The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Caught in a Web of Lies at UVA

Posted on | March 24, 2015 | 233 Comments

Oh! What a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
— Sir Walter Scott

Police in Charlottesville, Virginia, spent months investigating the claims made in a Rolling Stone story and found no truth:

A four-month police investigation into an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia that Rolling Stone magazine described in graphic detail produced no evidence of the attack and was stymied by the accuser’s unwillingness to cooperate, authorities said Monday.
The article, titled “A rape on campus,” focused on a student identified only as “Jackie” who said she was raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity more than two years earlier. . . .
There were numerous discrepancies between the article, published in November 2014, and what investigators found, said Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo, who took care not to accuse Jackie of lying.
The case is suspended, not closed, and the fact that investigators could not find evidence years later “doesn’t mean that something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie,” Longo said. . . .
Asked if Jackie would be charged with making a false report, he said: “Absolutely not.”

Feminists immediately seized on that — Chief Longo’s unwillingness to rule out the possibility that “something terrible” happened — to insist that Jackie’s rape story could be true, except it’s really not.  Jackie’s story was a snipe hunt, a wild goose chase. Here’s the telltale clue:

Longo said Jackie’s first mention of an alleged assault came without key details, during a meeting she had with a dean about an academic issue in May 2013. The dean brought in police, but the case was dropped because Jackie didn’t want them to investigate, Longo said.
In any case, the “sexual act” she described that year was “not consistent with what was described” in the Rolling Stone article.

This is it, you see? Jackie is a serial liar.

She was a freshman having trouble in school, and so she lies. She tells the dean a vague story about being a rape victim. The dean asks police to investigate, but the liar won’t cooperate with the police because she knows her story is a lie. Jackie’s rape tale in May 2013, however, didn’t match the rape tale she told Rolling Stone in fall 2014. Why is this? The vague story she told the UVA dean was utilitarian, a deception meant to explain her problems in school, to depict herself as deserving of sympathy. The story Jackie told Rolling Stone, however . . .

Think about this: By fall 2014, Jackie had been living with her lies for two years. It started when she was a freshman in fall 2012 and tried to “catfish” her friend Ryan Duffin:

A University of Virginia student named Jackie appears to have used internet phone services to fabricate the identity of a man she says she was going on a date with on the night she claims she was gang-raped by seven fraternity members.
The fabrication of the man, who Jackie told her friends was named Haven Monahan, adds another layer of intrigue to a bizarre saga which has unfolded after the publication of a Rolling Stone article written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely . . .
Monahan appears to have come into existence soon after Jackie was romantically rejected by one of her friends, Ryan Duffin. . . .
“She did not take it well,” Duffin told The Daily Caller last week of Jackie’s response to the rejection. “There was a lot of crying involved.”
Soon after that, Jackie began talking about Monahan, a third-year student she claimed had a crush on her. Intrigued, the friends asked for Monahan’s phone number, and Jackie complied by giving it to them.
The friends began corresponding with Monahan, who often steered conversations back to Duffin, the friends told The Washington Times.
Despite claiming she was not interested in the man, Jackie told the friends she was going on a date with him on the night she later said she was gang-raped at a Phi Kappa Psi house party.

Read the whole thing in case you’ve forgotten how the story Jackie told Rolling Stone hinges on the identity of her “date” the night in September 2012 she claims she was gang-raped. There is every reason to believe that this story was invented by Jackie in a misguided attempt to solicit sympathy from her friends, especially Ryan Duffin.

However, we must keep in mind an alternative hypothesis: Just because Jackie lied about where she was and who she was with that night in September 2012 “doesn’t mean that something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie,” as Chief Longo said. In other words, having invented a boyfriend for a make-believe date that night, Jackie could have been assaulted by a person or persons unknown. Because of her own previous deceptions, however, she couldn’t tell her friends the truth. Furthermore, if indeed “something terrible” did happen to her that night, Jackie didn’t want anyone to find out what it actually was. Whether or not Jackie was assaulted that night, the underlying falsehood — the Haven Monahan catfishing deception — destroys her credibility.

Once you catch a liar lying, you cannot believe a word they say.

Someone who would engage in an elaborate deception like inventing a fake boyfriend, using fake phone numbers to write fake text messages from “Haven Monahan,” is not trustworthy.

Maybe Jackie did go out with a guy that night. Maybe the guy did treat her badly, perhaps even sexually assaulted her.

Maybe — although we cannot accept anything as true merely because Jackie says it, because we know that Jackie is a a liar.

