. Erdely said that Jackie regained consciousness alone in the fraternity after 3 a.m. and fled the building blood-spattered and bruised, phoning three friends for help. [124], After the Charlottesville Police concluded that there was no evidence of a crime having occurred at Phi Kappa Psi during their press conference on March 23, 2015, Stephen Scipione, the president of Phi Kappa Psi's UVA chapter, announced that his fraternity is "exploring its legal options to address the extensive damage caused by Rolling Stone". Circuit Court filed November 9, 2015), Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, North American Interfraternity Conference, Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, "Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report", "Rolling Stone Faces Millions More In Defamation Charges", "Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name", "Dan Liljenquist: News stories about fake news stories", "Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely deemed liable in dean's defamation suit for University of Virginia rape story", "Lawyers in Rolling Stone lawsuit file new evidence that 'Jackie' created fake persona", "How the Retracted Rolling Stone Article 'A Rape on Campus' Came to Print", "Rolling Stone's investigation: 'A failure that was avoidable', "UVA dean awarded $3M in Rolling Stone magazine case", "Rolling Stone Settles Last Remaining Lawsuit Over UVA Rape Story", "The Misguided Idea Of The War Over Campus Sexual Assault", "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA", "Everything We Know About the UVA Rape Case [Updated]", "Key elements of Rolling Stone's U-Va gang rape allegations in doubt", "Sabrina Rubin Erdely, woman behind Rolling Stone's explosive U-Va alleged rape story", "UVA's Sullivan reflects on tenure, Rolling Stone controversy, student privacy laws", "Rolling Stone never asked U-Va. about specific gang rape allegations, according to newly released e-mails and audio recording", "Students claiming responsibility for Phi Kappa Psi vandalism submit anonymous letter", "U-Va president suspends fraternities until Jan. 9 in wake of rape allegations", "Protest outside Phi Kappa Psi house leads to four arrests", "Hundreds protest at UVA; student says memorial to victims vandalized", "The Governing Board of the Inter-Fraternity Council at UVA", "Author of Rolling Stone article on alleged U-Va. rape didn't contact accused assailants for her report", "Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape", "McAuliffe urges investigation at U-Va. after, "Official Statement from the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at the University of Virginia", "Magazine's Account of Gang Rape on Virginia Campus Comes Under Scrutiny", "Rolling Stone Tries to Regroup After Campus Rape Article is Disputed", "Updated apology digs bigger hole for Rolling Stone", "U-Va. remains resolved to address sexual violence as, "There's More Bizarre Evidence That UVA Student Jackie's Alleged Rapist Doesn't Exist", "Friends' accounts differ from victim in UVA rape story CNN.com", "More problems with the Rolling Stone piece", "U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault", "U.Va. They went on to call for Rolling Stone to "fully and unconditionally retract its story and immediately remove the story from its website". Very little. [28] A local business owner expressed support of non-violent demonstrations and told The Cavalier Daily that "The only way thing[s] change is if you talk about what's happening. No one supplied evidence to corroborate Jackie's accusations of a gang rape happening or that the accused rapist, supposedly named "Drew" or "Haven Monahan", even existed. [100], In Erdely's story, the rape was supposed to have occurred during a party at Phi Kappa Psi as part of a pledging ritual. [24] Eramo is suing Rolling Stone for $25 million, claiming the magazine's 2014 article "A Rape On Campus" defamed her by portraying her as indifferent towards the gang rape of student Jackie Coakley and unwilling to take her claims seriously. Rolling Stone ran the story anyway, to their journalistic and financial detriment. What distinguished the UVA story from anything else ever reported was that the assault did not involve drugs or alcohol, required elaborate planning, and involved so many people that the perps could not have reasonably expected to get away with ita confluence of factors that caused the allegations to have substantially more in common with ones that ultimately proved to be false, like the Duke lacrosse case and Tawana Brawley incident. "[89] Sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, meanwhile, tweeted that "I was wrong to give it [the Rolling Stone story] credence. Later media analysis of photos Jackie showed her friends of her date demonstrated that they were pictures taken from the public social media profile of a former