There are two separate controversies this week over rape stories that have been challenged by critics. Both stories involve leading U.S. universities. Unlike the Duke Lacrosse controversy, neither school is accused of wrongdoing. Rolling Stone magazine has apologized for shocking failures in reporting a sensational rape story where a woman named Jackie alleged that she was gang raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house, but the Washington Post reported on discrepancies in the account, including the fact that no party was held at the fraternity on the day in question. In the meantime, Lena Dunham’s story of being raped in college has been challenged as containing discrepancies and the man who has faced the most accusations is now considering a libel lawsuit against the author and director.
The Rolling Stone Controversy
Rolling Stone magazine ran the story containing detailed accounts of the rape of Jackie, but it agreed to a demand by the alleged victim not to interview with accused man. It was an astonishing lapse of journalistic principles and the magazine also failed to fully investigate the details of the alleged rape. Notably, however, the magazine issued an apology but then removed this line: “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced.” That line was replaced with this line “These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.”
The story “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, discussed how Jackie was a freshman in 2012 when she was forced to perform oral sex by seven men at the prestigious Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. Various people raised questions over the reporting, including the fact that some of Jackie’s closest friends questioned her account despite Erdely’s insistence that her friends’ accounts were “consistent” with her story. These inconsistencies include Jackie’s initial claim, according to friends and the Washington Post, that she had been raped by 5 men and then later claiming it was 7. Other friends said that there was an absence of any physical injury despite the claim of the magazine that she emerged bloodied and battered. The fraternity also said that there was no party on the day identified by Jackie and that her identification of “Drew” did not match anyone at the house and that in conflict with her claims, no one at the house worked as lifeguards at the pool. One of the named attackers was from a different house and no one by his name is a member at the Phi Kappa Psi. The man named said that he never met Jackie.
The fact that the magazine agreed not to interview the accused was widely condemned. The magazine stated that “[b]ecause of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man who she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men who she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her.” A Rolling Stone editor claimed that it could not reach some of the men, though others including the Post were able to do so.
The Post details clearly identified individuals who were never contacted by the magazine. The Post reported that the person identified in the Rolling Stone story as “Cindy” told it that Erdely’s version of events was “completely false.”
The story of the brutal rape is still available on the Internet with the addition of the apology.
The Lena Dunham Controversy
A man named “Barry” is reportedly considering a libel lawsuit against Lena Dunham for her account of being raped at Oberlin College. She supplied details of the rape by a “mustachioed campus Republican” named Barry. Dunham’s widely acclaimed memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, included an identification of Barry as the rapist and describes him as a 19-year-old student who was known as a “poor loser” at poker with a flamboyant mustache who worked at the campus library and hosted a radio talk show. She also stated that Barry was the “campus’s resident conservative.”
The seemed to reduce the suspects to one man named Barry who was on the campus at the time and named Barry who claims that he has been hounded by the allegation that he is a rapist and that Dunham has refused to speak with him or clear his name.
Dunham’s high visibility has made the rape allegation international news and that has magnified the alleged injury to Barry. She received a $3.7 million advance for the memoir and is a leading producer, writer, and director, including her celebrated work on on the HBO series Girls.
Dunham not only claims that Barry raped her but gives highly graphic details of the encounter. She also quotes a friend who said that after she “once her friend Julia woke up the morning after sex with Barry, and the wall was spattered with blood. Spattered, she said, “like a crime scene.” But he was nice and took her for the morning-after pill and named the baby they weren’t having.”
The conservative website Breitbart has investigated the claims and identified what it says are clear discrepancies. The Washington Post blog has said that those discrepancies offer a solid basis for a libel action.
It is difficult to judge the merits of the claim. However, a libel lawsuit could force a response from Dunham and discovery into her account. Such an action could be based on not just libel but false light. The latter tort is defined
in Restatement (Second) of Torts, Sec. 652E as:
(1) the portrayal must be found to be “highly offensive to a reasonable person” and
(2) the actor had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized matter and the false light in which the other would be placed.
