Caught in a Web of Lies at UVA

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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.





 

233 comments

  3. Erdely was shopping around for a story to base a screenplay upon, which she apparently hoped would make her a Hollywood commodity and not some schlub fetching Red Bull for Matt Tahhibi.

    RS is notoriously lax on “fact-checking” – worse even than today’s New York Times.

  4. That’s what she told Rolling Stone. It doesn’t match what she told her friends at the time. Neither match what she told the trauma counseling group, and none of those match what she told the dean.

    She filed no police report and in fact refused to even speak with police.

  5. Has her name ever been made public? Seems like she’d be just fine going to another school and remaining unknown.

  7. Not by name – his name is only public because he chose to reveal it.

    Stand-up guy. At least one decent person in this whole sordid mess.

  9. I haven’t seen it in the papers, but I’m sure it will leak, if it hasn’t already. When it does, it will get around. I suspect there are already people who know who she is. Her name WILL get out.

  10. You would never know if Honor Court proceedings were under way or not, because they are secret – including the findings and result. People who went to Fayetteville State may not be aware of that.

    UVa’s real problem is the President, a known fabricator and academic fraud as well as an incompetent and biased administrator. Sullivan needs to get the boot – NOW.

  11. For those who missed it, among the times Glass’ and Erdely’s paths crossed was when he was her editor in college and withdrew one of her stories for being falsified.

    Truth is stranger than fiction.

  12. The rape she described for Rolling Stone was so brutal that the rapist would have faced very long prison terms. They were clearly violent men (if they existed) and it would be a wonder if they didn’t also kill her to dispose of the evidence.

  13. There’s no criminal offense on her part, to refer for charges related to the rape allegations.

    WRT civil liability, or disciplinary action by the school, none of that is his call. So Longo can be any “type” – it’s not relevant.

    His “something terrible” comment was a disgraceful sop to political correctness. The something terrible that happened to Jackie was he crush went to a party and had fun without her and might meet someone else in spite of her schemes to make herself seem desirable.

  16. she didn’t file any false report. That’s why she’s not being charged. She never brought or made statements about the rape allegations to any criminal authority.

  17. The only thing real here was the slander that Jackie perpetrated against a very real fraternity. She could have made up a wandering band of minstrels- but evidently she knew that a gang-raping fraternity would get maximum attention/sympathy. Phi Kappa Psi should sue for slander.

  18. Getagrip. I basically agree with you. I was simply pointing out that UVa in this case is not the malefactor – ROLLING STONE is.

    You are beginning to sound like Steve Sailer. Who went to jail in this situation? Did anyone spend 30 years on death row for a crime they didn’t commit? No. So calm down.

  20. Yep. I’ve been independent since I was nineteen. Currently I caucus with conservatives.

    But I have to say, it’s getting more provisional every day. 2016 could become the deal breaker. I certainly hope not.

  21. Even though Senator McCarthy and his accusations have been widely debunked- it can’t be PROVEN that Communists weren’t all over the State Department and US Army.

    Gee- ever hear someone from the Left make THAT claim?

  22. Here’s what: I think she might have some marks. She might be the self-injuring type, and might have felt the need to explain them away to a curious friend, or found a way to capitalize on them. That’s speculation, a hunch. She does have a history of eating disorder and then there’s the absurd attachment/rejection issues she played out in the first iteration of her rape story… so maybe she’s a self-harmer, too. That or she is capable of falling down and hurting herself when she is drunk.

  23. Trigger warning: if your story is weakly sourced and full of holes, don’t pull the trigger on it.

  25. The left has been captured by the dishonest, authoritarian thought-policing of “political correctness.” I’m technically a swing voter, and each candidate has to get my vote on his or her own merits, but it seems like every year there are fewer normal, sane, rational Ds.

    It could be a perceptual effect, since I’m also increasingly sensitive to that particular cognitive sickness, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.

