Washingtonpost.com:

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A University of Virginia student’s harrowing description of a gang rape at a fraternity, detailed in a recent Rolling Stone article, began to unravel Friday as interviews revealed doubts about significant elements of the account. The fraternity issued a statement rebutting the story, and the magazine apologized for a lapse in judgment and backed away from the article.

Jackie, a U-Va. junior, said she was ambushed and raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi house during a date party in 2012, allegations that tore through the campus and pushed the elite public school into the epicenter of a national discussion about how universities handle sex-assault claims. Shocking for its gruesome details, the account described Jackie enduring three hours of successive rapes, an ordeal that left her blood-spattered, scarred and emotionally devastated.

The U-Va. fraternity where the attack was alleged to have occurred has said it has been working with police and has concluded that the allegations are untrue. Among other things, the fraternity said there was no event at the house the night the attack was alleged to have happened.

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are advocates at U-Va. for sex-assault awareness, said they believe that something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said that details have changed over time and that they have not been able to verify key points in recent days. For example, an alleged attacker that Jackie identified to them for the first time this week — a junior in 2012 who worked with her as a university lifeguard — was actually the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Whether every detail of Jackie’s account is correct or not is really irrelevant. Sexual misconduct is a national problem and it needs to stop. Colleges and universities need to revamp how they handle these cases as well as how they report the cases to law enforcement.

Something happened to this young woman. She is obviously scarred and damaged from her ordeal. I have no doubt that the media used her and probably misreported what she told them. I sincerely hope that Rolling Stone’s recanting her story doesn’t keep colleges from handling sexual attacks swiftly and severely. I hope it doesn’t keep victims from reporting their injuries. Just because Rolling Stone has recanted its story doesn’t mean this young woman wasn’t raped and traumatized.

148 Thoughts to “Rolling Stone recants, issues an apology”

  1. Cargosquid

    @Rick Bentley
    The only one watching Walking Dead in my house is me. I wouldn’t let my daughter watch it. No reason to have those images in a 14 year old’s head. What she gets in the course of a day is bad enough.

  2. Rick Bentley

    It varies kid to kid … main thing that I try to keep my 13 year old grandson away from is overt sexuality. Drug use – illustrative. Profanity – won’t affect him unless he’s immersed in it. Zombie violence – looks like the video games that he and most other boys play.

    If I watch “Cabin In The Woods” with him, simply because it’s great cinema, I skip through the one or two sex scenes. “Pulp Fiction”, just comment occasionally that people shouldn’t really use the F-word one out of every 15 words. So he’s not sheltered, but has context for what he’s seeing.

    I think this approach works okay, and that access to good movies helps with brain development. When kids have access to this kind of stuff, they don’t necessarily gravitate towards it. I noticed that after he and his friends started playing GTA 5, which is full of disturbing content, he was mostly using Netflixto watch things like Fairly Oddparents and SPongebob, and a series of shows on cute kittens.

  3. Rick Bentley

    These kids are already getting a warped view of the world from things they can turn the TV to, like Adult Swim cartoons and Family Guy. In that context, may as well let them see entertainment about the adult world that isn’t surreal and nihilistic.

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