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.”
Chip, Nothing has been proven. You don’t have to shut up. Perhaps some skepticism for the deniers. Oh, wait, you’re one of the deniers. Never mind.
I don’t know how much of the story is true and neither do you, so stop blaming the victim, and Jackie IS a victim.
You can save a lot of time by just typing “Shut up.”
For someone who admits she doesn’t know the truth or falsity of a story that has already proven to be false in several respects, you certainly are convinced of Jackie’s victim status.
Weird how you don’t think any of the people who’ve been vilified b/c of her story are victims, tho.
I don’t think Jackie made up the story from whole cloth. I think the story needs to be checked, as it should have been before it was published. I refuse to discount an accusation of rape because some details are wrong. I expect those accused to deny everything. I don’t know how much of the story is true and neither do you, so stop blaming the victim, and Jackie IS a victim.
bettykath – since the ‘facts’ of the story are unsupportable, it is hard to see if Jackie is a victim or not. Her roommate talks of her mood changing but does not talk of any wounds to her body which would have resulted from cuts from the glass table described so well in the article.
Actually, I have heard this rape story before, but I cannot remember where. The final one with the 7 guys gang-raping her and the last one having problems with failure to perform. I think it comes from a novel, but I cannot remember which one. Some author is going to make a plagiarism claim on her story.
You’ve got to keep up w/ this story, bettykath, as it’s quite fluid.
When the Post contacted the friends last week, they said the account of the attack she gave them that night differed from the version in Rolling Stone. Jackie had not appeared to be physically injured, when they saw her late that night, they said, and she told them she’d been at a fraternity party where she had been forced to have oral sex with multiple men.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/rolling-stone-uva-reporting-rape
The Post also tracked down the man called “Drew” in the article, whom Jackie identified for the first time this week, and he said he had never met Jackie or taken her on a date. He could be lying, of course, but at the least, his account raises questions about Rolling Stone’s. He also was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.
Yeah, sure, “Drew” could be lying. And of course victims of assault may not be ably to nail down all the details of their assaults.
But Jackie’s story “evolved” toward ever-more specificity and ever-more violence. Are you claiming that’s a common feature of rape accusations?
Seems like there’s a pretty simple rule to follow: If you’re unsure about important details, don’t make specific accusations. Let the police investigate based on what you actually do remember.
How hard is that?
Oh, and claiming that Lena Dunham was similarly confused by trauma is absurd.
Michael, I initially took issue with JT saying that Jackie was forced to provide oral sex when that isn’t the story. The story is that she was forcefully vaginally raped by seven men.
There seems to be agreement that Jackie was seriously traumatized and probably raped. An additional point of my posts is that a woman going through the kind of trauma Jackie experienced was likely to get details wrong. I also don’t take the fraternity’s denial of a party on that date at face value. Maybe Jackie got the date wrong. It would certainly have been better if there had been more diligence in tracking down the details but I believe that Jackie was raped and the trauma of the rape was accurately portrayed.
I accept that details need to be verified. RS published a story that was not ready for publication. Responsibility for that is with the editor.
bettykath – You are willing to accept her story without checking. That is not good. Trust, but verify.
Olly, I think the outrage was on Nov. 4th. Kill them with the ballot.
Where’s the moral outrage over the IRS gang rape of conservative groups? At least that rape was provable.
You people are morally bankrupt.
BettyKath:
You quoted the Rolling Stone article. Do you realize that that story has been questioned by Rolling Stone, and that RS appears to be backing away from it due to its lack of credibility?
How could any woman who went through such a horrific experience, not report it to the police? She had the semen of all of the guys, she probably had deep cuts from the broken glass and weight pushing her body into the glass. She recognized plenty of the men involved. With all of the evidence, she had a slam dunk case against the whole lott.
But this woman also let down another segment of society, college females, like my daughters. I think it would be Jackie’s duty to contact the police and bring charges against these so called rapists and she did not. So, she basically let these 7 rapists off, to rape again. She didn’t report this horrific crime out of self preservation and to the detriment of other females. It’s her duty as a female to report this crime and take the perps off the streets to protect other women.