The risk for Dunham is that there may be enough details — and alleged discrepancies — to get such a case to discovery and possibly trial. Discovery could result in depositions of an array of acquaintances and Dunham herself under oath. “Barry” has reportedly set up a donation site to pay for “costs and related fees associated with defending Barry’s reputation including, but not limited to, potentially pursuing Lena Dunham and Penguin Random House for harm caused to Barry’s reputation from the publication and sale of Ms. Dunham’s memoir.”
Pogo… ‘the left, the liberals, the lefties, the liberals, the left…. To the right, march!’
Karen @ 10:46, speaking of gross mischaracterizations of comments….You need to work on that.
The Dean has had death threats, bricks are being thrown through the frat house’s window, and the young men falsely implicated have had to move out.
What’s their life going to be like the rest of their college years? Much fun? Will they have great memories of college to tell their kids and grandkids? Will their grades suffer? How do they feel having been falsely accused of gang rape, with allegations that will shadow them for the rest of their lives? They were victimized.
The drive-by media keep making inflammatory headlines, getting all the facts wrong, and then causing great harm in society.
This is a pattern, and it’s making some of us very jaded and mistrustful of journalists.
The reputation of journalists used to be that they were brave, stalwart champions for truth, no matter what, willing to go to jail to protect their sources. They had a code. They asked hard questions no matter how much they liked the people involved.
That reputation is pretty much mud now. There are still honorable journalists fighting the good fight, but the barrel is pretty full of bad apples. The responsibility lies with the editors, because they set the rules for their reporters.
” And we do not know what actually happened to the young woman. ”
We know quite a bit about what did not happen to her, and that much of her story was a lie, and that she made a similar claim of rape 2 years prior.
The outrage is not “hollow nonsense,” except in that the left’s Daily 2 Minute Hate is once again shown to be fake.
That their claims are hollow is very important, as it speaks to their mendacity and unreliability.
Lee:
” Ginny, a college senior who was really raped when she was 16, suggests that false accusations of rape can serve a useful purpose. “Penetration is not the only form of violation,” she explains. In her view, rape is a subjective term, one that women must use to draw attention to other, nonviolent, even nonsexual forms of oppression. “If a woman did falsely accuse a man of rape, she may have had reasons to,” Ginny says. “Maybe she wasn’t raped, but he clearly violated her in some way.”
OK. Let’s say your son was accused of rape because his coworker felt he was running her over at work and getting all the good projects for himself. She felt violated because he spoke up loudest. That would be a nonviolent, nonsexual form of oppression. But it’s all OK for her to cry rape, because she had reasons to, because she felt violated.
Sorry, but rape has a definition in criminal law of sexual assault. If it’s a “nonviolent, even nonsexual form of oppression” it is not rape, and men should not be sentenced for rape, go to jail, and register as a sex offender for it.
Seriously, this is what is wrong with the education system. It’s being run by maniacs.
Karen S – well put. Although rape is the taking by force, most of us think of rape in a sexual sense. A nonviolent nonsexual rape is not a rape, since it does not fit the definition. Except, for feminists, who have changed the definition to fit their needs.
Michael Haz:
There was nothing at all contradictory in my comment. Rolling Stone failed to properly investigate a story prior to printing it. And we do not know what actually happened to the young woman. Those who believe that men are victims of feminist rage undoubtedly will argue that campus rape is a myth popularized by liberals, turning the entire conversation into yet another barrage of partisan rancor. Those whose innate sense of compassion is dependent upon the emotional exigencies of the moment will now argue that they themselves are victims. And all of this is hollow nonsense.
Michael H:
Wouldn’t you think that if you were raped so savagely that the wall was splattered with blood that you would have to go to the doctor, and possibly have surgery? Be unable to walk and require an ambulance? That much blood would require stitches.
I have personally known a woman who suffered an impossibly brutal attack, and was hospitalized for WEEKS. People like her deserve our compassion and protection.
In this case, not a single detail has been able to be substantiated. Until and unless they can make a solid case, we have someone whose story has been proven false. You can’t get everything wrong in your story and then be upset that people stop believing you. If the police investigate and do find evidence of rape, then it will be different.
Inga:
Why are you talking about this? I thought it was reprehensible to discuss this topic instead of police brutality?
