"Rolling Stone" blames UVA for rape story

[DrLeftover]

On Thursday, Rolling Stone magazine responded in court to a $7.5 million lawsuit filed by University of Virginia associate dean Nicole Eramo over a now-retracted article titled "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA." For perhaps the first time, there's a suggestion that the University may have contributed to the faulty story.

Eramo sued in May after the media poked holes in Rolling Stone author Sabrina Erdely's account of a fraternity gang rape of a freshman identified as "Jackie." The plaintiff claims she was cast the "chief villain" of the story, doing nothing to help the victim and presiding over an academic institution that was "indifferent to rape on campus, and more concerned with protecting its reputation than with assisting victims of sexual assault."

Rolling Stone commissioned the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to look into the story and the investigation resulted in a report faulting the magazine for failing "basic, even routine journalistic practice."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/rolling-stone-argues-university-virginia-809468

 

[Jazzy]

From another source:

In May, Associate Dean of the University of Virginia Nicole Eramo filed a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine for making her look like a villain in the magazine’s infamously now-retracted story “A Rape on Campus.”

But now, the magazine has claimed in court that Eramo was, in fact, one of the reasons why the magazine thought that the student at the center of the story, “Jackie,” could ever be trusted. A letter from Rolling Stone to Eramo’s lawyers, which was considered inadmissible as evidence but was allowed because Eramo referenced it herself, states the following:
“…Rolling Stone believed in the credibility of Jackie’s story because it came with the imprimatur of UVA, and of Dean Eramo specifically.”

UPDATE — 7:50 p.m. ET: Eramo’s counsel, Libby Locke, provided the following comment in response to the Rolling Stone lawyer letter:
"Rolling Stone‘s claims that Dean Eramo was somehow the imprimatur for the story is categorically false. Rolling Stone‘s sole basis for that conclusion (found in the Rolling Stone lawyer letter) is that “Erdely was directed to Jackie by Emily Renda, then working closely with Dean Eramo in the Student Affairs office ….” That is false. Renda was a student advocate for sexual assault victims at the time she directed Erdely to Jackie. She was not working closely with Dean Eramo on sexual assault cases, she did not — and has never — had access to University sexual assault case information in any capacity, and Dean Eramo did not participate in providing Renda or Rolling Stone facts to support this false and reckless story. It is shameful that Rolling Stone is trying to shift the blame to Dean Eramo for their own malicious and reckless reporting."

So, now what?

 

[DrLeftover]

They sit in a courtroom and point fingers at each other while a judge sneaks sips from a hip flask of Virginia Whiskey.

 

[Webster]

They sit in a courtroom and point fingers at each other while a judge sneaks sips from a hip flask of Virginia Whiskey.

Meanwhile, those who've actually been victims of rape will have to deal with the aftermath...

 

[DrLeftover]

True.

All incidents like this do is cheapen the actual crime.