Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?
UVA / Karen BlahaJournalists who contemplate such matters are now
wondering whether the
incredible Rolling
Stone story about the gang rape of a University of
Virginia student is just that: not credible.
Last week, I wrote that the breathtaking story was an indictment of the university's feeble attempts to address the so-called campus sexual assault crisis. For me, the lesson is clear: Rape is a serious crime, not an academic infraction. The police—and only the police—are equipped to deal with it. "The best way to confront campus rape is to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves and make violent crime the business of the normal criminal justice system," I wrote.
I didn't question the incident itself, because my point stands regardless. Making universities investigate and adjudicate rape—something that both federal and state governments are pushing—is the wrong approach, and what happened at UVA is just one example of why that's the case.
Unless, of course, it didn't happen. Then it would be an example of something else, entirely.
A recent Washington Post profile of Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the Rolling Stone story, raised some eyebrows:
Erdely spent weeks corroborating details of Jackie’s account, including such minutiae as her work as a lifeguard. She concluded: “I find her completely credible. It’s impossible to know for certain what happened in that room, because I wasn’t in it. But I certainly believe that she described an experience that was incredibly traumatic to her.”
Some elements of the story, however, are apparently too delicate for Erdely to talk about now. She won’t say, for example, whether she knows the names of Jackie’s alleged attackers or whether in her reporting she approached “Drew,” the alleged ringleader, for comment. She is bound to silence about those details, she said, by an agreement with Jackie, who “is very fearful of these men, in particular Drew. . . . She now considers herself an empty shell. So when it comes down to identifying them, she has a very hard time with that.”
The story does take one journalistic shortcut. The alleged assault, described in graphic detail, is presented largely without traditional qualifiers, such as “according to Jackie” or “allegedly.” The absence of such attribution or qualification leaves the impression that the events in question are undisputed facts, rather than accusations. Erdely said, however, that her writing style makes it clear that the events are being told from Jackie’s point of view.
I have no reason to disbelieve Erdely, and I understand why she would choose not to disclose anyone's identity. But she should be able to confirm that she knows who the attackers are, shouldn't she? Again, we don't have to know who they are, but we should know that she knows—or else the story is just one long uncorroborated accusation. And regardless of whether or not the story is told "from Jackie's point of view," it was written by Erdely, who treats its contents as fact.
Journalist Richard Bradley read the story with a respectful but skeptical eye and came away with several important questions. After fretting about whether Erdely had done her due diligence and contacted the alleged attackers, he turns to the rape itself and finds the circumstances almost unbelievable:
The allegation here is that, at U.Va., gang rape is a rite of passage for young men to become fraternity “brothers.” It’s possible. One would think that we’d have heard of this before—gang rape as a fraternity initiation is hard to keep secret—but it’s possible.
So then we have a scene that boggles the mind. (Again, doesn’t mean it’s untrue; does mean we have to be critical.)
A young woman is led young woman into a “pitch-black” room. She is shoved by a man, who falls on her; they crash through a glass table and she lands in shards of glass. She bites his hand; he punches her; the men laugh. (Really? A man punches a woman and people laugh?) With the smell of marijuana (not usually known as a violence-inducing drug) hovering over the room, he and six more men rape her. ...
Having been raped for three hours while lying in shards of glass “digging into her back”—three hours of which Jackie remembers every detail, despite the fact of the room’s pitch-blackness—she passes out and wakes up at 3 AM in an empty room.
Jackie makes her way downstairs, her red dress apparently sufficiently intact to wear; the party is still raging. Though she is blood-stained—three hours with shards of glass “digging into her back,” and gang-raped, including with a beer bottle— and must surely look deeply traumatized, no one notices her. She makes her way out a side entrance she hadn’t seen before. She calls her friends, who tell her that she doesn’t want to be known as the girl who cried rape and worry that if they take her to the hospital they won’t get invited to subsequent frat parties.
Nothing in this story is impossible; it’s important to note that. It could have happened. But to believe it beyond a doubt, without a question mark—as virtually all the people who’ve read the article seem to—requires a lot of leaps of faith. It requires you to indulge your pre-existing biases. ...
“Grab its motherfucking leg,” says the first rapist to one of his “brothers.” It reminds me of Silence of the Lambs: “It rubs the lotion on its skin…” But Silence of the Lambs was fiction.
Bradley notes that his experience editing the works of infamous fabulist Stephen Glass taught him to be extra critical of stories that confirm his pre-existing biases. And he notes that the UVA rape story seems to confirm biases that many in the media have about colleges, fraternities, and rape.
I would like to think that I am relatively free of these biases. I have no particular axe to grind with fraternities, although I do think they play a regrettable and occasionally dangerous role as alcohol distributors to the under-21 crowd, courtesy of the federal drinking age. And I don't believe sexual assault is as grave a problem at college campuses as many activists have made it out to be—if the 1-in-4 statistic were anywhere close to accurate, it would be a baffling outlier in a sea of falling rape rates.
So when I say that I was initially inclined to believe the story, it's not because I wanted or needed it to be true to fit my worldview. Rather, I assumed honesty on the part of the author and her source—not because I'm naive, but because I didn't think someone would lie about such an unbelievable story. This isn't a case of he-said / she-said; this is an extraordinary crime that indicts a dozen people and an entire university administration. Assuming a proper investigation—which the police are now conducting—confirming many of the specific details should be relatively easy. If "Jackie" is lying, there is a good chance she will be caught (and Erdely's career ruined). So I believed it.
However, some of the details do strike me as perplexing on subsequent re-reads. One issue now being raised by skeptics is the nature of her injuries, which sound as if they would have required immediate medical attention. (According to the story, everybody involved was basically rolling around in broken glass for hours.) If the frat brothers were absolute sociopaths to do this to Jackie, her friends were almost cartoonishly evil—casually dismissing her battered and bloodied state and urging her not to go to the hospital.
Universities should be divorced from the rape adjudication process, regardless of what actually happened at UVA that night. That said, I'll be following any and all developments in this case, and am eager to see this particular story either confirmed as true or exposed as a hoax.
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The story was utterly preposterous. Even more absurd than the Duke Lacrosse allegations. It really demonstrates the bubble that the mainstream media live in that they continually get duped by these outlandish stories. How do you go through four years of college, hear a story like the one reported in Rolling Stone, and not immediately think "bullshit"? A gang rape initiation ceremony at a Frat Social? Really?
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Or spending 3 hours rolling around with a women on broken glass
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You know who else liked rolling around on glass?
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That damned bird that flew into my window last week?
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Iggy Pop?
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Terry Funk?
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gg allin
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John McClane?
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Mmmm, McClane.
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Yippy-ki-yi-yay, MF!!!!
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Recently finished, very interesting book, but truly frightening read:
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How do you go through four years of college, hear a story like the one reported in Rolling Stone, and not immediately think "bullshit"?
Because college has degenerated into operant conditioning to trust authority and experts.
Rolling stone is an authority and the author is an expert, so the college grads will trust both by default.
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In a way it reminds me of the "Bug Chaser" story that I believe was a Rolling Stone article. The premise was that in the Gay community there were people who held parties SPECIFICALLY so that lots of uninfected people could have unprotected sex with HIV positive Gay men. it was widely reported. Briefly. And then I only ran into it again when I went digging.
And my thought was "Is somebody in the Gay community playing a joke on the Clueless Breeder? And I recalled the Doonsbury story that introduced the Roland Headly reporter character; where the Walden Puddle characters told him all kids of outrageous nonsense about what "college kids" were into, and he totally swallowed it
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Well, that may be so, but I still think Rainbow Parties were like totally real
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I don't care if it's true. I want to believe it.
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It seems to me to draw a parallel to the young woman in a HuffPo story who was so poor she couldn't afford to get her teeth fixed.
There are people who believe what they want, regardless of evidence. The same thing's playing out with the "hands up, don't shoot" crowd. -
As a gay male, I can say this is unfortunately very real. "Pozzing" is a surprisingly common fetish in the gay community (when I say surprising, I do not mean significant -- it is still rare but the fact that there's pornography for it means there is an audience). I've never met anyone admit to being into pozzing but I see it online more than I care for.
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It reminds me of those ridiculous Satan's Lil' Daycare child abuse stories a few decades ago. All sorts of bizarrely dramatic details that don't make any sense, and a world filled with people who are either utterly selfish or extravagantly evil just for the hell of it.
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Yup.
As for this story, when I was in college I was a member of a Greek fraternity, and we all heard stories about rapes that happened at other houses...but never more than individual circumstances with one or two perpetrators (who were quickly outed). The idea of this as some sort of initiation ceremony is wholly preposterous.
For this to be an initiation, the entire fraternity would have to be in on it...and not one person raised an objection? Every single one of them happily engaged in a felony for several hours, in a situation with that high of a probability of being caught? Not one of these alleged sociopaths, apparently unconcerned with the prospect of being caught, bragged to people about what they'd done? The victim's friends didn't care and ignored her, despite visible injuries?
Even the worst houses on campus will generally have at least a dozen good, decent people who don't get into the excesses of college. The idea that somehow a fraternity recruited that many tight-lipped sociopaths, and nobody dissented is simply impossible. It's like I tell the 9/11 "truthers"...if a conspiracy requires more than five people to keep their mouths shut, and nobody talked, it's bullshit.
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This.
I too was in a college fraternity, and keeping secrets simply wasn't that easy. My house engaged in moderate hazing, and I'd heard rumors of what my pledgeship would be like from the very beginning, and from people who had no connection to the fraternity. The rumors turned out to be both detailed and true. I can buy that three or even five people could keep something like this secret. But the idea that seventy-something people could keep an initiation requirement like this secret is very difficult to swallow.
Ditto the fact that for this to be an annual rite of passage for pledges, we have to believe that there is not a single good man out of the hundreds who have been members of this house since the alleged annual gang rape started. I was as wide-eyed and eager to fit in as anyone when I was 18 - maybe more so - but there was a limit to what I was willing to do, and rape was way beyond that limit. I sincerely doubt I was alone in that regard.
What is more, even in the 90s our chapter leadership was acutely aware that shit rolls uphill. We knew that if something went wrong at the house, the leadership would likely be held personally responsible, and even civilly or criminally liable. Pure self-interest therefore led us to put the kabosh on anything that was too risky. So if the Phi Kap leadership knew about this, they're either brain-dead morons or lack the least sense of self-preservation.
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Let's not go that far. Plenty of real stories of frat boys and various clubs/bands raping each other and killing each other, never mind women. It's not common, but we do see it a few times a year. A few boys were just raped on a sports team by other members of the team in Massachusetts.
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They desperately want to believe these types of stories because they have listened to the lie all men are pigs for 35 years. Their actual life evidence tells them this isn't true, so when manufactured evidence comes along supporting it, they jump at it.
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And reporters like Erdely are more than happy to enable them...because "men are pigs" stories sell among her customers' demographic. And she gets to pitch herself as a feminist hero.
I'm sure she was absolutely salivating at the prospect...and either lied about the fact-checking she did, or fabricated the story from whole cloth.
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Not "all men are pigs." However, your blanket accusation certainly lends evidence. How about proving the few wrong instead?
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There is an easy explanation for all of this: all those 1980's Satanic cults have disguised themselves as fraternities.
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Most of the Phi Psi dudes I knew were total a-holes. Having said that, this story is not very believable. And since when to you write something like this without getting input from the accused?
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Are they all heavily scarred? The gang rape on broken glass initiation would seem to be pretty easy to confirm.
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"since when to you write something like this without getting input from the accused?"
That would be a "He-Said/She-Said" story. Duh! Waste of time. This is a "She said" story, and your criticism of it is reflective of your patriarchal assumption of privilege and the Media's War On Women.