  26. Wellllll, that isn’t ever going to happen – because if what she described happened, she’d have needed medical attention, and rather a lot of it, and right then.

  27. Maybe she wanted to start a dialogue? That seems to be the usual excuse when someone makes up something heinous like this.

  28. Even if she is a cutter (*shudder* and I can’t believe I actually know that term and use it), it’s remarkably difficult to cut your own back. Even drunk, it’s nearly impossible to fall into broken glass and roll around in it, because it will hurt like…well, it wouldn’t be trivial.

    So, no.

  29. THe fraternity was shut down, essentially. The building was vandalized, specific persons named by witch-hunters on campus (they were injured, had to hire lawyers). UVA is completely to blame for how they handled the RS piece. And RS and Erdely in particular, at fault for pushing an unverfied story where the even Jackie, the teller, wanted to back out and was uncooperative about providing verifying details. But UVA slandered the frat, it’s members, and because of that specific men were pointed at on chat boards and even interviewed by the college and police.

  30. Sucks, and those who vandalized the frat should be prosecuted (altho) I doubt they ever will be. But again, get a grip. It’s not like spending 30 years of your life on death row for a crime you didn’t commit. Suck it up and move on.

  31. I didn’t know that. About him revealing his own name. I think you’re right, he probably is a decent person. Perhaps that decency is what repelled him from crazy jackie

  32. The Honor Code at UVa has been a signature of the school for 173 years. For those of you who are smirking, the code has worked well for a very long time. (Link: http://www.virginia.edu/honor/). It is administered by the students (entirely). One strike and you’re out (permanently). It appears there may be enough circumstantial evidence to disprove the “alligator’s” account of rape. If so, let the Honor Committee do it’s job. UVA Alum (1969).

  34. I haven’t really kept up, but I thought the single sanction had been toned down since our time. (I was there in the 70s).

    Also, Mr McCain, at Virginia, we don’t call them “freshmen”. It’s “First year”, etc.

  35. Borderline Personality Disorder is as real as you are. 30 years of psychiatric practice convinced me.

  38. You can’t prove that I didn’t have sex with Blort from Planet Grelznak last night.

    It was out of this world, btw.

  39. If the Police/States Attorney’s Office would fully investigate, I do mean fully- as in laying pressure on the accuser, then either a heinous crime would be solved or other “rape victims” would be discouraged from 1) telling lies 2) going to campus authorities instead of law enforcement.

    Rape victims deserve justice, so do “rape victims”.

  40. The president of that university needs to be fired. It is increasingly obvious that if women want to be given credit for being equal they have to stop fronting this hysterical women’s supremacist movement. Some sane adult has to step in and point out college is for learning, not itself a giant gender studies lab, and that EVERYONE, including men, have rights and need to feel someone is looking out for those rights. The university makes me sick to read about.

  41. You’re confused. To Victim Feminists (don’t confuse them with all feminists, some of whom are profoundly rational and decent), rape IS an individual crime that is encouraged and ignored by the institutional corruption called Patriarchy.

    That they consider it an individual crime is why campus activists want all those accused of rape to be expelled so they are free to roam the streets and assault others (assuming that they are really sexual predators and not just randy young men) – one of their many internal contradictions.

    That they see such crimes within a larger social context is why they have demanded changes in federal and state laws and campus policies which assume the guilt of men without investigation or trial and assume the honesty of all women “survivors”, who are so terribly liberated that they need Big Brother to constantly protect them.

  42. Mattress Girl couldn’t look any stupider if she wore an Underdog outfit. If that’s the face of women’s equality then women are clearly not equal. I’m surprised more women aren’t speaking up and saying this moron doesn’t represent women. She represents failure.

  44. UCDavis would welcome her with open arms…then she could start this whole thing all over again.

  45. Not being as educated in the Psych Sciences I feel more comfortable using the latter rather than the former lest I be accused of applying false labels.

  47. It’s not a perceptual effect. ’60s liberals were absolutely against a thing like the Comics Code Authority for example.

