‘Rape Culture’ or ‘Libel Culture’? Lawyers for Rolling Stone Blame the Victim

Posted on | July 19, 2015 | 45 Comments

Rolling Stone‘s bogus gang rape story, which falsely accused a University of Virginia fraternity of a crime that never happened, led UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo to sue the magazine for $7.5 million. Eramo said the story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely “portrayed [Eramo] as callous and indifferent to allegations of sexual assault on campus and made her the university’s ‘chief villain’ in a now-debunked article.”

The central problem of Rolling Stone‘s story was that it relied on the unverified claims of a UVA student identified as “Jackie” who, upon closer scrutiny, was revealed to be mentally unstable. “Jackie” had perpetrated a “catfishing” scheme, inventing a fake boyfriend she called “Haven Monahan,” in a misguided effort to attract the romantic interest of a male friend by making him jealous. To her friends, Jackie identified this fictional character, “Haven Monahan,” as the instigator of her gang-rape; she told a different version of the story to Erdely, who failed to interview Jackie’s friends; Jackie refused to cooperate with police investigating her claims; and police obtained evidence indicating there was no party at the fraternity house on the night in question, contradicting the story Jackie told Rolling Stone.

The startling recklessness of Erdely and her editors at Rolling Stone was the subject of a devastating critique by the Columbia Journalism Review, and it seemed Nicole Eramo’s defamation lawsuit would be a slam-dunk. However, in a motion to dismiss Eramo’s lawsuit, attorneys for Rolling Stone now place the blame on UVA officials who vouched for the veracity of Jackie’s gang-rape claims:

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responded in court to a $7.5 million lawsuit filed by University of Virginia associate dean Nicole Eramo over a now-retracted article titled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.”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. …
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.” . . .
Perhaps most interesting — and a sign of how Rolling Stone will defend itself going forward — is the letter that the publication sent to Eramo’s lawyers in February. This confidential letter has never been made public, but Eramo’s lawsuit briefly referenced it. And so, Rolling Stone decides to detail how it first responded to Eramo “because Plaintiff has chosen to describe such communications in her Complaint, despite their inadmissibility.”
The letter . . . makes the case that Rolling Stone had “good reason” to focus on the University of Virginia because it is “one of only 12 schools selected for a compliance review by the Department of Education’s Office” and “has been the scene of well-known sexual and other violent assaults.” . . .
The letter rejects the premise “that because Jackie’s account of her gang rape is somehow flawed or false, all references concerning Dean Eramo or UVA are likewise false.”
But maybe most provocative is the letter’s discussion of a woman named Emily Renda. . . .

“Ms. Erdely did not stumble on Jackie’s story. She was directed to Jackie by Emily Renda, then working closely with Dean Eramo in the Student Affairs office — the same Emily Renda that included Jackie’s account of being ‘gang-raped’ in her Congressional testimony about campus sexual-assault policies. There is no question that both the author and Rolling Stone had full faith in Jackie’s credibility and the accuracy of its Article at the time of publication. In no small measure, Rolling Stone believed in the credibility of Jackie’s story because it came with the imprimatur of UVA, and of Dean Eramo specifically.”

The boldface is in the letter. The publication is essentially arguing that Eramo vouched for the credibility of its main source. And this is potentially important because the letter states “at bottom, any libel inquiry turns on what Rolling Stone knew and believed at the time of publication” and a footnote in the letter also says that Eramo is “unquestionably a public figure.”

You can read the whole story at the Hollywood Reporter.

This is dynamite, my friends. What Rolling Stone is saying is that officials at UVA — specifically including Emily Renda — were responsible for the “flawed or false” story that Jackie told Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Renda had included an account of Jackie’s claim (identifying her as “Jenna”) in Renda’s June 2014 testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee:

One of the student survivors I worked with, Jenna, was gang-raped by five fraternity men early in her freshman year. Despite the severity of the assault and injuries she sustained, Jenna still experienced a feeling of personal responsibility. Looking for affirmation, she sought out peers and told her story. Sadly, each and every one of the friends she reached out to responded with varying denials of her experience . . . These statements haunted Jenna. She told me that they made her feel crazy, and made her question whether her own understanding of the rape was legitimate. . . .
Survivors who receive disaffirming responses to initial disclosures are more likely to experience negative mental health consequences as well. These negative and victim-blaming responses from her peers reinforced Jenna’s sense of fault, and prevented her from coming forward to the University’s administration or the Police. When she finally sought assistance from the Dean of Students’ office, after struggling and nearly failing out of her classes for two semesters, it was difficult for the university to conduct a meaningful investigation because much of the evidence had been lost, and witnesses were more difficult to locate.