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“”””he punches her; the men laugh. (Really? A man punches a woman and people laugh?) “”
How do the men know that he punched her in a pitch black room?
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Duh, cuz that's what they all do.
sheesh, everyone knows that.
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Also, she was supposedly pushed through a glass table that shattered.
Glass tables have support structures usually of metal, sometimes of wood. Getting pushed through one with sufficient force to shatter the glass when necessarily involve contact with the support structure that would cause moderate to serious injury beyond the cuts from the shattered glass.
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and that glass is really heavy/tempered. The fragments would be like daggers.
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It was sugar glass for breakable props, no one was even cut
/sarc
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Exactly, if this part is true, Jackie should have at least a couple of scars on her back. Although that's probably just the patriarchy talking.
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I suspect broken glass may be one of the TRUE details. Stupid college freshman gets hammered at frat party, hooks up with someone (not her date), experiences 15 mins of unsatisfying sex, and passes out. Hours later, she wakes up nude in a pitch black room. Still somewhat drunk, she rises unsteadily from the bed, trips, and crashes through a glass-topped table, cutting herself.
Next day she relates the story to friends, expecting massive sympathy. Having seen her chugging booze & acting like a buffoon at the party, friends caution her against crying rape. She infers that their sole motivation is selfish – they want into the club! Time passes, “minor” details get exaggerated, and the level of sympathy elicited grows. Now, anyone who denies her story is a mansplaining rape apologist b/c even if it was not gang rape, even if there was no foreign object, even if no one ever called her “it,” and even if it was not an initiation ritual, she was too drunk to consent to sex. And here are photos of bloody glass cuts to prove the tale! Now do you believe? -
You can't crash through a tempered glass table because you can't crash through tempered glass. I can't be done even if you try. Why do you think they make them out of tempered glass after all?
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May have been laminated glass. Either form is rather innocuous when broken.
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In the early 90's, I knocked over a bottle & shattered a glass-topped table myself. Don't know if it was tempered glass or some other, cheaper glass. Kinda reminded me of that night when I saw this:
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Tempered glass dagger-like? That's pretty much the exact opposite of tempered glass. Tempered glass shatters into pebble-like fragments. 3 hours rolling around in it would likely leave cuts, but your flesh wouldn't be shredded. You'd probably suffer more damage from falling through the table frame.
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Check out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LirMPp1L8Useveral large shards there. Suppose it depends on how the glass was made.
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Not sure what he had there but it wasn't tempered glass. This is how tempered glass breaks:
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And note where she was hitting it - on an edge with a high impact tool. That's the only way TG can be broken. It's just not plausible to claim you can "fall through" it. OK, so it's not impossible I suppose but you can't just toss out the fall through the table claim and have it be just axiomatic that it's true.
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Not always. Expensive ones perhaps. But, one of my kids broke a glass coffee table pretty easily. The sheet of glass broke in two.
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that would cause moderate to serious injury beyond the cuts from the shattered glass.
I thought of this as well. I would expect at least heavy bruising, if not a fracture.
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This is the most problematic claim. No one is crazy enough to manufacture a table that does not use tempered glass. Tempered glass is almost impossible to break. I've goofed around trying to break tempered glass doors the cabinet shop next to me threw out by throwing 10 lb. metal scraps from my shop into it as hard as I could. They just bounced off. You can get tempered glass to break but you must hit it just right on an edge. Even then it does not shatter into daggers, it shatters into little dull granuals kind of like gravel. You likely couldn't cut yourself on them if you wanted too.
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"No one is crazy enough to manufacture a table that does not use tempered glass."
I defer to your greater expertise. For how long has this been true? What if the table was an antique? UVA is very proud to be an 'old school.'
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My experience is that tables that have just glass for tops are made out of heavy glass that stands up to abuse. Coffee tables and end tables where the glass sits in a wood (particle board with plastic veneer) frame tend to have cheap, thin, very breakable glass.
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When my kids were small one of them broke a glass section in a coffee table I owned. It was done pretty easily too. He just dropped something on it and it broke in two large jagged pieces.
Maybe now they use tempered glass. But, I think you might be surprised that cheaper tables would just use thick glass.
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That's my impression too, Pulseguy, but I'm no expert.
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This was in a frat house. Could be a cheap table, or a home-made table, or one where the original glass was stolen and the stupid frat boys just put a sheet of window glass in its place. Of course, it's likely that much of the story is b.s.
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all were wearing NVGs obviously...and ninja suits
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I've been skeptical of the story ever since I heard about it. There just seemed to be too many fantastic details to believe. While I can believe you might find one advanced level sociopath in a large college fraternity chapter, there's no way I can believe that there are six of them who apparently decided it would be fun to carry out their rape in a pitch dark room on broken glass. Then of course you have the girl's friends, who apparently are also a collection of unfeeling sociopaths who care less about her injuries than getting invited back to future parties, as if there aren't dozens of other fraternities that throw parties on the UVA campus. And why in the world would any girl want to go back to parties where she might be gang raped?
To be honest, the whole thing reads like something you'd find on a second rate erotic fiction website. What kills me is that it's being taken as the gospel truth by so many, despite the outrageous claims and absolute lack of a shred of evidence other than the story.
I was a fraternity man myself and proud of my time there. I learned a lot, had a great time, and met a great many friends. We had parties at least once a week. I never heard anyone even imply that rape, or even taking advantage of a girl who was obviously completely wasted, was okay. But I heard from people who never came to or got invited to our parties that they knew the kinds of things we did. The conception that seems to be out there of fraternity men is fiction.
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I'm a former frat guy too. I second all of this.
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Thirded.
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To this day, I don't understand why anyone would join a fraternity. Thats before you even get around to the details of the process of pledging.
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Different strokes for different folks. That's all it is.
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SOme like their strokes harder than others.
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Exactly. I used to party back in the day with the Frat guys across the street. The organization wasn't for me and they didn't much care for us long-haired hippies either. But we both saw something in each other to admire and didn't let it get in the way of the fun. Times change and apparently not for the best.
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I don't either. But I went to a college that wasn't very frat oriented. Some places I think you almost need to join a frat to get decent upper class housing on campus.
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It's really useful if you're going to a school far away and you're not a social butterfly. Another reason is if you want to party hard all semester and still get passable grades due to all the academic support.
I didn't join because a significant portion of my high school class went to the same college, and I hated frat parties. The sound of my shoes sticking to the floor whole being crammed between 50 people still haunts my dreams.
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The instances of Van Wilder style pledging are not the norm, having talked to several in the fraternity community at my school. It certainly was not allowed at my chapter.
And why did I join? I had never made strong friendships in life, and thought this might be a great opportunity to do so. It was the best decision I ever made in school, and easily the only reason I was able to graduate was the support of my brothers.
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Yup, same here. I learned so much from the people I was in a fraternity with...some of whom I lost touch with, some of whom are just like brothers to me today. It was a good experience.
We did have hazing back in my day, but it was generally ridiculously silly stuff and we didn't intentionally put people at risk. It had about as much in common with "Animal House" as "Down Periscope" had in common with the actual Navy.
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But I heard from people who never came to or got invited to our parties that they knew the kinds of things we did.
I used to be part of the local music scene - one couple had weekly parties at their house. Lots of drinking... some drunken makeout. And maybe someone had (consensual) sex once in the bathroom.
But the stories about these parties - for those who never had been there - became legendary. Orgies of epic proportions... nudity... sex... I wish!
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"gang rape is a rite of passage"
I would be skeptical if this was written about the Golden Horde. About a 21st Century College Frat, nope.
Sounds like we are headed for another Duke Lacrosse. I wonder if this was because somebody had a grudge or just wanted to take frat guys down a few pegs.
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I doubt this makes it as far as Lacrosse. It sounds as though either the truth is drummed out during the police investigation, or the journalist is discovered to have wildly embellished the story.
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Yeah, the prosecutor probably will look at what happened to the Duke lacrosse prosecutor and say "I'm going to need a bit more evidence than hearsay before I put my career on the line."
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Prosecutors have immunity even more than cops do. I really doubt that the Duke prosecutor suffered any consequences worse than non-reelection.
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Nifong won election after bringing the charges, then later was removed from office and disbarred. He spent one day in jail for contempt and later filed bankruptcy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong
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Actually, Mike Nifong got brought up on ethics charges, got disbarred, got sued, and went bankrupt. He's about as persona non grata with the lawyers of North Carolina as any human being could get.
It's something that should happen more often, but unfortunately he's the exception.
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Now we need him brought up on false rape charges too...divine retribution
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Also, the governor of North Carolina got a law passed allowing him to remove from office any D.A. or judge who was disbarred...as a direct reaction to Nifong.
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Those closest to the Duke Lacrosse investigation immediately after the allegations were made quickly realized nothing had happened, rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong just ignored their conclusions.
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He also fabricated evidence and conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence.
It wasn't just a matter of cherry-picking what he wanted to hear...he actually faked the evidence on which the trial was based. That's why the state later came out and said the lacrosse players were "innocent", not that they were merely dropping charges.
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Yeah, the author of the piece is a bad fiction writer. Doing this for the greater good.
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Indeed. If it is a "rite of passage" then it is something they do to all new members. Are we really supposed to believe that this frat has a perfect record of selecting sociopaths for membership?
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And a perfect record of choosing compliant victims who never tell the police or any shotgun owning family members.
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And not a single potential pledge who has been told he had to gang-rape someone to get into the frat went to the police, ever.
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It worked, didn't it? Didn't all fraternities get suspended at UVA?
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For a semester.
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As a former frat boy myself, I can assure you that unless things have changed radically, so that frat boys are now pipe-hittin' OG bangers, this didn't happen. No way, no how.
Even if you had a few of the bros who had her pull a train, this level of violence and abuse would simply not happen in a frat, and even if it somehow did, you couldn't keep everybody from running their pieholes about it all over campus.
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That was the most ludicrous part of the story...that a group of college age sociopaths so unconcerned with getting caught during a rape wouldn't brag about it to someone later.
Not a shred of corroborated evidence, beyond the alleged victim's story...assuming the alleged victim isn't just a fabrication.
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While I can believe you might find one advanced level sociopath in a large college fraternity chapter, there's no way I can believe that there are six of them who apparently decided it would be fun to carry out their rape in a pitch dark room on broken glass.
The more I see/here about the story the more hallmarks of a conspiracy it seems to bear; while there were facts, rather than document them, they were left to be reclaimed by entropy. The remainder of the story has been inflated beyond sensibility.
Not only is there one advanced-level rapist, there are six. Not only are there six, there are six with regular turnover. Not only are there six and a regular right of passage and turnover, they're so advanced-level, practiced, and methodical that they regularly let their victims go. Not only do they regularly let their victims go, apparently the victims of their regular rites of passage have a whole host of douchebag friends, family members, and staff who really want to get in on the parties this frat is/these frats are hosting.
The story, as is, cannot be 100% true. Either there is a basement full of dead bodies and the overwhelming majority is in on the secret or there's falsehood to be extricated.
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“Grab its motherfucking leg”
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it puts the lotion in the basket!!!
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This is what I would expect a female to imagine about rape: they treated me like an inhuman piece of garbage, like an "it."
But I suspect rapists and gang rapists in particular are very, very clear in their mind that the victim is a she.
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"This is what I would expect a female to imagine about rape: they treated me like an inhuman piece of garbage, like an "it.""
This is what I would an expect a doctrinaire feminist to imagine about rape. Objectification! Objectification!
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I can hear the harpies condemning this write up now. "No one would EVER falsify a rape claim."