Whatever actually happened to Jackie that night, we don’t know and cannot know, because the only source for the story has proven herself untrustworthy. And so when she told a UVA dean in May 2013 that she had been sexually assaulted, Jackie was uncooperative when the dean called the police. Yet the assault Jackie vaguely described to the UVA dean in May 2013 was “not consistent” with the story Jackie told Rolling Stone‘s Sabrina Rubin Erdely in fall 2014. If we have two versions of the story from the same source, and these stories differ significantly as to the time, place and nature of the events described, we cannot necessarily conclude that nothing happened, but we can conclude that the source is unreliable, i.e., Jackie is a liar.

So now we come to the real question: Why couldn’t Sabrina Rubin Erdely and her editors at Rolling Stone figure this out?

Why did they decide to rush to print with this wild story about a fraternity gang rape based on the word of a source who, as we now know, clearly had a habit of deliberate deception?

Rolling Stone editors must answer that question and, meanwhile, officials at the University of Virginia must answer another question: Why hasn’t Jackie been expelled for lying?

Jackie’s malicious lie about Phi Kappa Psi was a clear violation of the UVA honor code. Whatever the truth may be, Jackie lied to a national publication, defaming her fellow students, wrongly damaging the reputation of the university.

Jackie must be held accountable for her lies. The university’s institutional prestige is on the line, and only cowardice can prevent UVA officials from expelling her for her dishonesty.





 

Category: Crime, Education, Journalism, Sex Trouble

Comments

233 Responses to “Caught in a Web of Lies at UVA”

  1. NRPax
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:04 am

    So why is she allowed to remain anonymous and why is she not being charged with filing a false report?

  2. ericjg623
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:23 am

    “So now we come to the real question: Why couldn’t Sabrina Rubin Erdely and her editors at Rolling Stone figure this out?”

    Mainly because Rolling Stone is an entertainment magazine with delusions that they are also in the business of doing Serious Journalism.

  3. Whitney
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:25 am

    You know who the real winner is here. Ryan Duffin. He clearly had the good sense to not get involved with her and thats the only reason he didn’t become her victim

  4. Jeanette Victoria
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:28 am

    This is the new reality liberals have the moral authority to lie, smear and defame anyone they personally find offensive. If a conservative objects it is hate and could be interpreted as harassment and stalking

  5. Kirby McCain
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:43 am

    Proving nothing happened is impossible. Her defense attorney would say that women who are raped often have problems remembering details. As for the fictional admirer, that was never a part of the official rape story.

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:47 am

    Don’t let facts get in the way of a good fable…

  7. InRussetShadows
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:55 am

    You nailed it. I wonder how many times a day he’s thankful that he turned her down?

  8. InRussetShadows
    March 24th, 2015 @ 8:56 am

    Although UVA will never take action against Jackie, I do appreciate how you’re forcing them to live according to their own standards. Now we can just keep firing away at that weak spot and even use their own battle cry against them: “Hypocrisy!”

  9. Dianna Deeley
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:03 am

    From my phone: Precisely expressed, my thinking exactly!

  10. TimeandtheRani
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:04 am

    There’s a radical feminist FB group that I check in on, they’re always there with the latest story (Mattress girl, Rolling stone etc) to see if they acknowledge the end of this story. And of course they haven’t. They just plough forward with the next one. Never any looking back, never any acknowledgement that something they went on about forever is now debunked. Just more articles about rape culture and what men need to do to stop it.

    I’ve been a liberal my whole life, but I’ve ended up here because shit like this just enrages me now and it’s sites like this that are the only ones that seem to challenge it. Coming to realise that the left couldn’t care less about the truth is obviously something you’ve been aware of for a very long time, but is abundantly clear to me now over the past couple of years of race and rape nonsense.

  11. Dana
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:17 am

    They couldn’t figure it out because they didn’t want to figure it out.

  12. Fail Burton
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:18 am

    I have proof giant ants are behind all this. Go to any dictionary and you’ll find the words “giant” and “ants.” Case closed. Eat shit Patrianty.

  13. Toastrider
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:21 am

    If I was him, I’d offer thanks to whatever deity I believed in that I’d not gone down that road.

  14. Toastrider
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:22 am

    Pretty much ANY disagreement or questioning of ‘the narrative’ is now ‘harassment’. Which makes me wonder how these hothouse flowers will survive in the real world.

  15. Finrod Felagund
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:22 am

    There’s no delusion like self-delusion.

  16. robertstacymccain
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:23 am

    Remember: I’m an ex-Democrat.

  17. Toastrider
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:24 am

    Every now and then I poke my nose onto a radfem’s livejournal just for grins. The crazy there is palpable.

  18. Toastrider
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:24 am

    I for one welcome our future robot overlords.

  19. TimeandtheRani
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:31 am

    One can’t spend too much time there. I don’t know how McCain does it. You sometimes get people losing their shit at what they write and they get banned instantly, but you’ll also see on occasion some girl who showed up in all good faith, questions the standard line and they get absolutely brutalized for their “ignorance” and told to educate themselves properly before contributing in future. Most meekly accept it and apologize. Anyone who doesn’t gets banned and told that they’re not helping while other commenters talk about how “uncomfortable” they find that persons comments. It’s pathetic and very sad. A lot of good people go to these sites and end up sucked into the crazy because they want to fit in. It’s a cult for the disaffected, and you don’t question the leaders of your cult.