Reading that testimony very carefully, we see that “Jenna”/Jackie first contacted university authorities because she was on the verge of flunking out of school. However, subsequent reports have indicated, the reason there was no official investigation of Jackie’s rape claim was that she herself refused to cooperate with an investigation, either by the university or by city police. Given what we know about Jackie’s “Haven Monahan” deception — a lie she told her friends — the common-sense conclusion is that Jackie didn’t want police involved because she feared that she would be exposed as a liar, and that she might be charged with making a false police report. It seems Jackie shrewdly took advantage of the system, exploiting her fictional gang-rape claim to get “support” when her academic failure put her at risk of expulsion.

Jackie told UVA officials a story about how “victim-blaming responses” discouraged her from reporting her claims of gang-rape and, when Renda testified to a Senate committee about this, Renda misrepresented why “it was difficult . . . to conduct a meaningful investigation.” It was “difficult” because (a) Jackie was lying, and (b) Jackie didn’t want an investigation that she knew would prove she was lying. As to the alleged “negative mental health consequences” Renda cited, Jackie’s friends “made her feel crazy” because Jackie was crazy and is crazy, and if UVA officials had urged Jackie to seek psychiatric treatment, I’d bet $20 that any competent shrink would have diagnosed Jackie with borderline personality disorder. Jackie appears to be a textbook BPD case, and the question is why Emily Renda, who was a student activist rather than a psychiatric specialist or an experienced criminal investigator, should have been entrusted with the authority to (a) decide Jackie was telling the truth, (b) present the Jackie/”Jenna” story to a Senate committee, and (c) then act as liaison between Jackie and a Rolling Stone reporter.

It would appear that Emily Renda conspired with Jackie to convince Sabrina Rubin Erdely that Jackie’s story was true and, needing an official scapegoat to blame for UVA’s alleged failure to investigate this gang-rape, they blamed Nicole Eramo. Now, attempting to exculpate themselves for falsely demonizing Eramo, Rolling Stone points the finger at Emily Renda, saying that because Renda was “working closely with Dean Eramo in the Student Affairs office . . . the credibility of Jackie’s story . . . came with the imprimatur of UVA.” In other words, Rolling Stone blames the victim (Eramo) for the wrongdoing of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s dishonest sources, Jackie and Emily Renda.

Whether or not Rolling Stone succeeds in getting Nicole Eramo’s suit dismissed, we see how their lawyers are pointing the finger of blame at the system of “support” for sexual-assault victims over which Eramo presided as a UVA dean. The irony, of course, is that this system was established as a result of federal laws, and Obama administration policies, which had targeted UVA for investigation because the university had allegedly failed to properly investigate sexual assaults on campus. What happened when UVA was presented with Jackie’s false accusation shows how the feminist “campus rape epidemic” witch hunt puts university officials into a Catch-22 dilemma. Who do we blame for this?

Left to right: Sabrina Rubin Erdley, Emily Renda, Catherine Lhamon

Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has been identified (by independent journalist Richard Bradley, among others) as heavily implicated in Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape hoax. Erdely quoted Lhamon calling UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves “irresponsible.” Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller reported how closely Lhamon and Renda are connected:

[Lhamon] has served as the Education Department’s designee to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault which Obama created on Jan. 22, 2014. Renda served on the same task force.
Besides that link, both spoke at a February 2014 University of Virginia event entitled “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.”
Lhamon has been invited to the White House nearly 60 times, according to visitor’s logs. Renda has been invited six times. Both were invited to the same White House meeting on three occasions. One, held on Feb. 21, 2014, was conducted by Lynn Rosenthal, then the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. Twenty-one people, mostly activists, were invited to that meeting. Lhamon and Renda were invited to two other larger gatherings [in 2014] — one on April 29 and the other on Sept. 19. . . .
Renda and Lhamon also testified at a June 26, 2014, Senate hearing on campus sexual assault.. . .
Groves wrote that he was “one of the professionals vilified by name” in Erdely’s article.
He claimed that Erdely completely mischaracterized remarks he made at a Sept. 2014 meeting with university trustees about sexual assault and that Lhamon disparaged him with comments she made to Erdely. . . .

