That whole UVA fraternity rape thing...

I'll admit I didn't think much of the Rolling Stone piece on a sociopathic gang rape at the University of Virginia when I saw rumblings of it. Rape at a fraternity? Yeah probably. Then I started seeing people question the story, criticism is even coming from left lending sources like Slate.

I don't know if the story is true or not, but RS is being called out for not doing their due diligence and getting further proof of a scandalous, sensational story. Should they have included that one line? Should they have done more to back up the story before accusing young men of a horrible crime? Is it now more harmful to the victim (and future victims) that people are questioning the story? Or did RS get sucked in by an easy narrative, and didn't feel the need for more investigation. Is it the Duke Lacrosse case all over again?

Nothing else really, the story was one thing, now it's become another.

Interestingly, just read about the criticism in the New York Times, not ten minutes ago. They quote a few journalism professors who essentially say that the particulars of the story change the due-diligence requirements for the reporter, and that the sentence is not required.

I think they both make valid points. To me, the criticism seems not dissimilar from efforts to blame the victim. The story is what it is, either we believe the woman or we don't, but nothing is added by a quote from her accuser claiming it either didn't happen or that it was a consensual gang bang. Keep in mind, at the time of publication, there was no criminal proceeding, and that's not the focus of the story. The focus is that something is rotten at UVA, and plenty of sources are cited to make that case, even the university's president.

I remember the false gang rape claims about the Duke LaCrosse team so, yeah, it is a good idea to get the other side's story before you publish something alleging such a major crime occured.

There's a big difference, though, because the Rolling Stone piece doesn't name names. In the Duke case, the wrongly accused were named, and charged. Not a good analogy at all, and the journalistic requirements are therefore different.

Would these be socialists with an argument to spare, or just the usual union usury?

It named a fraternity and that fraternity has now been banned due to the claim which is a form of group punishment plus it puts a scarlet letter on every guy who was in the fraternity so, yes, I would say real world harm has been done. So it is important to tell both sides. We should be able to see the evidence and hear from both sides.

Anyone who doubts a rape allegation is a rape apologist, and a misogynist, and a soon-to-be rapist themselves, and needs to be castrated.

The criticisms of the actual article are way off base. The article has a 2 year old rape story about a girl who mad a bad choice to go it alone at a frat party, probably got raped, and then followed it up by not reporting due to pressure and fear. It is not meant to expose the rapists or restart a case where all the physical evidence would be long gone. As much as I would love to see the rapists exposed the reporter would expose her employer and herself to lawsuits all around had she started naming people who will never even get charged.

The story is a warning. It is a thing that happens all the time and hopefully some people will read it and chose to make better decisions like j having reliable friends with them who won't let them disappear for 3 hours, and who will actually stand by them as they go to the real authorities immediately. Students should not be relying on school administration to take care of justice because they are not the law and are only there to look after the reputation of the school. Since the reporter is not mentioning names, a narrative like that is just a warning. The only potential damage is to the university admins, and even they do not seem to be as much of a cause of her not reporting as her friends.

I don't get how people might consider something like this to be dealt with as a mere academic infraction. Rape allegations should be a criminal matter no matter where the event occurred. A moral of this story should be that if you believe you have been raped, go to the hospital and/or police IMMEDIATELY.

UVA has plenty of those blue light emergency phones everywhere; you don't even have to bum a ride or a phone from your extravagantly neglectful "friends".

I think the problem occurs when you have something called campus police. From what I saw in college the campus police are not the town police or the state police. They seem to deal with campus issues like parking and the students. These may be actual police, but their loyalties would seem to reside with the campus administration. It seems as if they take their issues to the administration before a prosecutor. The kids going to college probably do not understand the nuance when they see the word police. If these are the same sort of police we would get with the town or the state then there is clearly a massive problem in their loyalties and the procedure they follow regarding criminal activities. If they are just security like mall security than the word police should never be used with them, and for any legal complaint they get they should refer to the actual police.