  20. Dave
    March 24th, 2015 @ 9:57 am

    You just described MSNBC, CNN, NBC…..

  21. Dave
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:00 am

    Welcome. We’re supposed to have punch and pie, but we seem to be out at the moment. Stacy, did you forget to go to the store again?

  22. Lamontyoubigdummy
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:16 am

    “Haven Monahan”.

    Was he a character on Days of Our Lives or was it Dawson’s Creek?

    I’m surprised she didn’t go for “Ian McHunk” or “Taylor Awesomegorgeous”.

    Good grief.

  23. Abiss
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:25 am

    “only cowardice can prevent UVA officials from expelling her for her dishonesty.”

    And cowardice is just what you’re going to get Mr.! And you’ll LIKE IT!!!

  24. Abiss
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:32 am

    Congrats on taking the red pill! Better late than never, truly.

  25. SarahWW
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:35 am

    She didn’t file a false report with the police about rapes. She has avoided making statements to the police and that includes not directing police to any specific person or group of persons as criminal attackers.

    She ought to be expelled for an honor offense. However that is unlikely because I think if it wasn’t before it will be established that her conduct is the result of mental illness/ personality disorder (armchair dx, she’s a borderline). Based on the catfish drama, I think a review of Jackie’s submitted college work is in order; the plagiarizing is probably a long-time habit and would be discovered in her college papers and coursework. But that will not happen. She will be allowed to withdraw, keep her credits

    .Remedies for the harmed reputation of fraternity members might include some civil action. However, there is the problem of the college acting without sufficient information, and it’s power to take the action to do what it did if Jackie and her claims never existed.

    She possibly could be charged for the “embellished” bottle attack report. (She did given them false information directly in that instance. It’s unlikely because of the minor nature of her transgression in that case and because, again, no specific person was falsely accused. )

    As much as she is responsible for her false tales, I blame Erdely
    more for publication of it – for pushing the story out when Jackie attempted to pull out,
    practically extorted cooperation and had sufficient red-flag warnings to
    hold back unless and until she could verify details.

    Erdely was too blind, too invested in her narrative, to see what she was dealing with. Ironically Erdely is the only person to push Jackie’s story till it broke. And she will be responsible for Jackie being exposed, and paying any price at all for her fables, and being forced to deal with her propensity to tell them, and for people to be warned off of any accusations Jackie might make in the future.

    Jackie will (rightly) never clear her name as a false accuser. She will never be taken seriously again.

  26. runningrn
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:39 am

    Hoaxes like this are the ultimate misogyny. Women falsely screaming rape is such a slap in the face to real victims. Not only is it an insult to all those who have been sexually assaulted, it casts doubt on their experiences and marginalizes them. By not cleaning house and strongly opposing those who truly hurt the cause, feminists are minimalizing the pain of true victims because they are equating false narratives with crimes that really happened. Hoax rapes are embraced and feted because “they still draw attention to a real problem”, “something still might have happened”, and plus they pad the numbers. It’s absolutely disgusting.

  27. Art Deco
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:46 am

    No it ain’t, not beyond a reasonable doubt. The local authorities just do not wish to be bothered.

  28. thesickmanofeurope_com
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:47 am

    Which makes me wonder how these hothouse flowers will survive in the real world.

    Plenty of WhiteKnights to save them from the big bad world.

    http://uk.businessinsider.com/woman-uses-tinder-to-find-a-guy-to-shovel-her-car-2015-3?r=US

  29. Joe Guelp
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:47 am

    Hunter S. Thompson’s druggy, delusional “New Journalism” spewings forever distorted RS’ ability to separate fact from fantasy. So long as the *Right People* — Republicans, Middle Americans, anyone with traditional values — were being skewered, the objective truth of any allegation, however absurd or libelous, was irrelevant.

  30. Jeanette Victoria
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:48 am

    It’s a lie that “feels” true progressive think at it’s finest

  31. Art Deco
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:49 am

    Good point about her dealings with the authorities.
    There is no such illness as ‘borderline personality disorder’. It’s just a psychiatrists label that describes people (nearly all female) who are difficult in signature ways.
    There is no reason to believe “Jackie” meets the M’Naughton standard. If she does it, the University has an obligation to expel her.