As I wrote in April:

Lhamon, Renda and Erdely are part of a coven of liars who have conspired to fabricate a crime that never happened in order to justify this ongoing “rape epidemic” hysteria. This dishonest campaign of purposeful falsehood is being orchestrated directly from the White House as part of a systematic effort to create regulations that deprive college students of their due-process rights.

This is the real bottom line: Under pressure from feminists, the Obama administration has promoted policies that put male students at risk of false accusations, which are adjudicated in campus tribunals where the accused have none of the basic civil rights accorded to any common criminal in a court of law. Simply by setting foot on a university campus, under new policies imposed by federal authorites, a male student forfeits his due-process rights. He may be branded a rapist on the mere say-so of his accuser, and subject to immediate disciplinary action — including expulsion — without a police investigation, without a right to have a lawyer present during question, and without ever having an opportunity to confront his accuser in court.

Rolling Stone was complicit in this White House-orchestrated scheme to deny the constitutional rights of male students. The false narrative that Erdely told required a villain, and Nicole Eramo was blamed.

“Haven Monahan” could not be reached for comment.

Category: Uncategorized

Comments

45 Responses to “‘Rape Culture’ or ‘Libel Culture’? Lawyers for Rolling Stone Blame the Victim”

RS
July 19th, 2015 @ 11:36 am

What worries me is that the safe harbor of civil suits by wrongfully accused males is the only thing which provides a potential brake to any excesses; therefore, it must be eliminated. Title IX is still gender neutral and provides a redress for railroaded men. Therefore, the next big push by this administration will be to try to eliminate that means of clearing one’s name. Expect an effort to insulate colleges and universities from civil liability for the decisions of on-campus star chambers.
robertstacymccain
July 19th, 2015 @ 11:45 am

It’s amazing — but perhaps predictable — the laws intended to achieve “equality” result in (a) deliberate unfairness and (b) voiding basic rights.
RS
July 19th, 2015 @ 11:50 am

The whole thing got out of hand quickly, because the allure of testifying before the U.S. Congress overcame all good sense. When “the narrative” becomes the most important thing, it’s easy to fabricate examples to prove one’s point. It’s easy to get lost in the narrative only to have the facts bite you in the ass later on.

In my profession, we call it, “falling in love with your own case.” I’ve seen a zillion times: Lawyers who have story created in their minds and who cannot see that the facts don’t add up.
Earl Scruggs
July 19th, 2015 @ 12:13 pm

There are many teachable moments here. Essentially, Rolling Stone says that sine they employed Renda who peddled the story, it can’t be libel.

Unfortunately this legal argument may be effective: if you send me someone as your spokesman on sexual assault, I expect that person is speaking for you and with your permission.

What should be learned is that you should not employ “activists.” If you put someone in a position of authority who holds the institution where they hold that position in contempt and actively seeks to undermine and destroy the institution, you shouldn’t be surprised when bad outcomes result.

Applicability beyond this particular story is an exercise left to the reader.
Phil_in_Englewood
July 19th, 2015 @ 12:40 pm

Heh heh heh… It’s quite entertaining when two SJWs tie their own tails together and hang themselves over a clothesline. We can only root for both to lose.
Fail Burton
July 19th, 2015 @ 12:46 pm

A bunch of feminist witches rid themselves of pesky due process and went a-hunting based on their true feelings that men are pigs. Men and their pesky laws knew they were pigs in a poke all along which only confirmed men’s misogyny and membership in a Men’s Rights Activist group. In microcosm, this is how civilization falters, fails and falls. The lesson is one we’ve said all along: leave this stuff to law enforcement. If law cannot catch and prosecute a rapist there is no other recourse. You cannot simply gather cis white men up in a net no matter how much your mad gender studies text books show you the truth about this awful and evil world. The only innocents in this debacle are men, ironically, the only ones put on trial in the first place. The other lesson is feminists are still backing the UVA story because feelings and they know the evil of men is real an exists and due process and red tape only hinder lynchings.
Art Deco
July 19th, 2015 @ 12:57 pm