The part about the glass is particularly interesting. I ripped my left calf open on rusted barbed wire, hopping a fence to get to a house party. I was an absolute bloody mess. And despite the level of inebriation at the party, everyone wanted to know if I was ok and if they could help. There's no way a person could be "raped for hours on top of broken glass" and not have one single person ask about the mess that your body would resemble.
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I know, there were several times when either myself or another brother (or even a pledge!) were helped by people at our parties because we seemed to be in trouble.
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I was the designated "run interference" guy. No matter how tore up I was, I always maintained a level head. Escorting pukers, bouncing assholes out the door, talking down the cops, etc. Not once did we ever have a rape or sexual assault complaint. Maybe it was our company of females but they wouldn't hesitate to bounce your head off the pavement if you got inappropriate with them.
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As far as the girls go I just can't imagine a situation, based on the girls I know/knew, where the friends (at least one of them) didn't absolutely freak out when "Jackie" disappeared for several hours and then turned up later in what would have to have been a bloody and battered state.
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Bingo. If the story is true, UVA is full of sociopaths across the board.
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I would actually believe this, but still, they'd be concerned about the public image.
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And, what hot girl is ever worried about not getting invited to a party? As if the girls would have been concerned that the frat parties wouldn't let them in if one of their group complained. No guy party ever says a group of girls can't come in to the party.
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And there's no fraternity that throws parties so amazing that women would knowingly ignore the possibility of gang rape not to attend.
The story not only paints UVA as having an extraordinary number of sociopaths, but an unbelievable number of stupid women without any sense of self-preservation. I can't think of even one female I know who would ignore a credible story (with evidence) about a friend getting raped.
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but EVERYONE knows that UVA is where all the sociopaths and psychopaths want to go to college..its a self selecting thing.
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Wouldn't there be a line of guys with bloody hands and knees walking out of there too?
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The knees of the patriarchy do not bleed.
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@Drake
Ding! Ding! Ding!
@Scruffy Nerfherder
Heh... Hard to be on my knees when my privilege keeps me on my feet ;)
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Obviously they had some kind of protective pads. JUST LIKE LACROSSE PLAYERS WEAR!
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You would think they would have moved to a spot where there was no glass.
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Silence of the lambs was fiction?
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It's a cookbook!
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my best friend's step-mother makes $80 /hr on the computer . She has been without work for seven months but last month her pay was $15172 just working on the computer for a few hours. check this link right here now....
➜➜➜➜➜ www.netjob70.com
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Related - Canadian women now have a site to make anonymous rape allegations against men. Effectively destroying their careers and lives without any hint of evidence - or repercussions for false claims.
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Good God
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When I was in college, I was accused of all sorts of untrue and horrible things by a young woman I had been boinking. I wasn't accused of rape, but it made me look very bad in the eyes of my colleagues at the radio station we both worked at.
We had a decent fuck-buddy relationship and when I took up a serious relationship with someone else, she did't take it well. She was Grade A, bat-shit crazy, which didn't become obvious until after breaking up. A fucking loon who knew how to make herself look sympathetic, especially when she screams the awful accusations in a crowded hallway, manically sobbing about the atrocities committed against her.
She eventually lost her shit on the air, babbling incoherently, and unprovoked, physically attacked the girlfriend of the station manager, also a former fuck-buddy of hers.
That was pretty much all it took for her accusations to unravel.
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Sounds like someone stuck it in crazy
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Didn't I just say that?
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Nothing is more fun - for a little while.
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This wise tutorial seems appropriate.
You should check this out.
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Sounds like my ex-wife!
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"That was pretty much all it took for her accusations to unravel."
When she attacked a *woman*, her accusations unraveled.
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Hate to say this, but does anyone have a non-Roosh source for this? Treat him like I treat Jezebel; won't go anywhere near his stories unless I hear it from a reliable source.
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I suspect Jackie doesn't even exist.
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Yup. And then we get to find out just how little the editors at Rolling Stone actually pay attention to what their journalists get up to.
Good...that fucking rag has needed to be taken down by a major scandal for a long time.
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I called it in the last thread here:
http://reason.com/blog/2014/11.....us-blame-iThe story struck me as a likely fabrication immediately. It reads like the plot of a cheap TV movie. In fact, I believe I have seen that exact movie. Although in that case it was a bunch of frat brothers raping an unconscious girl who passed out in an upstairs room.
What this person is alleging is that the rape was premeditated, and that the "Drew" character deliberately pretended to be her boyfriend in order to lure her to the gang rape.
What are the chances that a bunch of SOBER frat boys are going to pre-plan a gang rape, knowing that anyone could turn them in an ruin their life, and intend to carry out this attack in the middle of a party where hundreds of people are available as witnesses?
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It reads like the plot of a
cheap TVLifetime movie.FTFY
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The only problem is that the made-for-tv movie was based upon an actual event.
http://articles.orlandosentine.....thers-pike
But also notice that, in this event there was an actual police investigation, and people were convicted.
That said, I too found this recent story less than credible.
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The actual event also involved (a) a woman who got extremely drunk and passed out in an upstairs bedroom in a frat house, and (b) a bunch of drunk guys who had a drunk unconscious woman in a private room in their house.
THIS story involves premeditation, which means that the guys were sober when they thought it up, and the girl was a conscious victim they deliberately lured into the upstairs bedroom.
A bunch of drunk guys spontaneously raping a drunk girl is believable. A bunch of sober guys planning the deliberate gang-rape of a woman they intend to lure into a trap is a bit of a stretch.
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I'm with Robby on this. But I remember the local Charlottesville station reporting when this first came out that the author of the piece specifically was looking at prestigious universities for a story like this because she wanted to make an impact. So it sounds like she went searching for the right type of story at the right type of school. Given that, bias in the reporting is a real possibility.
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Ah, but if you read the article closely, it is not just a prestigious university she wanted - it is a *state* university. And why? Governments will react a lot more strongly to something amiss happening with tax dollars.
She openly lauds Harvard, Yale, and Columbia for their progressive organizations to combat 'oppression'. Then jumps on a state school for only doing a "Take Back The Night" walk. The inference is clear: Ivy League equals utopia, state school equals Gomorrah.
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Stodgers: Governments will react a lot more strongly to something amiss happening with tax dollars.
I'm not arguing the intent of your point, but the sentence standing by itself made me laugh.
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LOL. Touche. ;)
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It's also worth remembering events like the racism related hoax(es) at Oberlin. Some SJW type had created the racist graffiti herself, to fire up racial awareness on campus. There is an increasing percentage of students and faculty at these places who would support completely making this story up if the ends justified the means ... i.e. the end of those evil frats.
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You know who else secretly organized violence as a pretense for getting rid of an organization he didn't like?
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Guy Fawkes?
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Paul Atreides?
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Palpatine?
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Gary Bettman?
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Julius Caesar?
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J. Edgar?
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George Washington?
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The Salmon Fishing in the Yemen guy in Angels & Demons?
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Hey, quit trying to incite Godwin's Law! ;)
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You must be new here...
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Why doubt the story? O ye of little faith. If the absence of verifiable facts is a stumbling block to you, you are not yet enlightened. The story is the moral equivalent of the truth. It's even better than the truth, because to believe without evidence is a fulfilling and spiritual reality. Let's not disparage the journalist. Ironic objectivity in the service of faith in a higher truth is a valuable talent. Surely, a Duranty Pulitzer to Ms Erdely.
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Well, if a person can win a Nobel Peace Prize simply for getting elected, why not?
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My bet is that "Jackie's" boyfriend "Drew" broke up with her at the party, possibly in a publicly humiliating way, and she made up the story to get revenge on him.
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I've been thinking "Jackie" doesn't exist and the whole story is a figment of the writers imagination.
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Or, when pressed hard enough, the writer will confess that "Jackie" is a composit,... like Obama's girlfriend.
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I've been waiting for several years for a reasonable explanation as to why schools should have anything to do with rape accusations other than to contact the local police department for investigation. Still haven't heard one.
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You sound old, white, and patriarchical
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and male and heteronormative.
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And above all, PRIVILEGED!
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not to mention gluten free, fair trade and non-GMO
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I don't have a problem with a school (or any organization) doing some independent fact finding in parallel with a police investigation if they feel its necessary to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to continue to associate with an individual that may have doing something awful, regardless of the criminality of that act.
The problem comes in trying to force colleges and universities to act as extra-judicial investigators and judges, especially while using an extremely low standard of evidence.
The reason they are being forced to do so is because some extremists decided that presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, two of the pillars of one of the most enlightened justice systems in human history, are just too damn inconvenient when trying to prosecute rape and sexual assault. So they are trying to do an end around the justice system.
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I don't have a problem with a school (or any organization) doing some independent fact finding in parallel with a police investigation if they feel its necessary to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to continue to associate with an individual that may have doing something awful, regardless of the criminality of that act.
I do have a problem with it because it could interfere with an investigation by law enforcement.That written, the reports from such investigations should be made available to the university in question.
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The universities are being "forced" to do in the same sense that a psycho cop is "forced" to taze jaywalkers to death.
University faculty and the federal government are both filled with people living out social justice vigilante fantasies. They're colluding to create a pretend court system that always delivers the "right" verdict.
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Look at how Graham Spanier and company handled the accusations against Jerry Sandusky. They concluded that there was nothing more to see, move along now. they have master's degrees and Phds. who is the common man to question their judgment?
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I believe the answer to your question is that if campus police investigate, it's easier to keep details and related stats under wraps.
No college wants prospective applicants to be able to quickly discover how many burglaries, muggings etc. happen on their campuses. Bad for business.
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I'll say "hoax".
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It is almost certainly a partial hoax, however if it were a complete fabrication it would be too easy for UVa to shred the story by releasing evidence that they have no record of the conversations that "jackie" had with the dean of sexual misconduct.
That said the question is whether Jackie made up all or parts of the story and the reporter accepted them unquestioningly, they worked together to embellish the story, or the reporter embellished "Jackie"'s story on her own.
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I'm going with this interpretation.
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Wait. There is a "Dean of Sexual Misconduct?" That sounds like one of Ozzie's shittier nicknames.
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The story does take one journalistic shortcut. The alleged assault, described in graphic detail, is presented largely without traditional qualifiers, such as “according to Jackie” or “allegedly.” The absence of such attribution or qualification leaves the impression that the events in question are undisputed facts, rather than accusations. Erdely said, however, that her writing style makes it clear that the events are being told from Jackie’s point of view.
Which is "fiction".
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I have no reason to disbelieve Erdely, and I understand why she would choose not to disclose anyone's identity.
Those pesky libel laws, for instance.
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Exactly!
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Even if you don't name names, libel can apply. The alleged rapist is quite identifiable in this article based on job, fraternity and class year.
If the writer made no attempt to contact him for his side, she just opened RS up to a huge lawsuit.
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Universities should be divorced from the rape adjudication process
why?when Graham Spanier and company heard that Jerry Sandusky raped some young boys in the Penn State showers, they took a look and concluded nothing more to see, move along now. If Spanier and company were over their heads in doing that, the Coe Office of civil Rights would not require universities to do what Spanier and company did.
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Even more reason to keep the university out. Maybe they want to protect their own, and investigate one of their own, thereby saying the evidence proves he is innocent, but when investigated by a detective, finds that the evidence points to guilt. These sorts of things open up all kinds of doors for conflicts of interest. In most if not all of the cases presented, the goal of universities investigating cases or rape has not been to discover if the alleged is guilty, but to present an image to the world about what they are doing. If showing that an innocent man is innocent means that people will think they are soft on rape, then they will expel him because they want to keep their reputation of working against rape, even if they have to ruin innocent lives in the process. And for a similar reason, having a teacher be the rapist is much worse, and so they would work to prove he is innocent, even if he wasn't because a student is responsible for their actions while the school is responsible for the teacher's actions.
