Good day all, time for something a little different. Yesterday a jury found that Rolling Stone magazine and journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdley had willfully and with malice defamed Nicole Eramo.
This case all started when Rolling Stone published a piece accusing a University of Virginia fraternity of raping a woman known as “Jackie” in the story. The story went viral and caused the virtual destruction of the fraternity in question, along with all sorts of accusations. In the case of Ms. Eramo, Rolling Stone basically said that she didn’t care what had happened. With that accusation in print, the world landed on Ms. Eramo. However, the story soon fell apart and it has become known that “Jackie” made the whole thing up, and that the journalist who wrote the story, Sabrina Erdley, didn’t do any of the basic work expected of a journalist. She didn’t call anyone, do any followups, nothing. Because of the damages done to Ms. Eramo, she sued both Rolling Stone and Erdley. Yesterday the jury found in favor of Ms. Eramo. Here are the details from The Washington Post:
A federal court jury decided Friday that a Rolling Stone journalist defamed a former University of Virginia associate dean in a 2014 magazine article about sexual assault on campus that included a debunked account of a fraternity gang rape.
The 10-member jury concluded that the Rolling Stone reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was responsible for defamation, with actual malice, in the case brought by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator who oversaw sexual violence cases at the time of the article’s publication. The jury also found the magazine and its parent company, Wenner Media, responsible for defaming Eramo, who has said her life’s work helping sexual assault victims was devastated as a result of Rolling Stone’s article and its aftermath.
In other words, Rolling Stone and Erdley had reason to question “Jackie’s” story, but decided it was to good to check. It took the work of other news organizations, specifically the Washington Post, as well as independent bloggers to ferret out that Jackie was either lying through her teeth, (Which she was), or was mentally delusional. (Which she may be)
The lawsuit centered on Erdely’s 9,000-word article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which appeared online in late November 2014 and on newsstands in the magazine’s December 2014 issue. Opening with a graphic depiction of a fraternity gang rape, the story caused an immediate sensation at a time of heightened awareness of campus sexual assault, going viral online and reverberating through the U-Va. community.
As I recall, members of the fraternity were threatened, and I think there was talk of expelling the members from the university. A little thing called “Due Process” wasn’t going to be bothered with. However, as mentioned, the story blew up in Rolling Stone’s and Erdely’s faces.
But within days of the article’s publication, key elements of the account fell apart under scrutiny, including the narrative’s shocking allegation of a fraternity gang rape. The magazine eventually retracted the story in April 2015, and Eramo’s lawsuit came a month later, alleging that the magazine’s portrayal of her as callous and dismissive of rape reports on campus was untrue and unfair.
Again, if I recall correctly, the description of what was alleged to have happened to Jackie was so horrific, people were wondering how she survived, never mind how long she spent in the hospital. Police came in to investigate, and that’s when things started falling apart.
Originally hailed as a brave triumph of reporting for its raw accounts of rape and attempts at bringing accountability to a storied public university, the article led to protests of the U-Va. administration, vandalism of a campus fraternity and outrage among activists trying to prevent sexual assault.
This reminds me of what happened with the three men at Duke University. A stripper accused them of gang raping her, and a corrupt distract attorney, knowing that the case was false, tried to railroad the three young men into prison for a crime that never happened. One of the accused was proven to not even be on campus, IIRC, at the time of the alleged assault. The DA lost his license and barely escaped a prison sentence. The accuser? She is now serving a sentence for murder. You would think Rolling Stone and others would remember that fiasco. They didn’t and now they are going to end up paying through the nose.
Eramo has asked for $7.5 million in damages but now, following the verdict, can argue for a different amount. The argument for damages is scheduled to begin Monday.
With the Gawker decision, which was over $100 million, (They settled recently for something like $35 million), and with the obvious malice, RS is going to to take it in the shorts. Rolling Stone released a statement after getting their heads handed to them by the jury.
In a statement after the verdict, Rolling Stone said that the magazine, for nearly 50 years, has aimed to produce journalism “with the highest reporting and ethical standards, and with a humanistic point of view,” noting that Erdely’s story attempted “to tackle the very serious and complex topic of sexual assault on college campuses.”
“In our desire to present this complicated issue from the perspective of a survivor, we overlooked reporting paths and made journalistic mistakes that we are committed to never making again,” Rolling Stone said in the statement. “We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo. It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.”
And here is the problem with that mindset. Dozens of men are being accused of rape or other sexual misconduct and the schools aren’t even bothering with any sort of actual investigations. They’re just expelling the accused with no recourse for them. Well there is one recourse and now these men being accused are now fighting back in the courts, and they are starting to win.
The whole problem of these false accusations cane be laid right at the doorstep of the Obama Justice Department and Title IX. The DOJ has threatened universities with lawsuits and loss of funds if they don’t “Deal” with so called “Massive rape culture” on their campuses. This has led to the kangaroo courts where the accused men are not allowed to have a lawyer, can’t confront their accusers or even put on a defense.
Now that the courts are starting to get involved, people are finding out that most of these accusations are false, that law enforcement was never notified and that in many cases, the accusers are lying through their teeth for political reasons. (See Social Justice Warrior). Rolling Stone’s story, and the loss in court is, hopefully, going to start people really thinking about the flood of false accusations, made up stories and the lives ruined by these frauds. I am not hopeful.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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