If we had a Republican congressional caucus worth a pitcher of warm spit, we’d have come 2017 a new higher education code which would limit itself to the rubrics of interstate and international recruitment of students, the rubrics of billing such students, and the rubrics of the interstate and international recruitment of faculty. If Congress were really bold, they might make use of this as a lever to secure the replacement of the baccalaureate degree with something briefer, focused, and practical. All other federal regulation which was specific to the higher education sector would be eliminated, all federal subsidies to higher education would be eliminated, and the Department of Education would disgorge it’s statistical and assessment bureaux to the Labor Department and then cease to exist.

Of course, we have no such Republican congressional caucus. We have the McConnell / Boehner zombie caucus.
Lulu
July 19th, 2015 @ 2:09 pm

I’m shocked that a student was given so much responsibility — whether this is a worthy line of defense by RS or not, it seems that UVA should rethink who officially speaks for them or even gives the appearance they speak for UVA…
RKae
July 19th, 2015 @ 3:47 pm

I saw a chronic case of this on one of those “Forensic Files” documentaries. There was a guy who had raped and murdered a woman 30 years ago, became a “wrongly convicted” cover boy on TIME magazine (their big headline was “Are we going to execute an innocent man?”) and did lots of interviews. He was a bespectacled white guy who looked like your average accountant, and he played this cliche for all the mileage he could get out of it.

He was executed, and his lawyer kept fighting to shame the state for what they did.

So now that we have DNA evidence, he was going to clear his client’s name. (And, of course, shame the state some more.)

Toward the end of the documentary, he was sitting anxiously next to the phone as the DNA results were about to come in. It rings. He picks it up excitedly. Then his face falls. “…Oh… OK… Thanks.” He hangs up and says numbly, “He did it.”

A beautiful moment in TV history.
Matt_SE
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:29 pm

Is it just me, or do all these women attacking and conspiring against each other seem rather…catty?
DeadMessenger
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:42 pm

Ironically, the feminist witches could well be the way they are, not solely due to mental illness, but also from a lack of time spent with men.

I know this because of being raised on a farm with my four brothers, and having a father who would sometimes advise me to “man up”. Then I went to engineering school, in which I was the only girl in all my core classes. Then I worked in technical positions in which somewhere between 99% and 100% of my close coworkers were men.

While my situation is admittedly extreme, I think that both sexes need to spend time with each other in small groups. I believe that men blunt the female propensity for decision-making based entirely upon feelings, and womem blunt the male propensity for making all decisions based entirely upon fact, with no consideration of people’s feelings.

Certainly the correct mixture of the above is more successful than not, which is why God created them male and female. The key, I believe, is that God ordained women as helpers and advisors, and men as decision-makers (among other things), and we’re all better off when we know our place.

Feminists, therefore, are not doing their jobs, and they’re not allowing men to do their jobs either, guaranteeing ultimate disaster.
Daniel Freeman
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:44 pm

Unfortunately, that is a difficult needle to thread, since colleges also have the goal of forming future leaders. They actively seek to provide positions of modest responsibility on purpose — that’s the point of student government and school-sponsored clubs — so it would go against their instincts to say no, we shouldn’t give this responsibility to a student.
DeadMessenger
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:47 pm

I’m getting a mental picture of McConnell and Boehner with their skin dropping off, stumbling around, chanting “brains…brains…”

I’m not sure if I’m imagining it though, or whether I just saw it on C-SPAN.
Matt_SE
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:50 pm

Yes, each complements the other. The nuclear family is the most stable arrangement. SJW engineering will produce a generation of maladjusted kids.
DeadMessenger
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:54 pm

Nevertheless, students shouldn’t be speaking before Congress. Or if they do, they need to have a responsible adult right there with them, and it needs to be made clear that the person speaking is ONLY a student, and thus, there’s at least a 50/50 chance that they will say something wrong or stupid.