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I have no doubt that this is completely unsubstantiated bullshit. Was listening to NPR two weeks ago and a caller posed this very question the writer did zero due diligence.
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My theory, for whatever its, worth. Jackie was raped by Drew and Drew only, told administration who more/less ignored her over and over. She gets in touch with reporter, "I was raped, how can I make the school pay attention?" And here we are.
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Or "Jackie" is crazier than a shit house rat and made it all up. Or the writer couldn't find the story she wanted and made it up herself.
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Or "Jackie" is an SJW and wanted to "score a victory against the fratboy patriarchy".
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Except once you've concluded that everything is made up except the initial crime, there's no good reason to believe in the initial crime either. Lots of reasons not to, in fact.
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Having been ignored by the administration why did she not go to the police or county sheriff?
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The entire "rape scare" is nothing but the Left using rape to make war on our justice system and due process protections. The fundamental premise of our criminal legal system is the right to confront your accuser and to hear the evidence against you in open court. We don't have Star Chambers in this country and we don't secret trials, not even for terrorism cases. Terrorists captured in this country are still tried in open court.
This means that unless someone is willing to testify under oath in open court, the event effectively didn't happen as far as the law is concerned. We are talking about a serious crime here. If this women is not willing to testify under oath about it, then it didn't happen and her story should not be printed, period.
The point, here, however is not rape. The point is to get people used to the idea that you can convict someone of a crime without testifying against them in open court. This thing is nothing but sticking a crowbar in that little crack they created in the child sex abuse cases. See, it is just mean to expect a child to testify in front of his abuser, so we can make an exception to the confrontation clause for that. Well, it is just mean to expect a top shelf white girl to even testify under oath and we can't let a rapist off, can we?
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Rape is not the only scare the Leftist leadership is peddling. They are also peddling the "knockout game" scare.
The left also claims that America is a deeply racist country, and that the very system is racist. Would not undermining due process protections give all the racists running our justice system even more tools to oppress minorities?
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The leftist leadership is peddling the knockout game? They'd like to pretend it doesn't exist.
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Oh come now, it's not like every man is a potential rapist.
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Yes, all men are potential rapists. All women too. It's not an interesting observation. We are all also potential murderers, thieves and fraudsters. People have remarkable potential that is very rarely fully fulfilled and that is a good thing.
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Yes, John, it's all a secret plot by a cabal of evil leftists to undermine the principle of due process. Because they all secretly WANT to set up a Stalinist regime, and not the Utopia built out of Unicorn Farts.
Seriously, John, I hate leftists with the first of a thousands suns, but even I am not that paranoid.
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The facts are what they are. This is what is happening. If you want to believe leftists are well meaning but just too stupid to understand what they are doing, good for you. I can't say you are wrong. What I can say, however, is that since the results are exactly the same in either case, it doesn't matter if they are malicious or stupid.
It is a slippery slope and leftists are doing everything they can to push us down it. Sorry but "leftists are not that bad and don't mean to" is a pretty pathetic excuse and explanation.
Due process matters. And no exception to it ever remains an exception. It just keeps expanding.
I am not paranoid, I just understand how these things work and you don't.
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If it quacks like a duck . . .
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...Then it's rape?
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Does no one think that some gender studies SJW agitator isn't a little bit excited about getting a extra-judicial weapon they can use whenever they want?
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Hazel--If the DoEd's deliberate effort to reduce the legal protections for men accused of rape or sexual assault on campus, and the absurd affirmative consent laws, aren't enough evidence for you, I'd be curious what is.
It's all about power and control over their perceived enemies. It always is.
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Paranoia isn't required. Good people often do horrible things with perfectly honest intentions. Most Russians honestly believed they were working toward a of Stalinist Utopia, but they still ended up with starvation, gulags, and the KGB.
Why this batch of fools is stealing a student's due-process rights isn't important. The very act of doing so is evil.
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With all due respect Hazel, didn't you run across Ezra Klein's "Sure affirmative consent violates people's rights, but rape is so awful it's okay" comments? Do you think he's somehow an outlier on the left? Whatever their motives (I can't ever genuinely know), John's model does carry a lot of explanatory value.
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I really don't think they are motivated by a desire to institutate a state that has show trials. They are misguided, but they aren't plotting to rid the entire criminal justice system of due process protection.
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Hmmm, we could say they don't want the immediate end state of Stalinist show trials, but their steps down the trail could lead to such a system emerging, and they are not aware of that or don't worry enough about it. (Mainly because they think they will be a protected class in such a system. Just like all those old school communists did until Stalin put them on trial.)
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"Yes, John, it's all a secret plot by a cabal of evil leftists to undermine the principle of due process."
Who says it's a secret? At best it's an "open" secret that the left not only condones lying, but lauds lying for The Cause.
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I don't get how the left can square affording the ununiformed "suspected" terrorists captured on the "battlefield" with more rights than they are giving US citizens.
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Because they sympathize with the terrorists and don't with American citizens. The terrorists are at most a distraction from the real war they are waging on the undesirable classes of American society.
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They think that they are giving the rape victims more rights, so on balance taking rights from the accused isn't so bad. Another problem with the idea of positive rights.
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Another problem with the idea of positive rights.
just looked up positive rights, how the fuck is that even considered viable philosophy outside the sphere of academia, given the nature of humans?
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I don't know. I think people just observe that it would be good if everyone had health insurance or free food or whatever and just conclude from that that it must be a right. Many are at least honest enough to admit that they don't really believe in natural rights at all. So what they really mean by rights are politically granted entitlements and privileges.
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To be fair, they are not talking about convicting these guys of rape and putting them in prison.
They just want them expelled from college.
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That doesn't clue you in to the dishonesty? Would you say college expulsion is a suitable punishment for rape?
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No. The point is they want a lower standard of evidence for college expulsions than for criminal rape charges. Nobody is saying don't have criminal charges.
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And if the person arguing for expulsion is not pursuing criminal charges, that doesn't tell you anything? Seriously?
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No. The point is they want a lower standard of evidence for college expulsions than for criminal rape charges. Nobody is saying don't have criminal charges.
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They may not be talking about a criminal conviction, but they are calling it rape, which is a criminal offense.
It appears that "rape" has been re-defined to include any boorish, sexually promiscuous behavior that a woman regrets later on.
However, the UVA gang rape, if it were true, would have been a serious crime.
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That's how progressives work: change the definitions while nobody is paying (enough) attention, and then, while grabbing for more power and influence, scream slurs at anyone who dissents.
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Today
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Because they want power over US citizens, not terrorists.
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"This means that unless someone is willing to testify under oath in open court, the event effectively didn't happen as far as the law is concerned."
I think you're being a bit romantic about our justice system. The most common outcome of a criminal proceeding - a plea-bargain - doesn't entail a confrontation in open court to test the truthfulness of witnesses. Maybe the accuser will make a victim-impact statement, but it will be based on the assumption she's telling the truth.
And people do plea-bargains for reasons other than "you got me bang to rights, copper!" Sometimes it's to avoid the expense of a trial and to avoid the risk of a false conviction and a harsher sentence.
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You know what happens in a plea bargain? The defendent testifies under oath what happened and if the judge believes him, the judge finds him guilty. Moreover, no one plea bargains without the threat of someone testifying in open court against them. You generally are not very successful getting defendants to plead guilty when you don't have any witnesses or evidence against them.
But hey, maybe you and Hazel can work together to end that requirement. If so, you will see a lot more plea bargains. That shouldn't bother you since you apparently beleive prosecutors don't need evidence to get them nos.
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"You generally are not very successful getting defendants to plead guilty when you don't have any witnesses or evidence against them."
You might want to look again to find where I said that, because I don't think I did.
But I will correct my misinterpretation of *your* remark - I missed the term "willing" in "willing to testify under oath in open court." So I thought you meant there *had* to be such testimony. My bad.
But a plea-bargain is still basically a coerced confession. The witnesses aren't tested before a jury.
Comparison between plea-bargaining and torture:
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No. There doesn't have to be such testimony.
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And you didn't say there had to - I made a mistake.
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I feel that I violated some Internet Code of Conduct by using the m-word.
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I can tell you about a plea colloquy I saw in a federal court. It was a bunch of yes/no questions to which the defendant was supposed to say yet. The charge was robbery of goods which had moved in interstate commerce or some such.
So it was like: "Did you rob the store?" "Yes." "Had the items you stole previously moved in interstate commerce?" "Yes."
And then I suppose he got rewarded by a more lenient sentence.
I'm not sure how he knew that the stuff had moved in IC, his lawyer probably told him he'd have to confess it to get whatever deal they'd negotiated. I'm sure he would have said the good were imported from Siberia if that was part of the deal.
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This is an interesting article.
I'd be interested on the author's take on mandatory Form 1040 confession that taxpayers are mandated to make each year.
Seriously, the conventional understanding of government - judicial, legislative, and executive - is colossal myth that whitewashes an enormous scam.
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Special courts are a similar extension. First Drug Courts, now Veterans Courts. What will be the next one? It's a way to subdivide the justice system into different processes based on the accused.
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I think that in the case of rape anyway, a lot of the people who support the new standards are genuinely sympathetic to victims and don't have some broad agenda about the justice system. They are wrong to want to erode due process rights and standards of evidence.
But it can be incredibly frustrating pressing charges on someone for rape. Especially when it comes down to one person's word against another. Now, of course the usual standards of proof and due process must be observed. The alternative is much worse. But I think that they sympathy for the accusers in a lot of rape cases is quite understandable. -
It is frustrating to prove murder cases. There are hundreds of murder cases that go unsolved every year. Should we reduce due process in those cases too?
The people you speak of Zeb are morons or people who have lost the capacity to reason because of their desire for revenge. In other words, they are just the types of people courts are supposed to protect society from.
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Well, I hope I have made it clear that we should not reduce due process in any cases. Of course not. I'm just saying that the emotional reaction is very understandable. It's still wrong and shouldn't be indulged.
And the frustration I am talking about is that of the accuser, not the prosecution. It's their job, they are supposed to be frustrated. The big difference with murder is that murder victims are dead and have no part in making the case against the accused killer. Yes, of course lots of crimes of all sorts go unsolved. But a lot of rapes go unreported because the victim doesn't want to deal with the whole thing and often doesn't have a lot of confidence that their attacker will be convicted. A lot of people see that and give in to the impulse to do something.
The point is that it is a poorly thought out emotional reaction and that a lot of people who support new rules/standards are not doing it because they are on a mission to destroy due process.
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The point is that it is a poorly thought out emotional reaction and that a lot of people who support new rules/standards are not doing it because they are on a mission to destroy due process.
First, there are living victims of murder, the family and friends of the victim. They want justice just as much as any rape victim. Second, protecting against raw emotional reactions demanding easy and quick justice is why we have due process in the first place. Once the courts give into it on rape, they will inevitably give into it on every other serious crime. Why are rape victims more important than the families of murder victims or the victims of theft or any other crime? They are not.
Maybe they don't have a plan. It doesn't matter if they do, since giving into their appeals will produce the same results if they had had a plan.
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Yes, of course there are surviving victims of murder, as you say. But in general, they are not the sole witness to the crime or necessarily central to the investigation and trial.
It does matter whether they are on a mission to destroy due process or are just overly emotional in their reactions. The latter you can convince of the value of due process and rights of the accused. Even on the left, lots of people do understand the value of due process, free speech even for people you don't like, etc.