The admin and security really only care about student safety as a matter of reputation and not because the kids are hurt. The only somewhat abnormal thing about this story is it was a gang rape. Going out, having a few, meeting a guy, and going off alone with him and ending up not being able to get out of the situation where saying no doesn't mean anything to the guy is actually a very common story. In some cases it may just be next day regrets over sexual encounters they had not planned on, but there is a ton of date rape and regular rape going on in college and the schools do not want to investigate because it is impossible to stop when you have so many places and opportunities for it to happen. What they should tell the girls is some good advice about going out and protecting themselves, and not being alone in places where no one knows where they are because of these things, but whose parents are going to send their girls to a school who admits rape and regret run as rampant as it does, and they really do not have the ability to police every party or lonely place.

Well then...

*Comedy trumpet*
Wah, wah, wahhh.

Now they need to get the shit sued out of them for libel by all the fraternity members so that the editors learn to enforce basic journalism standards. They hopped on the social justice warrior bandwagon and didn't do any fact checking nor cared about the real world harm their libellous actions would cause. We're not talking about public figures they wrongfully attacked/accused but 18 to 22 year old college kids.

I'd be curious to know what the new information is. I think the only mistake they made was listing the fraternity. The point they make in the notice (part that was not in the quote) is valid about protecting the identity of "Jackie". As for whether she lied, then they are doing their job -- publish the story based on the evidence they have, then report on subsequent discrepancies when they happen.

Yeah, but I think jounalists usually at least try to get the other side of the story.

Notice how they blame Jackie, not their own due diligence. Victim blaming anyone?

It is looking like the whole thing was completely fabricated so it is no wonder "Jackie" didn't want them contacting the accused men. Not only was there no party on the night in question but the men she accused weren't even members of that fraternity, and two of them weren't even in the country at the time as they were studying abroad.

It seems to be completely made up bullshit by an attention seeking social justice warrior.

For some reason, Rolling Stone stepping on their collective dicks like this makes me smile.

I liked a lot of the stuff they did on the financial crisis and on the NSA spying thing but the chick who wrote this article screwed up so big you have to wonder if she figured the ends justified the means. I mean, not even bothering to do basic fact checking?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...says-trust-in-gang-rape-accuser-was-misplaced

Gosh, I'm no journalism major, but it seems to me that if you have a potential story about a crime, you should make sure it was at least possible that such a crime did occur.

Whoever failed to do that should be fired. If you're a journalist and someone tells you an extremely serious and important story, you run it without fact-checking it, and it turns out to be false, your problem was not that your trust was misplaced. Your problem was that you trusted in the first place.

Wow, that's, fuck, completely incompetent. Like I said above, I'm okay with protecting the supposed victim, but that's basic fact checking and easily done.

When modern universities discuss "To Kill a Mockingbird", Atticus Finch is presented as the villain because he cast doubt on Mayella Ewell's claim that field hand Tom Robinson raped her, and that's just not allowed.

Misogynist. I bet you had rape for dinner.

Nah, it's better at breakfast time.

In the artical "jackie" also claimed she was draggedup a back stairway and that she was nightly haunted by the memory of said back stairway. Only there is no back stairway just the main one at the front of the house. It doesn't exist.

It's her dream damnit! She can be haunted by anything she wants!

Libel might be hard to prove for the individual frat boys considering the inaccuracy of the account. However the school and the frat itself probably have a decent case for having been identified. I have to wonder who was the one who altered events. The victim may have done it to give herself some protection, or due to poor memory. It is also written as a romanticized story so the author may have taken liberties to make it seem worse or fill in blanks she did not have the answers to. It seems to me the story should have been written much more anonymously removing names of any organization whos reputation could have been damaged by unproven allegations.

If there are some boys involved in this they should be worried. A civil case against Rolling Stone and the author would have to present evidence and possibly name actual people as witnesses to such an event. They need to make sure the university does not leave the court records unsealed and get their names in the press because just the idea that they might have gang raped someone could cause damage to their reputations, and since their names were never published the legal procedings may identify them. Maybe the author is that smart and revenge oriented where she put her reputation and career on the line to get a libel case against her and the magazine where witnesses would include the actual names of the frat at the time, and be such a media shitstorm they could not avoid being associated with the rape. A lot of companies do not have to deal with them just because their names become associated with this event even if it is not proven in a court of law. There are now a lot of college graduate women who may be HR or hiring managers who may have gone through something like this, or have friends who went through something like this, or just might be tired of frat cat calls and get rid of the resumes from these guys or their frat.

I followed this early on, but can someone give me a TLDR update - did the rape happen, or didn't it?

It doesn't seem like it did.