And if I were in Congress, I wouldn’t want to waste my valuable time listening to stuff under those conditions. (Although many individuals in Congress are professional meeting-goers, rather than workers, so there would still be an audience weighted strongly toward the Dem side.)
Matt_SE
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:56 pm

Many people in Congress don’t give a crap about the truth, or the testimony of any of the witnesses. That is an excuse for them to push the narrative (see: Kirsten Gillibrand, Claire McCaskill) and mug for the cameras. Nothing more.
DonaldDouglas
July 19th, 2015 @ 5:32 pm

Linked: http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/report-university-of-virginia-associate.html
RKae
July 19th, 2015 @ 5:39 pm

Is it wrong of me to want to see them settle it in a mud pit?
Mike G.
July 19th, 2015 @ 5:43 pm

I won’t even ask you to denounce yourself because then I’d have to denounce myself.
ISH @ Mininerd
July 19th, 2015 @ 5:48 pm

Why has no one yet publicly identified “Jackie”? She is not the victim, she is the perpetrator of a massive fraud. Some middle-tier city councilman gets caught having taken a few grand in kickbacks and his “perp walk” will open the six o’clock news —nationally if he’s a Republican.

“Jackie” defrauded a major university, tied up police resources, caused congressional hearings to be held, and libeled dozens of innocent young men.

She needs to be named and shamed.
Dana
July 19th, 2015 @ 6:31 pm

That Dean Eramo may have provided what Rolling Stone saw as corroboration of “Jackie’s” claim is simply more evidence of what I have been saying all along: college administrators have neither the time, nor the training, nor the inclination for criminal investigation.

I see it as perfectly reasonable that Dean Eramo believed the story; the problem is that UVA didn’t have a policy of turning over all sexual assault claims over to the police, people who do have the training and inclination for criminal investigations. The police understand that criminal claims have to be investigated from all angles, including ascertaining whether a crime was committed at all; college administrators don’t necessarily do that.

Any college which chooses not to refer all sexual assault allegations to the police is risking the same thing happening to them.
robertstacymccain
July 19th, 2015 @ 7:37 pm

Renda role was doing the “peer support” thing that is so much a part of what has gone haywire with the “campus rape epidemic” hysteria.

Rape Survivor Club is sort of an exclusive sorority on campus, where being a “survivor” is considered a qualification to do “peer counseling,” because of the trendy notion that young people don’t trust and/or won’t listen to ACTUAL ADULTS. Thus, being a “survivor” qualifies a student for a campus leadership role that can lead to paid employment.

Then you have to realize that victimhood envy is a real phenomenon among politically correct youth. Think about it: You’re an upper-middle-class white girl from the suburbs. You go to a “Take Back the Night” rally and the women who are leading the rally and speaking to the assembled crowd — the stars of the show, as it were — are all giving testimonials about how they were victimized by Evil Nasty Men. These speeches and testimonials all include some expression of how it is important to have the COURAGE to tell the TRUTH about what Evil Nasty Men do.

OK, so Suzie Suburbia, the upper-middle-class freshman from a nice affluent community with nice parents and a nice school full of nice kids has never been raped. Yet this rally has put her on notice that Evil Nasty Men on campus are just waiting for their opportunity to rape her. What then happens is that she becomes paranoid any time a man looks at her or talks to her. Any guy who acts friendly toward her is “hitting on her” — because this is all men ever do, see — and if she can manage to suppress this paranoia long enough to actually get herself into a romantic encounter with a guy, she is on High Alert for any indication that the guy is one of those Evil Nasty Men who she has been warned about. Because if anything occurs that displeases her — BOOM! Welcome to Rape Survivor Club.

Next year, she’ll be one of the stars of the show giving her testimonial at Take Back the Night.

This is what is happening. It is the only explanation for this pattern of frauds like UVA and the Sulkowicz travesty at Columbia.
RS
July 19th, 2015 @ 8:02 pm

The “survivor gambit” is also the way to escape the “shame” of “White Privilege.” Without the “survivor” tag, Suzie is just another rich white kid whose success is due to some sort of unfair melanin-based advantage.
robertstacymccain
July 19th, 2015 @ 8:12 pm

Here is the thing: According to research, at least 50% of campus sexual assault incidents involve alcohol. Given that the drinking age is 21 and the majority of college students are under 21, administrators could achieve a substantial reduction in sexual assault simply by rigorous enforcement of policies against underage drinking.

Ah, but that’s just it, you see!