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Why would you think that Zeb? And more importantly, why would it matter? Once you tell them their crime is special, then every other victim is going to want the same thing. All you are saying is "yeah but these victims think they are special and will not want that for other victims". On rainbow puppy island maybe. In the real world they are likely to empathize with the other victims and demand they get the same treatment.
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Why would I think what?
If it is that I think intentions matter, I explained why that matters. People who are just letting emotion get the better of their reason can be reasoned with, while people determined to undermine essential due process rights can't. I think that is pretty important. I think people will often come around on such issues. Even if it takes another emotionally based argument like "what if your son were accused of rape?".
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John is having a poorly thought out emotional reaction right now.
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No Hazel. There is nothing emotional about this. What is going on here is that you can't seem to grasp both why we have due process protections and what forces will destroy them if allowed to.
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As far as I am aware, noone is pushing to erode due process for actual criminal rape trials. We're talking about whether a guy gets expelled from college, not whether he gets put in prison, to put things in perspective.
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Okay, Hazel, they only want to ruin people's lives, not throw them in jail. That makes it so much better. Moreover, after start calling people rapists and throwing them out of their jobs and schools, don't you think people might be more willing to go ahead and throw them in prison under a lower standard? Also, if they can kick you out of school and mark you as a rapist for life, your due process protections in court are pretty cold comfort aren't they/
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John, I didn't say I think they are right. I'm just pointing out, before people start hyperventilating a bit much, that the dispute is over what standards colleges should use to expell students for rape accusations.
JFTR, I think they should still have presumption of innocence and due process.
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They you are are not saying anything except that you don't think this matters. Well, I think you are wrong in that. This matters because the stakes can be high even if it doesn't involve jail and once you say it is okay to assume those accused of certain crimes are guilty until proven innocent in this context, it quickly will move to others.
You refuse to believe that this issue could have larger consequences or be a stepping stone towards a larger goal. And you are just naive and wrong about that. Right now the feminists can't get rid of due process for rape in criminal courts. So they are going after colleges and the military and trying to change the standards there and then use that example to change it everywhere.
You refuse to see that because you apparently think they would never do such a thing. You are wrong.
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Some people are. Maybe not in this case. But there are certainly people who would like to deny the accused in rape cases the right to confront the accuser, for example. And then there are the new laws about standards for consent.
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The affirmative consent laws apply to college disciplinary proceedings, not criminal rape charges.
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Is that so? Well that is good.
You do encounter people (well I do) who would like to shield rape victims from being confronted by their alleged attackers in a trial, though. So there is that.
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There are no "affirmative consent laws."
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When you make it easy to press charges against rapists in some non-judicial setting, with the punishment being mere expulsion, you will get many, many more false positive cases.
Women who broke up with a guy and feel they'd be happier if they never had to see him on campus, for example. It will be easier for her to construe some sort of quasi rape in her mind in order to do this, and he's not really being "punished" too badly, so its not a big deal.
Also, expect stalker women to use this, as well.
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It's more of the mentality that you are guilty until proven innocent, and even them, you just got away with it. Believe me. I've argued with people over many cases, in a wide range of topics such as murder cases or rape cases. I admit, I see a lot of my younger 14-16 yr old self in their arguments. Over the years, I've gotten more cynical of the justice system, but I also learned not to just assume guilt either. And that is what I see a lot of people doing.
So it goes like this:
Person A is accused of raping Person B.
Debater A says that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Debater B says the opposite.
Debater A asks what if Person A is indeed proven innocent. Debater B thinks that justice would be served even if Person A was innocent and was instead convicted. They usually have a limit to how many innocent people it would take to not be worth convicting/killing a guilty person, but I've gotten responses as high as 100, but the average response I've gotten was around 10.Even my younger, more immature self would have thought that 10 innocent people being convicted/dying to convict/kill a guilty person. Now, I'd say that no amount of innocent bloodshed or conviction is worth it for a guilty. A weapon should only be as blunt as it takes to get as many guilty people as possible, and when it hurts innocent people, it means that it is too blunt.
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Another trend I see is that some of these people excuse convicting/killing innocent people, because they assume that they would probably go on to commit a crime anyway. Their reasoning is that a completely innocent person wouldn't even be accused and that if you are accused and supposedly proven innocent, it wasn't because you were truly innocent, but just got away with it, and even if you "didn't really do it", you must have been close to doing it, or were planning to.
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And the whole thing is a fucking joke. She won't go to the police because she is afraid of her attackers? Give me a fucking break. Since when are Frat boys like the mafia and murder the witnesses to their crimes? I am sure Drew is going to risk getting the death penalty in Virginia by murdering a victim to his crimes. It is just fucking idiotic.
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Fear isn't always rational.
Confirmation bias works both ways. The SJW crowd will latch onto the aspects of the story that confirm their biases and run with them. But the Reason commentariat is doing the same thing. Scepticism is good, especially when someone's life can be ruined over a false accusation. But saying "I don't know anyone who would do that, so this is idiotic" is, well, idiotic.
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Well, I don't know anyone who would rape someone in a pile of broken glass.
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All your telling me is "it might be true". Big fucking deal. A lot of things might be true. Indeed, many unbelievable things actually happen. The question is should we believe this "unbelievable" thing on the basis of a single magazine article and the word of a journalist who wrote it and nothing else.
What you fail to understand here is that the issue is not that the story is impossible. It is that the more implausible it sounds, the more proof is required for it to be believable. In this case, the story is utterly implausible and is presented with very little actual proof. That means it should be dismissed as fabricated bullshit until more proof is presented.
That is not confirmation bias. That is understanding the relationship between truth and proof.
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In this case, the story is utterly implausible and is presented with very little actual proof. That means it should be dismissed as fabricated bullshit until more proof is presented.
All I am pointing out is that you are deciding that it is "utterly implausible" because it doesn't comport with your experience or the way you think people act. OK, sometimes that might be appropriate, but this isn't a case of someone claiming they saw a dinosaur or talked with a ghost. That someone who was violently raped would act irrationally afterwards is not at all implausible.
Also, a lack of proof at this time doesn't mean you should dismiss it as "fabricated bullshit". It means you should wait to see what an investigation turns up. Jumping to the conclusions you prefer in the absence of evidence is confirmation bias.
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All I am pointing out is that you are deciding that it is "utterly implausible" because it doesn't comport with your experience or the way you think people act.
Yes, that is called "common sense". Once again, could it have happened? Yes. But it being possible doesn't make it likely. As I said above, implausible things do happen, they just don't happen often.
Also, a lack of proof at this time doesn't mean you should dismiss it as "fabricated bullshit". It means you should wait to see what an investigation turns up. Jumping to the conclusions you prefer in the absence of evidence is confirmation bias.
That is complete horseshit and wrongly shifts the burden. The author of this article is the one making implausible claims and therefore has the burden of providing proof necessary for it to be believable. The story is bullshit until proven otherwise. That is the default. Anyone can make up and article or lie to a reporter with some fantastic story. We don't believe those things until we have proof that they are true. You are claiming we should believe them or withhold judgement until proof is found. Bullshit. You withhold final judgement. In the meantime you consider it bullshit but are open to proof otherwise.
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It's also probably common sense to assume that a well respected football coach isn't actually raping children, but that happened.
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And I wouldn't have believed that either, until there was proof.
That is the point Zeb. It is not that implausible things don't happen. They most certainly do. It is that they don't happen often and you shouldn't believe they have happened without a lot of proof.
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I certainly agree with all that. And for the record, I don't find this account to be terribly plausible either. Seems like very bad journalism, at least. But I don't know if assuming (as a regular person having nothing to do with law enforcement or law) that a story is utter bullshit without that proof is always appropriate either. There are a lot of things where it is probably best not to have a strong opinion one way or the other.
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People make all kinds of goofy and even insane allegations of implausible things.
It's almost always correct to discount them unless there is strong evidence to support them.
There are a lot of stories of alien abductions. Lots of people believe them, and many have not been completely debunked. Is it reasonable to regard such stories as bunk until strong evidence is presented, or should we give them credence until they all conclusively debunked?
I have heard that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. Am I supposed to believe that until some sort of investigation by Sheriff Joe Arpaio is complete?
Seriously implausible claims require strong evidence. I don't believe in alien abduction stories, and I don't believe this gang rape story either. And I won't believe either one unless strong evidence is forthcoming. It is far, far more likely that both stories reflect the imaginations of people with mental problems, or people who seek attention.
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I don't see why the accusation against Sandusky was inherently implausible.
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It's not that the accusation was implausible. It's what the possible truth of the accusation implied: that for the accusations to be true, there would have to be a school-wide (and even larger) cover-up for the abuse to go on for so long.
And that's exactly what happened, it turned out. Still, generally, it's a good idea to be skeptical of claims of conspiracy.
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But, again, you don't have to only assume she would act completely irrationally. You have to assume her friends, all of the classmates, the faculty, her own freaking mother - everybody - acted entirely irrationally in the frat's favor.
At that point, yes, it starts to look a lot more like alien abduction or "I saw a ghost".
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Not just that the victim and everyone the victim knows would act irrationally, but that "Drew" and his accomplices, with hours and days to plan, somehow knew they would act irrationally.
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So, the reasoning is "An absence of proof does not constitute a proof of absence".
Worked brilliantly with Iraq's WMDs, didn't it?
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"Scepticism is good, especially when someone's life can be ruined over a false accusation."
Who are you talking about here? Because Jackie already ruined Drew's life. It should be easy to pick out the Phi Kappa Psi brother who works as a lifeguard and tie it to the timeline of his class year. This is character assassination, pure and simple.
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Or she won't go to the police because a criminal investigation would risk unraveling her story and opening her up to libel lawsuits and criminal charges of her own.
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Journalists who contemplate such matters are now wondering whether the incredible Rolling Stone story about the gang rape of a University of Virginia student is just that: not credible.
Uh... yeah.Yet another case of the commentariat being two steps ahead of the Reason editorials.
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The Reason staff all are journalists. They are loath to criticize the guild.
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The aspect of the story that didn't sit right with me was the behavior of Drew. To lure an unsuspecting women into a gang rape in which he participated in, and then talk to "Jackie" as if nothing happened? Either Drew is a true and complete sociopath, or this story isn't right.
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According to the story, they're all sociopaths. "Friends" who tell you to ignore a 3 hour rape and a lacerated back?
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Yes, them too. Who acts like that?
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While I won't say "nobody", I will bet it's a fraction of a percentage point.
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If "Drew" were such a sociopath, he would have been smarter about how he did the crime. If Drew is as described, he is one of the dumbest criminals in America. If your thing is raping women, you don't rape ones who are part of your community with a bunch of co-conspirators.
There really are sociopath rapists in the world. They are hard to catch because they carefully choose victims who either don't know them or can be drugged so they won't remember what happened.
This story is so stupid only a fucking journalist would be dumb enough to believe it.
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This story is so stupid only a fucking journalist would be dumb enough to believe it.
Or make it up
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They only made it up because they thought everyone else was a dumb as they were and would believe it. Other journalists seem to be the only people who believe this bullshit.
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"...or can be drugged so they won't remember what happened."
She poured out her only drink, which leads me to believe they thought she had been roofied. But that would be me adding to the narrative, which already has enough questions being asked of it.
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Because she didn't like booze, no?
If she was afraid of being roofied, that's different.
Actually, 7 guys using roofies to gang rape girls would be much more plausible.
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Sorry - didn't mean to imply she *thought* she was being roofied, but only that that one missing piece might go a long way to making a more plausible story. Perhaps the writer wanted us to infer that without having to risk the speculation herself.
