GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

It takes awhile

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…but sometimes there’s justice.

Remember that UVa “campus rape culture” hoax that bubbled up in 2014? Recent news is that Rolling Stone will pay settlement damages to the fraternity they accused.

A source involved at the national level with the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, tells TheDC that Rolling Stone will pay $1.65 million to settle the defamation suit…

In the piece, “A Rape on Campus,” Erdely relayed the story of Jackie Coakley, a Virginia woman who claimed she was brutally raped by a group of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members during a party in Sept. 2012.

Separately, a UVa dean also got damages:

The magazine’s decision follows a settlement in April with Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia associate dean who was also smeared in the article, which was written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely…

Erdely portrayed Eramo as dismissive of Coakley’s case. But it was later revealed that Coakley not only fabricated the attack by the fraternity members but that Eramo took her allegations seriously at the time she made them.

A jury in Virginia awarded Eramo $3 million in damages — $2 million from Erdely and $1 million from Rolling Stone.

I don’t know what has happened to the original accuser, Jackie Coakley?

While I’m at it:

UVa “rape” narrative collapses…even more

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This Washington Post article is everywhere today, and with good reason. I just want to catch up anyone who may have missed it.

It appears that the fakery we’ve been discussing in the Rolling Stone / U-Va rape case is worse than we thought, and may have come from both “Jackie” (the alleged rape victim) and Sabrina Rubin Erdely (the Rolling Stone writer who turns out to be a past writing associate of the infamous fabulist, Stephen Glass).

First, a bit about Jackie’s seeming fakery. Going by the WaPo article, it’s possible that she invented her admirer “Drew”, whom Rolling Stone identified as her rapist:

Jackie told her three friends that she accepted the upperclassman’s invitation for a dinner date on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012.

Curious about Jackie’s date, the friends said that they tried to find the student on a U-Va. database and social media but couldn’t. Andy, Cindy and Randall all said they never met the student in person. Before Jackie’s date, the friends became suspicious that perhaps they hadn’t really been in contact with the chemistry student [via text messages to “his” number which Jackie had given the friends] at all, they said.

U-Va. officials told The Post that no student with the name Jackie provided to her friends as her date and attacker in 2012 had ever enrolled at the university.

Randall provided The Post with pictures that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in 2012. The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.”

The man said he was never a U-Va. student and is not a member of any fraternity. Additionally, he said that he had not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was in another state participating in an athletic event during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.

“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.

The WaPo article covers much other ground, including tidbits such as Erdely having painted Jackie’s friends as callous and as having refused Erdely’s interview requests, while the friends say that they had always encouraged Jackie to report her rape story to the police and that Erdely never made the slightest effort to interview any of them.

It looks as though 2 troubled women, acting somewhat separately (or deceiving each other), managed between them to cook up a fraternity-blaming hoax that liberals rushed to believe because it fit liberals’ prejudices. Or as V says, because it fit The Narrative that liberals are out to push. Get this:

U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan…wants the university community to focus on prevention of sexual assault.

That may be good, but perhaps Sullivan should have the U-Va. community also focus on *prevention of hoaxes and/or witch hunts* that only punish scads of innocent U-Va. students.

UPDATE: A link to Erdely putting down Stephen Glass. Your daily dose of irony.

Yet another left-wing ‘narrative’ crashes

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Was it “Fake but accurate”? Or just fake? You decide. Rolling Stone’s apology, via Ace:

To Our Readers:

Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university’s failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school’s troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone’s editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie’s account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

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. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor

Emphasis added. Once again, let’s underscore that Rolling Stone originally published their inflammatory story with zero attempt to check with the accused men. The accused fraternity is preparing to defend itself. Meanwhile, the media give minimal scrutiny to actual rapists – if they’re Democrats.

From the comments: Left-wing feminists go full-meltdown over losing The Narrative. SooperMexican has many examples of jaw-dropping Twitter illogic from Sally Kohn, Amanda Marcotte and others.

I simply must comment on one of the examples. Amanda Marcotte said “What I don’t get is if rape apologists are so sure rapes are hoaxes, why oppose investigating them and getting out that fact?” That’s mind-blowing revisionism, Amanda. The skeptics’ point was that we SHOULD investigate the UVa rape charges, thoroughly. Left-wing feminists had abandoned the duty to investigate.

One more: Melissa McEwan tweeted “I can’t state this more emphatically: If Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue, it doesn’t validate the reasons for disbelieving her.” Melissa, I can’t state this more emphatically: Your tweet is psychotic. The reason one would believe or disbelieve Jackie is PRECISELY IF her story happens to be true or untrue. So, the reasons for disbelieving Jackie are BY DEFINITION validated, if it turns out that Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue.

Update: In today’s world of smug fake-apologies, let’s give credit when we see a genuine apology. Anna Merlan wrote, “when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave’s doubts about the story and called them ‘idiots’ for picking apart Jackie’s account, I was dead f*cking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize.” Kudos!