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.

Police: "If you've been raped, maybe try calling the police instead of Rolling Stone." http://t.co/XPMuNyInLJ @AsheSchow @dangainor

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) March 23, 2015

Nothing is quite so traumatic as getting raped by your non-existent boyfriend at a party that didn't happen.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) March 23, 2015

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”

tricknologist
March 24th, 2015 @ 5:39 pm

She’s not that anonymous, I remember seeing an article on another blog that posted her real name and picture. I think it was Gateway Pundit, but my memory is a bit shaky on it.

I don’t think she can be charged with filing a false report because she never filed a report, the police were prompted to start the investigation by the dean and the RS story, she never wanted police involvement for obvious reasons.
JosephBleau
March 24th, 2015 @ 5:39 pm

To be fair to the police re their decision not to charge her, did she ever actually file a police report? Or were they just forced to investigate because of the article and the outcry? If she didn’t file a report, I’m not sure how she can be charged with filing a false report.
tricknologist
March 24th, 2015 @ 5:43 pm

She’s not that anonymous, I remember seeing her real name and pic posted on another blog. I think it was Gateway Pundit, but I’m not certain.

I don’t think she can be charged for a false report because she never filed a report. It was the dean and RS article that got the investigation started. She never wanted police involvement for obvious reasons, and from what I’ve read she didn’t cooperate with them. She lied to everyone else, but shut up when the cops started asking questions.
JosephBleau
March 24th, 2015 @ 5:48 pm

The dude had serious “spidey sense” about her crazy side. She’s been identified elsewhere, and she wasn’t bad looking at all.
JosephBleau
March 24th, 2015 @ 5:53 pm

“So now we come to the real question: Why couldn’t Sabrina Rubin Erdely and her editors at Rolling Stone figure this out?”
Because that would be VICTIM BLAMING, you pig!
Clean Willie
March 24th, 2015 @ 5:59 pm

Who said anything about a crime? McCain talks about violating the University’s honor code and expulsion from school, not prosecuting her for any crime.
DukeLax
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:12 pm

Around 30 years ago, gender-feminists perverted US law enforcement into no longer charging false rape accusers. 30 years ago, a false rape accuser would have to pay the costs of the investigation if she was caught fabricating the story…but new perversions have made it so “federal pork bloating dollars” now pay the investigation costs for false accusations. Welcome to Chaos!!!
DukeLax
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:15 pm

Watch as American gender-feminists push so many perversions and “manufactured statistics Alliances” into state law enforcement ( and law enforcement keep “taking the federal pork”)…… Until we reach the point where American guys are going MGTOW…just to not be hassled by US law enforcement.
Daniel Freeman
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:16 pm

I was falsely accused a couple decades ago by a girl who thought she was clairvoyant, and wanted to establish a pattern of allegations to increase the credibility of my supposed “future victims.”

No joke. I got through it, but it was hard. If I have a certain distrust of women — and my lifelong bachelorhood would point to that — then I came by honestly.
BillR
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:17 pm

One step even further than lying in broken glass was the supposed incident later in Jackie’s confabulation where a bottle thrown at her struck her head and shattered … and she wasn’t killed/knocked out for a long time. Strictly a movie-only thing — where they have special bottle look-alikes for barroom fight scenes that break easily and don’t leave dangerous shards. Her visual imagination drew from movies and TV, her text was cribbed from their scripts. So her RS writer studied with a confabulator, and later found Jackie. Birds of a feather.
DukeLax
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:18 pm

Hey..these borderline / bi-polars are now bringing in hundreds of thousands of “Billable hours” with their false rape accusations!! So why would state law enforcement want to stop their new federal pork “cash cow”
Fail Burton
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:31 pm

Name me one profoundly rational and decent feminist in the public arena.
Finrod Felagund
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:45 pm

Julie Brown flashback time:

“Is it true what they say about Julie?”
“There she is, let’s ask her”
“Julie, did you really go out with an alien?”
“Uh huh”
“What was it like?”
“Reeeeeeal different.”
Daniel Freeman
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:46 pm

It screams cardigan and boat shoes. Without socks.
Lamontyoubigdummy
March 24th, 2015 @ 6:58 pm

Indeed.

If she’d have named a Kennedy in all this, I’d understand her refusing to cooperate with the police & whatnot.

It’s a Kennedy. Just shut up and get out while your alive.

But, no.

It’s a “Haven Monahan”.
ChandlersGhost
March 24th, 2015 @ 7:58 pm

You don’t know Haven Monahan? He’s the rakish wastrel who ruined that poor tavern wench in Oxbridgeforeshire. She’s been locked away in a convent ever since.
robertstacymccain
March 24th, 2015 @ 8:07 pm

“… a girl who thought she was clairvoyant …”

Must have been one of those lesbian witches Pat Robertson tried to warn us about.
robertstacymccain
March 24th, 2015 @ 8:09 pm

Oh, I forgot about that.

Also, I forgot ROLL TIDE!
Robert Riversong
March 24th, 2015 @ 8:36 pm

You don’t get out much, do you?

Charlotte Hays, senior editor of The Women’s Quarterly, Feminist author bell hooks, Naomi Wolf, Wendy McElroy, Doris Lessing, Barbara Kay, Religious Studies professor Katherine Young, Humanities professor Camille Paglia, Philosophy professor Christina Sommers, Gen-Xer Katie Roiphe…
John_LC_Silvoney
March 24th, 2015 @ 8:56 pm

Or possibly “Blast Hardcheese”
theoldsargesays
March 24th, 2015 @ 9:42 pm

MGTOW?
“What’s that?”, Says TheOldSarge. Google,Google, Google…

“The Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) movement is a weird offshoot of the men’s rights movement resembling some kind of straight male separatism. ”

“It’s unclear if the movement has any power beyond “disgruntled douchebags talking shit about women (in general) on the Internet.””