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"I have no reason to disbelieve Erdely, and I understand why she would choose not to disclose anyone's identity. "
Oh, puh-leaze, Soave,,,, If you are going to write about this gigantic horse turd at least try to tell the truth about your inner thoughts.
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"I suspect Jackie doesn't even exist."
Yes, there is. In the story, Jackie Off.
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The allegation here is that, at U.Va., gang rape is a rite of passage for young men to become fraternity “brothers.” It’s possible.
Not since Teddy Kennedy left.
-jcr
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It’s possible.
Well, shit, anything that doesn't violate the laws of physics is possible.
That's not even an interesting question. The interesting questing is whether its plausible, probably, proven, all that jazz.
And its not.
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Come on, I mean it is not like journalists don't have a history of making up fantastic stories that fit the narrative of the day or anything. I mean, it is not like a Boston Globe reporter once won and later had to give back a Pulitzer for a story she wrote about a child heroin addict who didn't exist.
There are so many long form articles like this that have later turned out to be complete fabrications. Another example is the article that the movie Saturday Night Fever was based on. It was later revealed that there was no "disco culture" and the writer realized that but needed a story so just made the whole thing up.
I would be shocked if this story isn't a complete fabrication. Moreover, if Rolling Stone published this without their fact checkers personally talking to the victim and the people involved and confirming their existence, which I bet anything they didn't, they are every bit the pathetic rag their critics claim them to be.
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If you're talking about Janet Cooke and the "Jimmy's World" story, that was the Washington Post, not the Boston Globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Cooke
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Good catch.
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As I wrote on the previous post of this story - Stephen Glass redux:
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TO: Robbie Soave and Others
RE: The Police??!??!The police—and only the police—are equipped to deal with it. -- Soave
Heaven forfend!
The police would probably shoot the alleged perp out of hand, claiming they thought that tube-shaped thing, resembling a bahnahna, threatened their safety.
A better choice of words would have been….
The judicial system—and only the judicial system—is equipped to deal with it.
Indeed, the judicial system IS what deals with rape anywhere else. The police are just an instrument of it.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Justice consists of an enduring and unalterable intention to render to each what that person deserves. -- Aristotle] -
This reminds me of the Duke Lacrosse story and (at the risk of showing my age) the Amirault (sp?) day care case in Massachusetts. In the daycare case, kids were coached to tell fantastical stories of rape to include vaginal penetration WITH A BUTCHER KNIFE! The hysteria in the culture at that time about child molesters led to the decimation of two generations of a family that has yet to be corrected.
Even if this story is exposed as a fraud, where does UVA and this fraternity (and by association, all the brothers during that time) go to get THEIR good name back?
Just watch, this author will get a Pulitzer out of this.
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Probably and she will eventually have to surrender it after it becomes apparent the entire thing is a complete lie.
And the Duke Lacrosse case is a good analogy. But this is even worse. In the Duke case we at least had a real accuser who came forward to the police. Here we don't' even have that.
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Probably and she will eventually have to surrender it after it becomes apparent the entire thing is a complete lie.
Why? Did Duranty?
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One thing which bothered me was not the rape itself (which perhaps naively I though actually happened), but the supposed actions of the dean, who was portrayed as not wanting UVa to be portrayed as a "rape school." My thought was that the dean may or may not have said that, but that the reporter should have asked the dean if she said it, which I now doubt the reporter did.
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"Asked why UVA doesn't publish all its data, President Sullivan explains that it might not be in keeping with "best practices" and thus may inadvertently discourage reporting. Jackie got a different explanation when she'd eventually asked Dean Eramo the same question. She says Eramo answered wryly, "Because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.""
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If the Dean said the "wryly", then we can add him to what seems to be a very long list of sociopaths at UVA.
Any decent man, confronted with an actual hours-long gang rape of someone who is nominally under their protection, will not be "wry" about it. They'll be fucking enraged.
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agree
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"Any decent man..."
Decent man?
Haven't you heard? Penises are EVIL!
EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!
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The actions of the Dean is the one believable thing in the story. The administrators just want to cover their asses. Look at what Penn State did with Sandusky. They let a guy ass rape kids in the football facilities and use the football program as bait to attract new victims for at least a decade and God knows how much longer. The reason was that all they cared about was covering their asses. So once Sandusky started raping kids, they looked away because exposing him would have caused embarrassment. Once they did that, Sandusky owned them since exposing him would have meant admitting they looked the other way in the first place.
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You are either uninformed or wilfully misrepresenting what is currently known about the Penn State case.
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Bullshit. That is exactly what happened. They had a credible witness, the former QB assistant coach, who saw Sandusky raping a kid in the shower and 2002. And yet, they took no action to investigate it, made no effort to find out who the kid was and did not turn it over to the local cops.
Why was that? The reason is simple. Sandusky had been investigated before and the police dropped the case in the late 1990s. This time they would have had him. But, getting him would have required admitting they pressured the police into ignoring the case in the 1990s and God knows what else. So they had no choice but to ignore it.
That is the only rational explanation for their actions.
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Sigh.
I'll lay out the timeline and facts for you in detail.
The first time Sandusky's behavior was brought to anyone's attention was in 1998. Sandusky showered with a child, bear hugged him, but did not in this instance rape him. The mother of the child was suspicious when he came home with wet hair, and eventually the child told her what happened. She contacted the police, who initiated an investigation, which included secretly taping a conversation between the mother and Sandusky. Absolutely no one in the police or DA's office has ever accused anyone from Penn State of trying to interfere with or influence the outcome of that investigation. Ultimately, the DA chose not to bring any charges. CPS also chose not to take any action against Sandusky, such as putting him on a watch list or limiting his contact with children. The child was interviewed by two psychologists. One by a psychologist working with the police, which is the only report the police, the DA, and CPS saw concluded that Sandusky's behavior showed "boundary issues" but did not conclude that it was indicative of something more sinister. A second psychologist contacted by the mother warned that the behavior was consistent with grooming and the actions of a child predator. Sadly, that report was not commissioned by the police or CPS, and they never saw it.
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There was a second incident witnessed by a janitor. This really was a rape. Sadly, no one on the janitorial staff reported it. They said they were afraid of losing their jobs, but evidently that was not something they needed to worry about, as the third and most infamous incident demonstrates.
That was the one witnessed by the graduate assistant, another rape. He reported it and never was punished. Unfortunately, what he told various people is contested. We know he told his father, a close family friend, and Joe Paterno, as well as two administrators (the AD and the VP that nominally oversaw the university police). The assistant admits that he did not use the term rape or describe what he saw in graphic detail to either his father, the family friend, or Joe Paterno. That is not in dispute. He says he did use more descriptive and graphic language with the administrators. They claim he did not. The admins then seem to have carried out a half-assed investigation. You are correct that they did not try to identify the kid. They did talk to Sandusky and limit his access to campus, but did not revoke it. They did not go to the police. They ultimately informed Spanier, who signed off on all of it. Those are the facts of the case as they currently are known.
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Now, a conspiracy to cover up rape on the part of the admins is possible, and it might even be plausible. It is also possible and plausible that they thought the third incident was a repeat of the first because they were not given the whole story by the assistant, and decided not to inform the police. No one is denying that they exercised, at best, horrible judgement. They almost certainly broke laws regarding the mandatory reporting of possible sexual harassment of a minor. Maybe there was something more malicious going on, too, but neither you nor I know enough at this point to say that that is the only possible interpretation.
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Your explanation would work Lynchpin, except for one thing, they never kicked him off campus. If it was the case that they thought the QB's story wasn't sodomy but just old Jerry hugging another kid in the shower, okay then maybe they don't report it to the police to take action. That to me in 2002 seems utterly unbelievable but let's say that happened.
Okay, how do you explain them not kicking him off campus? It is known Paterno didn't even like him. He was a retired assistant coach. Maybe they were not sure what was going on, but that only explains why they didn't call the cops. He does not explain why they didn't at least kick him off campus so that whatever he was doing it would no longer be associated with the university and call the children's charity he was working for. There is always that.
No way did they let him continue to do what he was doing and not kick him off campus out of some weird "loyalty". The reason they didn't kick him off campus and allowed him to remain associated with the program is because he owned their asses. They knew what was going on and had covered it up and were committed.
There is no defending Paterno, the AD and the President on this. They were all accessories to child rape as far as I am concerned.
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They did tell him that he could no longer bring minors onto campus. And what exactly did he own them on? The only incident that anyone knew about before 2002 was the one in 1998 that was fully investigated by the police and DA, which Penn State fully cooperated with. There was no opportunity to cover anything up prior to 2002, but you assert that they were *already* committed to a cover up in 2002 and had to stay committed. That is in contradiction of the facts.
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How so?
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saying "I don't know anyone who would do that, so this is idiotic" is, well, idiotic.
If the author of this titillating bodice-ripper (Hi, Bo!) had had the good sense to set it in a Hell's Angels' clubhouse, instead of a Grade A White Bread college fraternity house, it might have been (more) believable.
Seriously, if this is part of a recurring pattern of behavior on the part of the fraternity, the word would be out, and NOBODY WOULD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THEM. Not to mention the prevalence of Campus Life administrators (or whatever they call themselves) who would like nothing more than an excuse to banish those icky unruly fraternities.
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I still wouldn't believe it unless the story was set in the early 60's. Most of them have daughters or granddaughters that age and would beat a rapist to death.
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Not sure about this piece but RS is just a gawdawful rag. Their piece on the Federal Reserve was pathetic. You can find better "journalism" in a high school paper (if they still exist ? ) .
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I am not paranoid, I just understand how these things work and you don't.
Wheeeeeeeeee!
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P Brooks,
The man just gets more intelligent and thoughtful every day. It just amazing the things you contribute to the conversation. I mean seriously, WHEEEE!!, do you stay up all night thinking of that kind of genius or does it just come to you out of diving inspiration?
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And for those who think this is a total fabrication, UVA is not denying that the student exists or that she reported an incident. They are saying that there are things in the story that they were not told at the time. Embellished? Perhaps. One-sided? It certainly seems so. But it is clearly not a *total* fabrication, otherwise UVA could squash it immediately.
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If I told you that Barrack Obama came to my Thanksgiving Dinner, would that be a total fabrication? Barrack Obama does exist. And I told several people he came to dinner at my house.
I suppose it depends on how you define "total fabrication". Even if the subject of this article does exist and made some kind of claim of rape, that doesn't make anything else in the article any more convincing.
Even if the person does exist and did make the allegations, what do you want done about it? What exactly can be done consistent with fairness and due process with an allegation, no matter how horrible, made by a person who is unwilling to come forward publicly and make it under oath?
The entire point of this article is to force UVA to take action and punish regarding the allegation. How can you in good conscience endorse that? And if you can't endorse that, what does the article matter, whether its believable or not?
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There are comments in this thread speculating that the student doesn't exist, and I interpret "total fabrication" on the part of the author to mean that she just made up the story wholesale. If people actually meant that the student made it up and that the author was just duped (maybe willingly), then her existence and a record of her going to the dean are not inconsistent with that.
Even if the person does exist and did make the allegations, what do you want done about it?
I want the accuser to go to the police. I've been consistent on that.
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Good for you. So do I. But until she does and makes her claim under oath, I don't believe a word she says.
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But it is clearly not a *total* fabrication...
Right, because there's no possible way UVA just wants to tread lightly about pissing off the SJW brigades who have already latched onto the story. You are far too credulous about this whole thing.
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There's a lot of assumption packed into that paragraph. How exactly do you think random bureaucrats at UVA are qualified to make such a determination? They can't. For the same reason my plumber can't diagnose cancer. The difference is my plumber doesn't pretend to be a hospital, but UVA administrators pretend to be a criminal justice system.