Underage drinking is one of the big attractions of college life. Kids want to get drunk, and if officials got serious about cracking down on kids getting drunk — suspending teenagers and calling the cops to investigate who was furnishing alcohol to minors — well, this might hurt enrollment.

So kids keep getting drunk, and drunk kids keep having sex, and sometimes the sex kids have while they’re drunk can be called “sexual assault,” although that’s rather a difficult judgment to make when the accuser and the accused were both three sheets to the wind when the incident occurred.

LADIES: Guys who give you free booze aren’t doing it as a philanthropic endeavor. There is a reason college guys want to get you drunk, and this reason involves your vagina.

GUYS: Never speak to a college girl. Never be alone with a college girl. Don’t even look at a college girl, because you can’t tell which college girls are crazy. Therefore, the only ways to avoid being accused of rape or “harassment” are (a) to avoid female students altogether, or (b) don’t go to college.

Guys who want to have sex with college girls should just join the Army. College girls love Army guys. Ask any college girl in Fayetteville, N.C.
robertstacymccain
July 19th, 2015 @ 8:23 pm

Growing up in a large family (4 or more children) with both brothers and sisters helps young people develop realistic expectations about the opposite sex. As family size has dwindled — the average is now about 1.6 children for college-age women — and with the rising rate of divorce and single motherhood, you encounter more and more young people who simply don’t relate to the opposite sex in healthy ways.

Of course, this isn’t to say that all kids from larger families are immune to problems (e.g., Josh Duggar) or to say that every only child is maladjusted. But the trend toward smaller families (and the general disruption of the nuclear family) is connected with certain social problems that are different than the problems we had 40 or 50 years ago.
Matt_SE
July 19th, 2015 @ 9:00 pm

I agree, but where are you going to get that info?
There is an omerta-like wall of silence surrounding “rape” victims, and Heaven help the person who violates it!
CaptDMO
July 19th, 2015 @ 9:22 pm

“borderline personality disorder”?
1. A useless term applicable to almost anyone, ESPECIALLY incompetent shrinks, and their unwanted, wanna-be, stepchildren, psycologists.
2. Why “borderline’?
ISH @ Mininerd
July 20th, 2015 @ 12:24 am

Rape Shield Laws offend me on a fundamentalist, anti-censorship, idealistic level… But, I can live with them. Refusing to publish the name of a rape victim as a matter of editorial policy makes perfect sense to me.

But “Jackie” isn’t the victim, she isn’t even an “alleged victim who had her day in court but the accused party walked.”

I find doxxing to be a reprehensible practice, but I still find myself hoping someone decides to do it to “Jackie.”
Daniel Freeman
July 20th, 2015 @ 1:52 am

I had my own issues — it’s hard on an introvert to always be moving around and changing schools — but I learned to be grateful that at least I had a sister. I learned to expect the socially-underperforming only child, who looked like he would be popular, but was actually starved for friends. It was weird.
Adjoran
July 20th, 2015 @ 2:25 am

This particular libel didn’t involve Title IX, as bad as that law has always been. Eramo was the dean to whom, after pushing by Renda, Jackie actually began a complaint. Eramo apparently saw the problems with her story from the start, explained to her the options at that point and how the investigation would proceed from there. Jackie chose not to pursue it at all, not even as an in-house school complaint, to avoid detection.

Renda never worked in Eramo’s office or had direct contact with her on individual cases. RS is just blowing smoke with that. Renda was running an entirely separate “survivors support group” that friends convinced Jackie to attend when she claimed to still be suffering the next year. It was from these group sessions that Renda got the info to provide in her testimony, and to urge Jackie to file a complaint.

So the connection was Jackie-Renda-Erdely-Lhamon(?), Eramo was not involved except when Jackie went to her and decided not to file.
Adjoran
July 20th, 2015 @ 2:28 am

This wasn’t quite the same. Renda used the story to promote herself before Congress, and both she and Erdely obviously figured they could slide it by editors as “too good to check” – and they were right. But if either believed a word of it, they would have made an effort to find the alleged perps, wouldn’t they? That says it all.
Dana
July 20th, 2015 @ 5:44 am

Obviously that’s the other side of the same sheet of paper, but if college administrators are unwilling and untrained in dealing with sexual assault, they are most certainly unwilling to deal with underaged drinking. That, too, would be a problem only the police can handle.
Unix-Jedi
July 20th, 2015 @ 6:34 am

There’s this thing, called Google….