  32. Art Deco
    March 24th, 2015 @ 10:55 am

    The university’s institutional prestige is on the line, and only cowardice can prevent UVA officials from expelling her for her dishonesty.
    It’s not cowardice. There is a masculine subtype and there is a feminine subtype (or a couple of subtypes) who are incapable of holding women accountable if they have any discretion not to and if they are not themselves in a state of white-hot anger at that (female) person. Look at the Mary Winkler jury for five examples of the feminine subtype and look at some of your own commenters for the masculine subtype. I’d wager a three digit sum that Chief Longo is one such person.
    The behavior of the UVa administration in this matter suggests strongly that the feminine subtype has the upper hand at UVa and that nothing will happen to Jackie.

  33. Art Deco
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:01 am

    Rolling Stone hired Matt Taibbi to cover the financial sector. Do you think Matt Taibbi has any understanding of economics, finance, or accounting or can even understands mathematics above and beyond elementary algebra? All he does is write entertaining copy for people who want to be taken in by him. Salable B.S. One of the mainstream reporters posted in Moscow while he was there (and a recipient of Taibbi’s juvenile assaults) refused to comment on him to another reporter. Instead he offered this, “Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig likes it.”. Rolling Stone is produce by people of low character for readers with bad taste and bad judgment. They thrive on weak laws on civil defamation. Give us British libel law, and they’re out of business.

  34. Art Deco
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:05 am

    Was he a character on Days of Our Lives or was it Dawson’s Creek?
    I think more The Young and the Restless. I checked Ancestry.com. It’s a rare name, appearing only a few times in all their American databases.

  35. M. Thompson
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:05 am

    “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” is a behavioral maxim that ought to be more popular.

  36. Adobe_Walls
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:11 am

    No they don’t want to be shrieked at by the SJW Harpies and their perenial Media Harpies.

  37. Adobe_Walls
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:16 am

    I’d say that they are so habituated to lying that they can no longer understand the concept of suspension of disbelief.

  38. Robert Riversong
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:18 am

    For the complete story of the now infamous Rolling Stone article on the alleged U-VA gang rape, its fallout, the media firestorm of criticism, the apology, the final police investigation report, and the demagoguery of those radical feminists who refuse to apologize for propagating the myth of “rape culture” and the meme of “victim culture”, see: Yellow Journalism and the Meme of “Rape Culture” – Rolling Stone and U-VA Gang Rape

  39. Dustoff
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:19 am

    Remember now, we are talking about R/S.

  40. Robert Riversong
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:22 am

    Except he, too, was vilified in the Rolling Stone story, as one of the three who allegedly talked Jackie out of reporting the “rape”, even though he was the one who was insisting that she do so and even dialing 911 on his cellphone before she stopped him and asked him to take her to her room and stay with her.

  41. Robert Riversong
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:24 am

    No, we’re talking about an entire University community and administration, the mainstream media, the advocates and politicians who seized on the story to advance their agenda, and the national hysteria over “rape culture” which preceded the RS article.

  42. Dusquene Whistler
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:40 am

    Her fictional admirer is very much part of it. “He’s” who took her to the party that night. The party that never happened.

  43. Fail Burton
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:43 am

    In feminist eyes, there is nothing to apologize for. To them, rape is a system, not an individual crime, as are all oppressions they allege.

  44. Steve White
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:48 am

    It’s very clear, to me at least, that ‘Jackie’ wasn’t raped. There was no party, there was no boyfriend, there was no dark room, there was no shattered glass, etc.

    Question: what price has Sabrina Rubin Erdely paid to this point? She has been, I think, strangely silent since the story began to fall apart. I wonder if anyone has tried to interview her, and what she would say.

  45. Fail Burton
    March 24th, 2015 @ 11:52 am

    The whole party is ex-Democrat. When snarky hippies like Adam Carolla are considered conservative, that’s saying something.

  46. Funeral guy
    March 24th, 2015 @ 12:18 pm

    Like blacks that go on wilding attacks against whites with total impunity, the “Jackies” of the world can lie, file false police reports, defame male students and their organizations and nobody will do a damn thing about it. The left is turning the world into an insane asylum and the rest of us are trapped inside with them.

  47. Deserttrek
    March 24th, 2015 @ 12:20 pm

    for jackie confinment to a mental institution for a LONG time, if not prison …. for the administrators , personal liability and prison too .. when these matters are dealt with the proper way they will be resolved or dropped, either way a liar must be dealt with as do those who adied and abetted the lie

  48. Davy Jones
    March 24th, 2015 @ 12:29 pm

    It’s the old George Costanza defense:
    “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

  49. ThomasD
    March 24th, 2015 @ 12:30 pm

    Sounds more narcissistic, particularly since she recognized the risks police involvement posed to her self, but she is most likely some sort of cluster B.

    Not that that remotely absolves someone from responsibility for their actions.

    What we now call ‘personality disorders’ we used to call assholes.

  50. RAH
    March 24th, 2015 @ 12:33 pm

    She should be charged for a false report and get jail. Her lies hurt a lot of people ther area lot of tort claims here