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Well that doesn't stop it from being a total fabrication (not that I think it is) it just means that the reporter didn't totally fabricate the whole affair.
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How, exactly would you propose they deny that a student named "Jackie" (the only identification of the girl) exists?
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UVA: According to my records, no girls named jackie go to this school...
(aide whispers: Sir! that was a pseudonym)
UVA: Um, Correction. We have no girls who with pseudonyms here...
(aide facepalm)
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The fact that she reported the story to UVA is not inconsistent with the story having been fabricated.
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A bruise still mottling her face, Jackie sat in Eramo's office in May 2014 and told her about the two others.
that is a heckuva facial bruise that lasts 7+ months.
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When I raped chicks on broken glass at my fraternity hazing, you can bet those chicks stayed bruised for LIFE!
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I guess her Vietnam vet dad had too much of a thousand yard stare to notice the bruises at Christmas.
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Roman Catholic reporter to the rescue! ...of Roman Catholic homosexual ritual bonding gang rapists, raped as children by their pedophile priests and now - "getting even."
The Rolling Stone article comment thread was frequented by highly motivated sleuths who came up with the pledge lists of Roman Catholic CIA/mobster/Zionists' sons, and a lifeguard, who "fit the bill."
No coincidence the usurped rape-protecting UVa has dishonored itself, further, sheltering Rome's Fifth Column's Philip Zelikow, the Zionist 9/11 coverup artist/traitor.
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Excellent. We have been looking for an insane gibberish generator since Herc was decommissioned.
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Mr. Jefferson, America's Founder and anointed Prophet, identified Rome as "the real Anti-Christ." Rabbis conclude Amalek gave us Hitler and committed the Holocaust. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen proves "two popes and the Roman Catholic Church are morally, legally, and ethically culpable of the Holocaust." Ergo: Amalek is the Anti-Christ; and Hitler's banker's homosexual, draft-dodging grandson committed 9-11 after being cheated into the White House by only the Roman Catholics on the Supreme Court.
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That's exactly what I would expect to hear at Rome's latifundial estate of Hit&Run;.
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Warty, the woman was raped by a bunch of Koch funded frat boy homosexual rapist priests. Can't you see that?
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SugarFree|12.1.14 @ 11:37AM|#
"Excellent. We have been looking for an insane gibberish generator since Herc was decommissioned."Not all of us have been....
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After reading that twice, I can say I'm reasonably sure it's something about Roman Catholics.
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The mindset of these fabricators is scary. To believe this, you would have to believe that your common man is up for rape and would not even object if they knew of it happening.
I have no doubt some women believe this, after all certain groups in society have been teaching it.
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"To believe this, you would have to believe that your common man is up for rape and would not even object if they knew of it happening."
There are people who believe that 1 our of 5 girls are "sexually assaulted" in college. I think the fact that parents keep sending their daughters away to college shows that the majority of people think that statistic is bogus.
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The stat you (and many articles like RS)quote defines sexual assault to include any unwelcome touching, *as well as* any unwelcome language of a sexual nature.
In which case the 1 in 5 stat seems somewhat appropriate.
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After watching the Hollaback! documentary, I am fairly sure that statistic is conservative under the new definition of "sexual assault".
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These culture war fantasies of yours are like a train wreck I cannot turn away from. Your bizarre paranoia and unhinged collectivist psychoanalysis of the PROGZ who live in your head is a source of great amusement to me, John.
Go ahead and accuse me of some weird sexual perversion. You know you want to.
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I think you are the smartest, most thoughtful, kind and insightful poster on the internet Brooks. If there is any perversions going on here, it is my overly zealous affection and respect for your obvious genius.
I only wish I could be such a genius like you and say things like "WHEE" and "you amuse me". The conversation on here would be so lost and pointless if we didn't have you around to set us straight.
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It is nothing more than Fifty Shades of Grey meets Animal House. How a journalist bought this pile of baloney is a great insight into the current level of journalistic integrity and professionalism.
Publish first, check second, apologize never. -
To be honest, I've been wondering if this fantastical tail was true too, and I'm still wondering...but here's the problem when you say a crazy gang rape like this would never happen at a frat. It has happened before...specifically at Phi Kappa Psi, and the perp went to jail.
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Sure it could happen. Gang rapes happen. But note, "the perp went to jail". The victim reported it and the police investigated it. And there were no doubt lots of witnesses who came forward and ratted out the people who did it. What didn't happen is the victim only told the college and Rolling Stone.
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Yeah the rape occurring is not the unbelievable part, it is the behavior of everyone else involved and the fact that none of those guys ever confessed to anyone initiating an investigation from some source other than the victim.
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Unless I missed something, that wasn't a gang rape. And the offender confessed.
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All rape is gang rape in a rape culture.
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And all hetro sex is rape so it must be gang rape too.
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I am sure there is some tortured logic to underpin this feminist yarn. But I've never heard it.
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Penises are EVIL!
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Yes, you did miss something. The victim found out that three guys had had their way with her, but there was only enough evidence to bring charges against William Beebe.
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The article you cite is about an incident where a single rapist attacked a girl. That a rapist could be lurking in the midst of a large university is highly believable. That a single fraternity would house eight rapists and that they would somehow identify each other and come together to plan an elaborate pre-meditated gang rape with a pledge they had just recently met is not.
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And it is called a "rite of passage," which implies it's happened a lot, and no one has ever reported it.
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This precisely. They had to have planned this in advance, sober, knowing that any one of them could call the cops. This isn't a story about a bunch of drunk guys and a drunk girl at a party.
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If anyone ever deserved to raped on broken glass for hours...
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My reaction to the story was somewhat skeptical. If it appeared as a storyline on Law & Order: SVU, then I would probably have ridiculed it as extremely unlikely. It's not impossible, it's just unlikely that so many people would be involved in a well orchestrated heinous act and that nobody would feel the need to object or leave - or that so many young women would be highly motivated to return to a place where they could be viciously assaulted.
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Of course, it should still be investigated by the police. There shouldn't be an implicit incentive to commit the most ridiculous possible crime hoping to avoid police inquiry. An earnest allegation is enough to start investigating.
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I was surprised by the story's graphic details despite the pitch black room, but surmised that her eyes adjusted in time, or that the author left out a detail of a light being turned on. What I find remarkable that the author didn't emphasize was that the victim poured out the only drink she had. If we're to believe this story, that would mean her assailants believed that after one drink, she would be compliant - meaning they likely believed she had been roofied (by Drew, presumably). I think that is an important detail to not even suggest it was a possible reason she had better memory of everything than 'Drew' expected, and that no other potential (known) victims have described similar attacks.
What I don't like is this continuing tradition of victims choosing not to report the crime, and instead fighting the battle in the media. It doesn't appear the author corroborated *any* part of her story, including those who picked her up that night. And it doesn't matter if Jackie named 'Drew' to the author: Phi Kappa Psi brother, works as a lifeguard - that should narrow it down for the entire UVA community. It is convenient character assassination.
I don't doubt this story may have happened. I just think that it is outrageous for people to use the media to destroy people's lives that have never been accused of a crime by authorities.
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Of course if you replace frat boys in the story with cops then...
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I worked for a rape crisis center. And while many stories haunt me, none haunt me so much as the woman who would call and make stories up to each counselor. Her stories were so horrific, just listening to them was traumatizing.
When all the counselors got together for a supervision group, we learned she had called each of us and made her stories up.
I read the RS story with a raised eyebrow. Not because it's impossible. But just certain details change the story from plausible to unlikely. Seven men is a lot of men. That's a lot of men to get to go along with a violent, prolonged attack. Her friends didn't even believe her. Could that be the quality of her friends? Yes. Or maybe they know something we don't.
Some women lie. Not most. Not many. But some.
I agree it's ludicrous to have universities having an ethics board oversee rape accusations. They only place such crimes should be is in courts.
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who tell her that she doesn’t want to be known as the girl who cried rape and worry that if they take her to the hospital they won’t get invited to subsequent frat parties.
If true, these are clearly not her "friends". And I tend to think she would have gone to the hospital anyway.
Does anyone know if she did eventually go to the hospital for examination? This could have easily corroborated her story. I see the story, as presented, as being possible, however unlikely.
...confirmed as true or exposed as a hoax
I'd say it's a toss-up, thus far.
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I already called BS on this in the first article. No group of people, women or men would take the side of rapists to keep their party privileges.
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"Last week, I wrote that the breathtaking story was an indictment of the university's feeble attempts to address the so-called campus sexual assault crisis"
'So-called'?
Wasn't it you, Robby, that 'so-called' it "a travesty, a culture of seemingly rampant sexual assault" and that the response by UVA was not merely 'feeble', but rather "callous, wholly inadequate"...
The simultaneous combination of "Ginning up outrage" followed by "pseudo-objective pretension to be commenting about the 'perceived outrage'" to be a wondrous, self-perpetuating journalistic M.O. You have no shortage of subject matter!
Step One = Throw Mud!
Step Two = Ask whether Muddied Subjects are being fairly treated?
Step Three = PROFIT -
Why is it remotely credible that there's any sort of college sexual assault crisis?
Where is the single credible study showing that sexual assault on campus and off is in anything other than decline, and has been for over twenty years? Why is a reporter who would like to be at all credible doing anything other than noting somewhere in his article that there is no sexual assault crisis?
Something that does not exist should never be reported as "so called." The people alleging that something non-existent exists must be named, and their assertion shown to be false.
This is basic journalism.
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The very fact that this story appeared in RS turned my bullshit detector on.
I don't think it's a complete fabrication, as in total fiction. My sense is that the RS reporter took "Jackie's" word, made only the most minimal attempt at corroboration, and wrote the story so as to downplay the uncorroborated nature of most of it.
What also stood out for me was Erdely's implication that the university's overall refusal to speak to her was somehow sinister. There are huge issues of liability, potentially criminal liability, at issue, so of course they're not going to go blabbing away to some RS "reporter." Was she born yesterday?
Do rapes happen at fraternities, especially at the rich boy elite fraternities like the one being portrayed here? I have little doubt of it. However, my guess is that most of these are date rapes, the work of prep-school assholes who've never once been told "no" in their lives. There's nothing unique to frats in that. I'm sure the same thing happens all the time at places these jerks congregate...say, the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, for example.
But even with my disdain for the rich boy frats, there's no way I'd believe that they're engaging in institutionalized "rape rituals."
It really does sound like the satanic day care hysteria of 30 years ago.
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They may happen, but they also happen in both directions. You would be surprised at the number of women who with a few beers in them, think it is okay to put their hands anywhere they want on a guy, and think it is always welcome.
I once walked a girl home that her friends had *literally* dropped at our front door on a Saturday night. She was groping me and trying to kiss me and was absolutely hammered. I made sure she went in her dorm building, then turned tail home. I got back to my house, went to my room and locked the door. Thirty seconds later there is a knock and my roommate lets her in, then leaves. And I regretted that night for the rest of my college days because I feared that in her drunkeness, she would forget (or revise) everything and accuse *me* of rape.
Was I assaulted? You bet. But fraternity guys are supposed to like that kind of thing, right?
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Oh, no doubt. And drunken awkwardness is hardly confined to frats, as my non-Greek college career illustrates...
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By the way, I hope my comments aren't taken to impugn frats generally. Most of my high school friends ended up in frats, and I myself went through rush...though I was too much of an introverted weirdo to get much interest (or to want to put myself in that situation).
I remember that most of the frats at my State U. were just a bunch of regular dudes living in conditions one minor step up from the state of nature, while a small number of frats consisted mostly of snotty assholes I'd want nothing to do with under any circumstances.