high-school classmate of Jackie, who was not a student of the University of Virginia, did not live in the Charlottesville area, and was out of state at an athletic competition the day of the alleged attack. Police said that three months after reporting she was raped by two football players in a bathroom at a party, she admitted to the same motivation that drove Jackie. The story portrayed University staff members as manipulative and callous toward victims of sexual assault. For the first time since 2002, applications to the university dropped. I believed it to be true at the time. Now, that's no longer the case. Recalling his experience with Stephen Glass before he was exposed for journalism fraud, Bradley argued the article relied heavily on confirmation bias. The same account was accessed on March 18, 2016, from inside ALTG, Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone LLP, Jackie's legal firm. Prior to the publication of the story, early-action applications were up 7.5 percent with 16,187 applicants. Erdely wrote that Randall was no longer friends with Jackie and, "citing his loyalty to his own frat, declined to be interviewed". [60] Wenner laid blame for the magazine's failures on Jackie. [40] Gary Pleasants, Phi Kappa Psi has been cleared; "We found no basis to believe that an incident occurred at that fraternity, so there's no reason to keep them suspended. [157], On May 12, 2015, UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, chief administrator for handling sexual assault issues at the school, filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit in Charlottesville Circuit Court against Rolling Stone and Erdely, claiming damage to her reputation and emotional distress. We all remember the tumult at the University of Virginia five years back. She decided to get the attention she wanted, by making up a completely baseless story about having been gang-raped at a fraternity house, Phi Kappa Psi (colloquially referred to as Phi Psi).She was then connected to the good folks at Rolling Stone magazine, which ignored all journalistic standards by publishing the account calling her just "Jackie" to protect her identity, mind you without doing a shred of research to validate any of the facts of the story. "[88], Emily Renda, the university's project coordinator for sexual misconduct, policy and prevention declared that "Rolling Stone played adjudicator, investigator and advocate and did a slipshod job at that. . "[27] Copyright 2014-2021 by Robert SuttonLike what you read here? Wemple posited that the claims presented by the magazine were so incredible that editors should have called for further inquiry before publication. 'Jackie' of retracted Rolling Stone story says PTSD fogged memory CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. A federal jury on Monday ordered Rolling Stone and one of its writers to pay $3 million in damages to a University of Virginia administrator over a discredited article two years ago about a supposed gang rape at the university. Charlottesville Police officially suspended their four-month investigation on March 23, 2015, based on lack of credible evidence. [163] On November 7, 2016, the jury decided that Rolling Stone and Erdely were liable for $3 million in damages to Eramo. Update on the JACKIE COAKLEY - SAVE for Falsely Accused - Facebook [49][50] After initially refusing to answer whether Jackie had access to or created the Haven Monahan email account, on May 31, 2016, Jackie's law firm filed court papers acknowledging they had recently accessed "Haven Monahan's" e-mail account for the purpose "of confirming that documents Eramo requested for the lawsuit were no longer in Jackie's possession. Forward it to your friends! [33][72][73] Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a columnist at The Intercept, said that Erdely's decision not to interview the accused fraternity members showed "a horrendous, hidden bias the premise that none of these guys would tell the truth if asked", while a staff editorial in The Wall Street Journal charged that "Ms. Erdely did not construct a story based on facts, but went looking for facts to fit her theory. Charles Johnson, a conservative writer with the site Got News, claims to have revealed the full identity and photograph of "Jackie," the woman who told Rolling Stone about her alleged gang rape. Please. "[52] According to news articles covering lawsuits resulting from the Rolling Stone article, Jackie concocted the Haven Monahan persona in a catfishing scheme directed at Duffin, who had not responded to romantic overtures that Jackie had directed at him. There's some reporting on the university's culture, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police; there's some reporting on the university leadership's approach to the issue, which shouldn't be taken seriously in light of the fraud exposed by the police.