Rolling Stone, Journalistic Integrity, And The Fight Against Campus Rape

by Tara Culp-Ressler Posted on December 5, 2014 at 2:37 pm

Certain details of a University of Virginia student’s story of an alleged gang rape at a college frat house are coming into dispute, leading the magazine that published the account to conclude that its trust in its source was “misplaced.”

Rolling Stone’s story about a horrific assault that was allegedly perpetrated against a student identified as Jackie — her real first name — has made national headlines over the past two weeks. The controversy prompted the UVA administration to temporarily suspend all fraternity activity.

But that story has also sparked some harsh criticism, since the reporter who interviewed Jackie did not make an attempt to include the perspective of the accused. Some critics suggested that Jackie’s account of being gang raped and penetrated with a beer bottle by several members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity sounded too horrific to believe. Others didn’t make a definitive assessment about the veracity of Jackie’s story, but suggested the Rolling Stone didn’t do its due diligence to fact-check the details.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the lawyer for the Phi Kappa Psi brothers plans to rebut the accusations that Jackie made in Rolling Stone. The fraternity maintains that it did not a host a party on the night in 2012 that Jackie alleges she was raped. They also say that some identifying details about the accused that were published in the story — the fact that several of them were employed at UVA’s Aquatic Fitness Center at the time — are inaccurate.

Some of Jackie’s close friends who spoke with the Washington Post also said that some specific details of her account have changed over time. They say they believe “something traumatic happened to her,” but they have “not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days.” For instance, Jackie disclosed the name of one of her accused attackers for the first time this week, but that man has never been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

The emerging details prompted Rolling Stone, which has recently come under considerable fire from other media outlets, to issue a statement suggesting that Jackie wasn’t as reliable of a source as the magazine initially thought.

“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,” managing editor Will Dana wrote. “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.”

False rape allegations are difficult to quantify because so many sexual assault go unreported. But the best research in the field estimates that they are extremely rare. Estimates put the rate of false rape reports around 2.2 percent, and the women who file false claims often receive punishments that are far worse than the consequences for actual college rapists.

For victims of sexual assault who choose to speak out, the proverbial deck is often already stacked against them. They’re up against the societal assumption that they must just want to take down popular frat boys — a narrative solidified by the infamous Duke lacrosse case — and, on top of that, they often aren’t able to tell their stories in believable ways.

Research has found that victims of sexual assault often display erratic behavior, like expressing no emotion, mixing up the chronological order of events, or laughing at inappropriate times. Police officers often interpret that as evidence that they’re not telling the truth. But that behavior actually reflects the disjointed way that the brain processes trauma, not a carefully constructed lie.

Other aspects of Jackie’s story that some observers were skeptical about, like the fact that she says she was raped by multiple fraternity members in a premeditated attack, are not necessarily unheard of. A widely acclaimed 1990 book entitled Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus detailed the intersection between Greek life and gang rape, arguing that fraternity brothers sometimes perpetrate acts of violence together that they would never think of committing by themselves. Other gang rapes have been reported at colleges like Johns Hopkins University, William Paterson University, and Vanderbilt University, as well as among high schoolers.

According to the Washington Post, Jackie is standing by her story. She says that her account is true, although she also indicated that some of the details in the Rolling Stone article might not be accurate.

Sexual assault prevention advocates on UVA’s campus are concerned about the potential discrepancies in Jackie’s story, and particularly the fact that the unraveling of the Rolling Stone article threatens to validate the pervasive narrative that rape victims are always lying. This attitude toward women who speak out about sexual violence prevents many victims from coming forward, and ensures that sexual assault is a vastly under-reported crime.

“This feels like a betrayal of good advocacy if this is not true,” Emily Renda, a recent UVA graduate who now works as a sexual assault awareness specialist for the school, said. “We teach people to believe the victims. We know there are false reports but those are extraordinarily low.”

“While the details of this one case may have been misreported, this does not erase the somber truth this article brought to light: Rape is far more prevalent than we realize and it is often misunderstood and mishandled by peers, institutions, and society at large,” Alex Pinkleton, a survivor of assault and a close friend of Jackie’s, added.