Seriously, she’s been ID’ed since like the day after the RS article.
RS
July 20th, 2015 @ 7:11 am

I understand that the UVA matter does not directly implicate Title IX. However, my point stands. I think there will be a move to insulate colleges and their employees from all civil liability regardless of legal theory, i.e. common law or statutory law, for decision making processes regarding campus sexual assault.

Title IX does contain within it some protections for falsely accused males or males who are victims of sham “trials,” because it is gender neutral. Look for Feminists to try to change that.
RS
July 20th, 2015 @ 7:14 am

That’s what I said. It was a good story and the powers that be didn’t figure it would ever be checked. Certainly they didn’t foresee it faling apart as it did. I’m sure self-promotion played a role, but the opportunity to self-promote arose because of the desire to advance the “campus rape culture” narrative.
Is the ‘Male Feminist’ Cuckold a Hoax? : The Other McCain
July 20th, 2015 @ 8:35 am

[…] but wanted to ignore the story because (a) yuck, and (b) I suspect the story is a hoax. Like Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape hoax, “Michael Sonmore” tells a narrative that is too perfect in its exposition of feminist […]
Finrod Felagund
July 20th, 2015 @ 9:38 am

Or men can go to an all-male college, of which there are still a small number.
Alex Furlong
July 20th, 2015 @ 11:34 am

Because 1) Borderline Personality Disorder is an actual entry in the DSM. Whether it should be or not is an interesting question. BPD is kind of a psychological catchphrase for “Something is wrong with this person because they’re having a hard time fitting in to society.” It’s maddeningly nonspecific.

As a consequence, 2) If you go beyond BPD into the more interesting types of personality disorder, you have to get specific. Based upon what we know of Jackie, we don’t have enough information to label her with some of the more severe mental illnesses, such as agoraphobia, schizophrenia, antisocial, etc. Jackie seems to have trouble dealing with cause & effect, but “dumbass prioritized her feelings for a male friend and did severely dumb things to those ends” is hard to tuck into a severe mental illness.
Daniel Freeman
July 20th, 2015 @ 2:10 pm

Security officers can write up students for drinking on campus, if they actually catch them in the act, and resident assistants can write up students in campus housing. It’s doable, if there’s the will.
Larwyn’s Linx: A Horrible Week for the Free World–And a Glimmer of Hope | H2o Positivo
July 21st, 2015 @ 3:26 am

[…] ‘Rape Culture’ or ‘Libel Culture’? Lawyers for Rolling Stone Blame the Victim: R.S. McCainTrump twist: Chris Rock said almost exact same thing about McCain in 2008 stand-up joke: BPRJohn McCain was a War Hero, but he’s also a Loser and an attacker of fellow Republicans: RWN […]
Alvindawes
July 21st, 2015 @ 4:02 am

Feel Free Freedom gheothermcca ……… Keep Reading
ISH @ Mininerd
July 21st, 2015 @ 6:23 pm

I’ve googled it. Most of the sites that claim to have her identity seem to be sub-Gawker levels hives of scum and click-bait.

I know, I know, I’m asking for something that is probably already out there to be published by to sort of journalists that would never actually publish it… Because publishing it would turn them into the disreputable sort of media outlets I don’t want them to be.

Do I contradict myself? Yup. But, hey, I’m just some yahoo with a keyboard, I don’t pretend to be otherwise.
mitchell DAY
July 21st, 2015 @ 9:52 pm

“In other words, Rolling Stone blames the victim (Eramo)”

Eramo is not the victim here. The TRUE victim is Phi Kappa Psi
fraternity!

“This is the real bottom line: Under pressure from feminists, the Obama administration has promoted policies that put male students at risk of false accusations”
You mean WHITE male students! Because the perpetrators of the REAL rape culture on campus are star Black football players who
sometimes don’t even get prosecuted!
Michaelburling
July 24th, 2015 @ 4:21 am

It’s All About You t-h-e-o < Make It Easy
More UVA Rape Hoax Fallout : The Other McCain
July 30th, 2015 @ 7:53 pm

[…] July 19: ‘Rape Culture’ or ‘Libel Culture’? Lawyers for Rolling Stone Blame the Victim […]