When I went to my friends' frat parties, it seemed like everyone was mostly surprised when an actual girl showed up--or at least one who wasn't already dating a brother. I guess my friends weren't in the right frats. LOL
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Thanks for clarifying. What you just described is 99% accurate - just regular dudes who had a party once a week where they bought beer for everyone who wanted to come and not be a douche.
But the living conditions being a step-up..? You must not have made it past the first floor. ;)
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"dudes living in conditions one minor step up from the state of nature"
For the record, most frat-house party pits I witnessed would have been condemned and vacated by any self-respecting Neanderthals...
in one particular case, there was a roach that had been smashed on the wall and then circled with marker and labeled "our mascot".
4 years later, that roach was still there. I rest my case.
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It really does sound like the satanic day care hysteria of 30 years ago.
It is EXACTLY the satanic daycare hysteria of the 80s. I've been primed to make this point for a while now but I haven't been here much as of late. But this is EXACTLY what it is and what makes me ill is that the media falls for it.
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"Rolling Stone writer needs to learn that Dexter is fiction"
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"Bradley notes that his experience editing the works of infamous fabulist Stephen Glass taught him to be extra critical of stories that confirm his pre-existing biases."
'my experience contributing to a pile of journalistic horseshit makes me an 'expert critic' in evaluating the horseshit journalistic stretches of others'
I think the story-behind-the-story here of journalists making hay out of criticizing other journalists work remains unstated
= regardless of the posture, that everyone here is getting paid to churn out more words about the non-existent "Rape Culture" theme to feed the internet Outrage Machine.
Whether the point is to express collective horror and disgust (step 1), ask thoughtful questions about the 'actual validity' of the accusations (step 2), or then engage in tut-tutting post-postmortems of the "what does this say about journalism" (step 3) = its all grist for the mill.
The key thing is to maintain a fine balance between populist pitchfork-wielding and pretending to be objective: never get so objective you fail to satisfy the Morally Outraged; but never be so Offended and Outraged that your work can later be shown to be part of "the problem".
But hey, even if it is= you can always sell yourself as an 'expert' on "how journalists get swept up in popular narratives and lose their objectivity"
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It's likely a hoax. No single aspect of the story is theoretically impossible (although the notion of a frat having a gang rape initiation in today's campus environment seems pretty preposterous). But all them taken together just really strain credulity.
But, I doubt it will be proven false. If it is proven, it will nonetheless be described as a very important "teachable moment" because, notwithstanding its falsity, this case is "representative" of goes on every day. Plus, the fact that anyone dared question it in the first place is proof positive of the prevalence of a "rape culture" which doesn't believe victims.
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Correct.
That charlatan Ehrlich is quoted with the disclaimer that 'He's right in general; he just got some details wrong!'
We'll get the same bullshit here, and it will continue to get cited.
I think it was Churchill: 'A lie is half 'way round the world before the truth gets out of bed'. -
Yeah, I don't see how 'proving a negative' in this situation is even possible. Several years have gone by, the alleged perps have graduated, and since no rape kit or other physical evidence was collected, it ends up with nothing more than he said/she said.
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Where is the "he said"?
There's no one to rebut this. There will be the sort of meandering investigation you might expect of a several years old allegation. In the mean time, fraternities will be demonized. The idea that gang rape is all but ignored will hang over the University. Feminists will prattle on about how our culture encourages rape.
It's the ideal story for contemporary feminism.
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Why would the guys laugh when the rapist punches her if it's pitch black? How would they see it?
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They were all wearing night-vision goggles. Did I forget to mention the night-vision goggles?
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It is obvious that the rolling stone story is BS like much of what they publish. Time to grow up Robby and stop calling yourself "Robby".
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A whole thread and no "glass ceiling" jokes?
Come on, the Stephen Glass angle practically writes itself!
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Long time no-see Dave
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Is Lena Dunham involved?
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Frat is where the party and the young people are (and often glamorized in films and TV shows), and I imagine the drinks there are free, or a few bucks for a cup of beer. People like drinking in a crowd or some social setting.
So even if college kids could drink at 18, they would still hit the raves, the nightclubs, the frats, etc. They'll just drink more inside their rooms or dorms on top of that.
Frats might be a de facto speakeasy, but 18 year olds don't have to go that far to get a drink. When I was in college my freshmen suite mates smoked and drank pretty much in plain sight.
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This tale is the back-story of Sweeney Todd, by the way.
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The part that sticks out most to me is the idea that a gang of frat brothers pre-meditated an actual gang rape, just upstairs from a bunch of witnesses. Not a "let's all each have sex with a willing participant" or even "let's all each have sex with a passed out girl" which is still rape but less risky for the rapists than "let's force this girl down and take her one at a time". The party guests included non-frat members, who likely would be able to hear screaming or even wander upstairs looking for a bathroom. How certain could the rapists be that no one would rat them out and back up the victim's story? They crashed through a glass table, and continued with their rape in the dark, despite shards of glass being near their sensitive parts? Not that I've ever planned a violent crime, but this sounds like very poor planning, especially since it's implied these guys have done this before.
It's possible the rape really happened to this woman, and she just got the details wrong (after all, it did take place years ago). But all the more reason for the journalist to do a better job investigating this, rather than taking it at face value with no corroboration.
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Your appeal to 'plausibility' is a de facto attempt to silence women. SHAME!!
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RAPE CULTURE! RAPE CULTURE!
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I totally agree. It sounds like another Tawana Brawley, but let's see what, if anything, we find out later on.
It would certainly be tragic if this story, by itself, got anyone expelled.
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"Rather, I assumed honesty on the part of the author and her source—not because I'm naive ..."
Yes, it is because you are naive. Or just not paying attention for decades.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness" is not a cultural universal. It has generally been a universal in Western culture, particular the Anglosphere, but the Anglosphere has a new culture within it, the Progressive Theocracy.
For the Progressive Theocracy, there is no rule but Power. If a lie works better than the truth, fine. Whatever works. We've seen them employ "Noble" lies like this time and again, particularly in the case of violence against women. As long as the lie serves the desired narrative, what matter if it is true? Power, by and and all means available.
Destroying societal trust is one of the great crimes of the Progressive Theocracy. Societal trust matters. Tearing it down matters. A society without that basic trust in reciprocal honesty becomes exactly what the Progressive Theocracy desires - a competition in tribal power, each tribe trying to consume the other.
It's a corollary of Gresham's Law; just as bad money drives out good, dishonesty drives out honesty.
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When I was in college, a very popular fraternity had a room in it that was painted black with one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and one bed in it. That was the sex room. The frat brothers would get the girls as drunk as they possibly could (in those days, it was punch bowls with grain alcohol), drag them into the room and gang rape them. I saw it happen, I saw the room. I won't say anything more, but I am ashamed to say I did nothing about it. I didn't tell anyone about it for many years. The Rolling Stone story - her story - is extremely credible to me.
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"That was the sex room"
Cool story bro
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Very sorry? You mean you were an accessory after the fact to a gang rape? Why would the frat let a non member into the gang rape room? Lol. I call bullshit.
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"drag them into the room and gang rape them."
On the internet, no one can tell you're a dog.
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yo, this story is so stupid, I suspect it might be a CONSERVATIVE hoax to make the media look bad like a bunch of gullible idiots. I mean, that conservative dude went pretty far to make ACORN look bad, maybe another conservative wanted to something similar? I mean, it is pretty awesome, fucking the leftist dialogue while getting some shits and giggles.
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She bites his hand; he punches her; the men laugh.
And the men witnessed this in a pitch black room? Enough to laugh?
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Marks just don't know how to think about a hoax. They are impressed by the believable parts of the story, as if it's hard to concoct something believable, and fail to ask the key question -- why are the unbelievable parts there?
For instance, many commenters here smell the hoax, but assume that the claimant has no scars on her back. On the contrary, you should ask why the ridiculous and unbelievable story of the glass table is included at all. If she left it out, there would be that much less to disprove her tale. She asks you to believe it because that story would transform into "evidence" a few small scars she happens to have on her back (from whatever cause). Don't be blindsided when they show up.
If you really want to get depressed about this farrago, note how the grrl-power feminists at Jezebel http://jezebel.com/is-the-uva-.....1665233387 completely swallow the idea that three "friends" of the claimant, encountering her on the spot covered with blood and other evidence that would assure them her story was true, would tell her not to go to the police or even a hospital for fear that their association with her might prevent them from being invited back and gang-raped in their turn.
Even more unbelievable than the glass table, but it has to be in the story to explain why there is no one to corroborate her: unfortunately, everyone she knows is insane.
It's amazing this story has lasted even a week.
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Bill,
You must have missed my post, which precedes yours by 11 hours, but thanks for the warning.
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and no one would ever hoax a hate crime either...you're naive.
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"Two House of Commons representatives belonging to the Liberal Party of Canada have been anonymously accused of harassment. Justin Trudeau, pretty boy, son of ex-Prime Minister superstar Pierre Trudeau, and lastly, leader of the Liberal Party, chose to immediately suspend them for the duration of the investigation."
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Alternative title : "Why People Who Say Women Don't Lie About Rape Should Be Punched In the Face"
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Soave writes, "I have no reason to disbelieve Erdely, and I understand why she would choose not to disclose anyone's identity. But she should be able to confirm that she knows who the attackers are, shouldn't she?"
Would it not be very difficult (impossible?) for her to confirm the attackers identities without implicating the victim as the source of the allegation? How would that work, exactly?
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Erdely could have at least established that the alleged assailants are real people that actually exist, which could have been accomplished without alerting the alleged assailants in any number of ways -- public records, campus officials, inquiries to her friends, etc.
Heck, she could even interview the alleged assailants directly without telling them who the accuser was.
If the incident actually happened as described, the alleged assailants obviously already know who she is, unless this was such a common occurrence they could confuse her with someone else they gangraped on a pile of shattered glass.
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I bet "Jackie" has visions of making even more money per hour than this by filing all sorts of lawsuits against all sorts of large publicity-averse institutions. UVA, the national chapter of the fraternity, etc.
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She's a third year student - her MO isn't money, it's sexual assault awareness and advocacy.
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Why the assumption that "Jackie" is even real? Stephen Glass made up stories completely, including sources. Couldn't Erdely be doing the same?
Given the minimal amount of fact checking, if any at all, done by Rolling Stone, isn't it likely that the editor is in on the hoax?
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She's real.
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This Rolling Stone story set off my bullshit detector immediately too. It's way too implausible that a half dozen college guys would conspire to do something this insanely reckless.
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They didn't WANT to be interviewed. They refused and continue to refuse media requests for information - even their national chapter won't reply to emails or phone calls.
Phi Kappa Psi is a fraternity with a history of violence against women; they have committed two known gang rapes at UVA. Since 2011, Phi Psi chapters have closed permanently at UCLA, and University of Arizona. They have also been suspended from University of Dayton, Cornell University and West Virginia University. Please sign the petition to suspend Phi Kappa Psi permanently from UVA; their suspension is currently temporary: http://change.org/p/teresa-sul.....ermanently
For more information: http://www.facebook.com/shutdownphipsi -
What is immigration policy like on your planet? It sounds like a really nice place to live, and I might consider moving there.
I live on a sometimes rather backward planet called "Earth," in a country called "the United States of America." Sadly, it is actually fairly commonplace here for friends and even family members of rape victims to dismiss, minimize, or outright and openly disbelieve them. Even when they're bruised. Even when they're bleeding. Even when they're obviously severely traumatized.
The idea of living in a place where such behavior is considered "cartoonishly evil" rather than "distressingly normal" is quite appealing. What are the requirements for obtaining a visa?