Inga:
You are assuming that her story is true. Is that because it is a rape accusation? You should never assume anything, but question everything. She blamed a mustached conservative who worked at the library and hosted his own radio show. She called him “Barry” and, guess what, there really was a Barry that fit that description, but it turns out he was innocent. His reputation is totally ruined, but he was innocent. Now she’s saying that there was no “Barry” but that he was an amalgam of her attackers. What do you think the chances are that there are two such persons that fit that description?
I don’t assume their stories are correct because they are women or because the accusation involves rape.
If she’s going to write a book and do an interview, then maybe she should go to the police and press charges instead of making millions of dollars off of it. Is this about justice or money?
Frankly, now that there were so many inconsistencies, and her story has changed several times, the only way she can prove she was assaulted is for the police to investigate.
What we know, indisputably, is that the facts she gave the magazine were all wrong. That is not my opinion. It’s a fact. You would think if you were gang raped by 5 or 7 men, the name of the frat house and its location would be branded into your brain for the rest of your life, where the mere mention of the name would give you PTSD. But, nope, she got all the details wrong.
Any jury who got a case like this would have great difficulty believing victims who made money off of a story but got all the facts wrong.
All Rolling Stone had to do was go to a rape crisis center near a university if they wanted a legitimate story.
I read Jackie’s story and was traumatized myself just reading it. It bothered me for days. When the retraction and apology came, it was stunning and I felt duped.
Exactamundo Maureen. This is what I expressed and why my bowl of compassion and empathy is pretty low and for which I have been scolded and nagged at by some (or one) on this board. Yes. I do not have reflex jerk compassion or empathy about an individual case……..until I KNOW it is true.
When you are duped, played for the fool over and over and over by the media, by politicians, by organizations who want to elicit a response from YOU to benefit THEM, you get a bit tired of it.
Like Pogo said earlier, are ANY of the leftist alarming stories actually true? Since most of them turn out to be lies and exaggerations, why should we bother getting all compassionate and have empathy for something that likely never even happened.
So the public and certain ethnic groups get all ginned up to respond and then….ooops….it wasn’t true after all. But what does that matter? The narrative was advanced right?
Ooooooh, someone mad? Get back to the TOPIC, lol!
And and and… Nothing. Conjecture.
But hey, keep on with your male-hating propaganda.
Is it that hard to understand that a traumatized rape victim got the name of the Frat house wrong?
…and the date. and the semester, and the kind of rape, and whether or not she got cut when a glass table broke, and whether or not there was blood splattered everywhere, and seems to not know which building, or the names of anyone who was there, or who invited her to the party…….
…..and whose friends are backing away from her story, and who never called the police or campus security, and never sought medical assistance….
Haz, I think you do not know what “change the topic” really means. Princess Bride.
We DO NOT KNOW if any of the details are lies.
And really, your multiple attempts to change the topic are little more than an admission that you have no argument that supports Jackie’s accusations.
RS did a bad thing by not checking out details of the story. Is it that hard to understand that a traumatized rape victim got the name of the Frat house wrong? So RS throws Jackie under the bus. That was the worst thing they did.
“Bad reporting doesn’t negate college rapes.”
You are correct, however, this story most likely will cause problems for future rape cases at college/universities. I do not blame ‘Jackie’, I blame the reporter of Rolling Stone Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She did not fact check her story, got the fraternity wrong, the date wrong and many other details. It’s not Jackie’s burden to make sure the story is correct in it’s facts, it’s the writer.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely was ‘rape shopping’ colleges for a rape story that fit her agenda. I think what we should be asking is why, out of the hundred’s of rapes across the country at universities, why did she pick an activist rape victim? Why did she pick UVA? Why did she choose that particular fraternity to accuse? Lastly, why didn’t she fact check sources? Is this a case of willful or blatant ignorance?
Rolling Stone is also guilty here because Ms. Erdely supposedly called the editor to request that he not print the story, for reasons only known to her. RS did not fact check their reporters article before it went to print. Then RS tried to back peddle by blaming the article’s publishing mistake on the supposed victim Jackie by claiming her story was rife with factual mistakes. They have yet to take responsibility for publishing a story based on lies, maybe not all lies, but there are some pretty big unsubstantiated ones.