“As a general rule, the reaction of sane people is “Sure, do go your own way and stop whining already!”

I’ll just stick with thousands of years of tradition. The crazy gals are only an nth of a single percentage point of the population.
Casey
March 24th, 2015 @ 9:55 pm

Setting aside ideology for a moment, simple confirmation bias explains the behavior of the Stone editors. To people who accept the 1-in-4 rape claim as fact, it would be self-evident that the poor creature was raped, and by who else but the same affluent, white, privileged males who have been raping everyone else for the past 500 years.

See? Easy-peasy.
Adobe_Walls
March 24th, 2015 @ 10:00 pm

How the latest kerfuffle at UVA is handled will be instructive.
Sex, Lies and ‘Broken People’ : The Other McCain
March 24th, 2015 @ 10:16 pm

[…] It is apparent that university officials — sincerely desiring to protect women from sexual assault but also desiring to protect themselves from lawsuits, federal regulators and bad publicity — have created a climate in which a “believe the survivors” doctrine gives deranged or dishonest women carte blanche to make accusations like Jackie’s tall tale of gang rape at the University of Virginia. […]
Feminists Lie About Rape : The Other McCain
March 24th, 2015 @ 10:16 pm

[…] the comments on an earlier post about the UVA rape hoax, someone appended a list of similar hoaxes perpetrated at colleges. The original source of this […]
theoldsargesays
March 24th, 2015 @ 10:23 pm

“Getting out” means being able to rattle off a list of “profoundly rational and decent feminists”?

Who would’ve guessed?
Meh.
Robert Riversong
March 24th, 2015 @ 10:30 pm

Yeah – getting out of one’s own constraining biases, prejudices and bigotry.
Daniel Freeman
March 25th, 2015 @ 1:19 am

Ha! For all I know, she was as straight as Allison Dubois. Speaking of which, I have conflicted feelings about Medium; well-written and Patricia Arquette is a cutey, I watched every episode on Netflix, but some rubbed me the wrong way.
brianrw
March 25th, 2015 @ 3:29 am

Her name is Jackie Coakley.
NRPax
March 25th, 2015 @ 5:56 am

Found the relevant article but I notice that any major news publication that discusses the case still tries to protect her identity.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:06 am

Libel and slander are crimes. Very difficult to win a judgement in court, though.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:10 am

Because the last thing they wanted was to look closely at this “too good to check” story.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:10 am

Truth and falsehood are constructs of the patriarchy.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:11 am

She’d rather be a hammer than a nail.

Yes she would. If she could. She surely would.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:13 am

To be fair, the fraternity was already on Double Secret Probation.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:17 am

Much as serial fabulist Scott Beauchamp created war crimes gleaned from watching Hollywood’s depiction of the Vietnam War. They looked true because, hey, we’ve all seen those kinds of things in movies all the time, right?

At first it was only a few vets who questioned how these “too good to be true” events actually happened, as they contradicted what they themselves knew firsthand. Beauchamp began his harrowing tales of US troops run amok while still stationed in Germany, before ever going in theater. But he hit all the tropes TNR readers were expecting to read.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:23 am

Good point, Giant robot ants. Because giant, you know, actual ants would be silly.

Actually Isaac Asimov wrote once a column critiquing the various “giant insect” films of the fifties, relying on the Inverse Square Law. An ant grown to be, say, twenty feet long and maintaining the usual proportions would not be able to support its own weight, if it were still made of the usual ant construction materials.

So yes, the giants ants have to be robotic, if only for logical consistency.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:25 am

Dirk McStud. Brick Manley. Spike Armstrong.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:26 am

Pro tip: quicker to use sarc tags:

/s
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:28 am

Dockers and Sperry topsiders and Polo shirts, with a Tag Heuer watch. Drives a meticulously restored MGA, graduate of Philips Andover.

In short, pretty much me. Easy now, one at a time, ladies!
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:33 am

Yes, quite. Young Monahan and I served together in Injah, doncha know, with the Punjab Rifles. Solid chap, left the Army when his pater died and left him the estates. He and Biffy Blicester-Cholmondeley used to pair at bridge, once dismantled Major Wensleydale’s Buffy-Porson two seater and reassembled it in the Colonel’s office.

Yes, yes, all fine lads, we’ll not see their like again. If we ever did.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:34 am

You miss the point. It’s called “lying for justice.”

See also, eggs and omelets.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:36 am

The frat was shut down and they suffered actual physical damage from vandalism.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:38 am

Oops. Now I read you making my point and with greater detail.

But what is being lost sight of here, save by a few commentors, is that there are real victims, none of whom is the lying Jackie.

As the saying goes, where do I go to get my reputation back?
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:40 am

Actually it is a lot like that, differing only in degree. Look at how closely the Duck Lacrosse team came to facing actual prison time for a hoax. If expelling a fraternity is the best the SJWs can do they’ll take it. Ruining a man’s life, that’s even better.
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:42 am

Naomi Wolf counts as rational and decent?
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:47 am

Claire Voyant? Hey, she was at school with me! Sure glad I never dated her. Just got this bad vibe from her, know what I mean?
Steve Skubinna
March 25th, 2015 @ 6:48 am

Right. So says some guy who never had to look at a lurid shirt and thus destroy his chances for a STEM career.
Quartermaster
March 25th, 2015 @ 7:02 am

With all that testosterone, can you imagine the rape culture there?
Quartermaster
March 25th, 2015 @ 7:06 am

There are others as well. Despite some of her writing, I wouldn’t include Paglia in the category of rational and decent either. 3rd wave Feminism is anything but rational.