Did Jackie go to a psychologist to help her deal with this? If not, why not, any woman who went through this would be in a psychological coma. Don’t tell me it’s because she was afraid or couldn’t remember because she sure seemed to remember alot in her story, not to a police officer, but to a news reporter.
That’s another reason I find this story hard to believe. But I do not blame Jackie, I blame the reporter Erdely who did not vet her sources and Rolling Stone for not asking the questions of verification.
As far as Dunham: Random House has stated that a change will be made to future editions of Lena Dunham’s essay collection, Not That Kind of Girl. They are unable to verify her sexual assault and are worried about a lawsuit, so this is a CWA move.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/08/lena-dunhams-publisher-says-her-alleged-rapist-barry-wasnt-actually-named-barry/
My cyber finger left out an important word…
The story is NOT about forced oral sex
The article about trauma and memory may also apply to Dunham’s story.
From JT, “The story…, 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.”
The story is about forced oral sex. From the story:
“Shut up,” she heard a man’s voice say as a body barreled into her, tripping her backward and sending them both crashing through a low glass table. There was a heavy person on top of her, spreading open her thighs, and another person kneeling on her hair, hands pinning down her arms, sharp shards digging into her back, and excited male voices rising all around her. When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. The men surrounding her began to laugh. For a hopeful moment Jackie wondered if this wasn’t some collegiate prank. Perhaps at any second someone would flick on the lights and they’d return to the party.
“Grab its m—f-cking leg,” she heard a voice say. And that’s when Jackie knew she was going to be raped.
She remembers every moment of the next three hours of agony, during which, she says, seven men took turns raping her, while two more – her date, Drew, and another man – gave instruction and encouragement. She remembers how the spectators swigged beers, and how they called each other nicknames like Armpit and Blanket. She remembers the men’s heft and their sour reek of alcohol mixed with the pungency of marijuana. Most of all, Jackie remembers the pain and the pounding that went on and on.
As the last man sank onto her, Jackie was startled to recognize him: He attended her tiny anthropology discussion group. He looked like he was going to cry or puke as he told the crowd he couldn’t get it up. “Pussy!” the other men jeered. “What, she’s not hot enough for you?” Then they egged him on: “Don’t you want to be a brother?” “We all had to do it, so you do, too.” Someone handed her classmate a beer bottle. Jackie stared at the young man, silently begging him not to go through with it. And as he shoved the bottle into her, Jackie fell into a stupor, mentally untethering from the brutal tableau, her mind leaving behind the bleeding body under assault on the floor.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119#ixzz3LRN1C1va
bettykath – for this to have occurred as she says she would have been hospitalized at least long enough for stitches. BTW, RS has backed away from this whole story.
And, of course, no fraternity would white wash its involvement by denying a party took place. Maybe Jackie got the fraternity wrong, maybe not.
bettykath – whether a fraternity had a party or not is easy to check.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/trauma-memory-rape-victims-report-details-hazy/story?id=27450074
excerpt:
Many trauma victims don’t clearly remember certain details of what happened to them, said Dr. Phillip Resnick, who directs the forensic psychiatry program at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and is not involved in the UVA case. For example, victims who have been robbed at gunpoint might focus on the gun but not remember details of the robber’s face, he said.
“This is an issue with all crime victims,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that the victim will be unreliable.”
He said if a victim remembered a license plate number but was off by one digit, it wouldn’t suggest false reporting, but hint at a memory distortion or omission.
Sexual assault victims often have a hard time recalling what happened leading up to or following the assault, regardless of whether they were drugged, said Jennifer Marsh, director of victim services at the anti-sexual assault group RAINN, which stands for Rape Abuse and Incest National Network.
Sexual assault victims may also try to fill in the gaps in their memories as they try to make sense of what happened to them, Marsh said. Sometimes victims do this because they’re afraid that no one will believe them without a coherent story, she said. As a result, many law enforcement officials have been trained to see these memory gaps not as red flags but as “perfectly normal following a traumatic event.”