    “‘Partial nudity, the aggressive display of cleavage and the navel,
    and shorts/skirts higher than 4″ above the knee are not allowed.'”

    That’s a quote from a video-gaming convention about “booth babes.” One would think it was from the year 1890. I Dream of Jeannie didn’t allow her to show her navel. These morons are going backwards.

  48. It was intended to portray a larger truth.

    In 1990, Mariam Kashani, a sophomore at George Washington University, who was a rape counselor and worked for a rape crisis hotline, told the school newspaper about a white woman who was raped by two black men on campus. The men held the woman at knifepoint and the men had “particularly bad body odor”. When the two men were finished, Kashinai said, they laughed at the woman and told her she was “pretty good for a white girl”.

    When her story crumbled, Kashani said she was really sorry and insisted that she “had hoped the story, as reported, would highlight the problems of safety for women”.

    In April 1991, Princeton University student Mindy Brickman falsely accused a fellow Princeton student of raping her, spreading her claim through conversations around campus. She also repeated the smear at a campus “take back the night” rally.

    Once Brickman’s claim fell apart, she wrote an apology in the pages of the Princetonian newspaper: “I never intended for anyone to be hurt by my statements, which were intended to raise awareness for the plight of the campus rape victims”.

    In 1993 at Oberlin College, a “take back the night” group posted a number of signs on campus labeling an apparently randomly-chosen, innocent freshman as “Rapist of the Month”. An 18-year-old male student, a philosophy major, was retrieving his mail when he first saw the signs calling him a rapist. He tore down the signs and had to deny the allegation to his friends.

    “I haven’t even dated at Oberlin,” the student insisted. “I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I couldn’t have gotten myself in that kind of situation.” A friend described him as “almost boring”.

    Sophomore Emily Lloyd suggested that critics of the falsehood were missing the “take back the night” group’s larger point. “So many women get their lives totally ruined by being assaulted and not saying anything,” Lloyd explained. “So if one guy gets his life ruined, maybe it balances out.”

    In November 2004, Desiree Nall, a student at Rollins College in Winter Park FL and the president of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, told police during Sexual Assault Awareness Week that two men raped her in a bathroom on campus.

    Police became skeptical of Nall’s claims after she couldn’t keep her story straight and was unable to provide descriptions of the two men, and an examination at a sexual assault treatment center showed no evidence of any sexual assault.

    Nall, 23, eventually recanted her fake rape allegations. Police suggested that Nall could have been attempting to “make a statement” about sexual assault, and ultimately spent $50,000 investigating Nall’s imaginary claims. Nall was charged for making a false statement to police. Her husband defended her, insisting the cops targeted her because “she is a women’s-rights activist”.

    In February 2013, Morgan Triplett, 20, visited the University of California, Santa Cruz for a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender conference. While there, she claimed that she had been raped in broad daylight on the campus. The bizarre truth is that she successfully used Craigslist to locate a stranger who agreed to beat her up in exchange for sex. Her first ad sought somebody to shoot her in the shoulder. Her second ad, seeking someone willing to “punch, kick and bruise her” panned out.

    Triplett met her unnamed mangler in Santa Cruz, he beat her up and they had sex. She used a cellphone screen reflection as a mirror to see if the injuries were sufficient, and then told him to pummel her some more. With fresh bruises to substantiate her tale, Triplett then informed 911 that a mysterious assailant had raped and battered her while she was walking on a path looking for banana slugs – the UCSC mascot.

    In April 2013, former University of Florida student 22-year-old Tanya Borachi said a man dressed in black and wearing a black mask and gloves brutally tied her hands and gagged her while she was getting out of her car. She only got away, she claimed, by kicking the man in the groin and running, still tied and gagged. Her roommate, who fell for her story, unbound her.

    Boarchi initially defended her fabricated story by saying that she was trying to teach the world “a lesson to women in the area that an attack could happen to them”. Police charged Boarchi with filing a false police report.

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