Resnick also said an inability to remember some aspects of trauma is actually part of the diagnostic criterion for post-traumatic stress disorder, which The Post wrote Jackie told them she was diagnosed with following the rape.
bettykath – Jackie may have been diagnosed with PSTD, but she seemed to have a lot of details. Now, she either knew them, made them up or created them from whole cloth. You take your pick.
How come Liberals aren’t screaming from the rooftops that the FBI changed the meaning of Rape, and now includes rapes of men and sexual assault with an object, amongst other things?:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This report uses the FBI’s new definition of rape — but doesn’t know exactly how many sexual offenses were carried out.
The Justice Department said in 2012 that it would change the FBI’s definition of rape so that it covered more forms of sexual assault and didn’t just cover the rape of women. Rape had been defined since 1929 as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will,” but that definition was dropped starting last year. So this is the first installment of the FBI’s crime statistics report to include the new definition.
However, not every state and local agency that feeds into the FBI’s numbers were able to change how they record these kinds of sexual assaults, so some were able to report assaults using only the older definition. The FBI estimates that the number of sexual assaults last year increased by 41.7 percent to 38,250 with the inclusion of the rapes of men and sexual assault with an object, among other things. The bureau came up with this number by looking at sexual offenses (including rapes of men and other kinds of assault) in the National Incident-Based Reporting System. This number “can be used to generally understand” how sexual offense statistics are likely to rise, according to the report, at least until the FBI figures out how to determine a representative sample of such assaults.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/11/10/five-things-we-learned-from-the-fbis-big-report-on-crime/
How come Liberals aren’t screaming from the rooftops that the FBI changed the meaning of Rape, and now includes rapes of men and sexual assault with an object, amongst other things?:
I stopped reading any more replies. How come “liberals” haven’t? how do you know that. This has become nothing more then bashing of anyone who is not on your side, This is like reading the comments at Huckabee’s FB page where it is all bashing of anyone who does not agree with you and presentation of I am right and therefore anyone who does not accept what I say is wrong, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I am sorry too often this blog reply section has turned into a playground of children.
I stop with this thread but I am afraid I will end up leaving as so many others have because the common sense, decency, and ability to debate using facts that was the cornerstone of the comments section seems to be long gone.
It is a real sadness. I learned from this blog and the commenters. People actually would say “I see your point” even when disagreeing. Now it is name calling and bashing of the other side, facts be darned., Just as an example. the Dunham book, 2 times at least pointed out that was published after her show “well they relied on her work before it was published” so you could pound your point, no facts. no way to know that just supposition but because of an inability to look at it and oh, maybe I am wrong about that, I will look into it and see if maybe they used her unpublished work it is just nope, I was right and the facts just don’t matter.
So sad this blog has degenerated in this way.
That’s the thing. Liberals who gin up these false accusations and are sued in court and forced to pay judgements are still lionized. Invited to the White House. Given TV shows. Because lies don’t matter to the liberal media. Only the narrative which must be put forward at all costs. Regardless of the damage done to the reputations and lives of people who they lie about.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/12/26/article-0-16A734B3000005DC-109_306x464.jpg
They have no shame. Lena Dunham could lose a multi-million dollar case and still enjoy her status as the “voice of her generation.”
They are welcome to her.
Things that confirms Liberal biases feeeel sooo good. Things that don’t confirm those biases are bad, and hurt their feelings, and mega-ouchies!, it physically hurts to think new thoughts. So this whole affair was kind of like journalistic masturbation.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Details don’t matter when you know someone is guilty. Everbody knows that fraternities are rape factories and conservative men love to rape liberal girls….it is just a fact. Why let details mess that up. What could go wrong?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/86/Leo_Frank_(1884-1915).jpg/230px-Leo_Frank_(1884-1915).jpg
@Eric
Good comment about the slippery nature of truth. Same thing as with the Ferguson silliness. We know now that the whole “hands up—don’t shoot” story was crap, but does it matter??? Not to some people. Not when votes are involved!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
trooperyork:” verifiable details”
From what I gather, the college proceedings and public position are overtly moving away from an evidentiary fact-based standard to determine defendant’s guilt and replacing it with emphasis of the accuser’s belief and even feelings.