And people wonder why victims of rape and sexual assault don’t come forward:
Rape now gets the “both sides do it” treatment from our failed media experiment. If the alleged rapists want to push their side of the story, they can leave behind the veil of anonymity and tell their side in court.
And fuck the New Republic and the Washington Post for pushing this shit. The Rolling Stone rape piece officially has now received more public scrutiny that all of Judy Miller’s WMD claims prior to the Iraq war.
Baud
I missed this story completely.
BTW, love the way you name your images.
dickbutt
Yeah! Just like Duke lacrosse. Damn accused rapists getting their day in court!
Villago Delenda Est
Well, you know all about the Rolling Stone. Dirty fucking hippies. Outside of the Village.
My nym. Over and over again.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Ash
I’ve heard rumblings about the story ‘not being true’ but just assumed it was the usual rightwing bs.
So the reasoning is that we didn’t hear the perpetrators side of the story?! What the fuck is wrong with these people? And you know what the icing on all this will be? When the same fucking publications write stories asking how Bill Cosby was able to get away with it for so long.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
There are vastly larger reasons why rape victims don’t come forward than basic journalistic responsibilities for covering alleged crimes.
Southern Beale
The New Republic casting stones in the journalistic integrity department is rich, indeed.
Violet
Funny how they didn’t seem interested in “both sides” in Ferguson.
John Cole +0
@Ash: Even if the story is not true, and a fabrication of the author or the subject of the story, that would be a completely different issue. What I find ridiculous is the demand that you get the alleged rapists side of the story.
David in NY
Cole is on a real roll today. Go, John!
beltane
When do we get to hear the stories of the people disappeared to Guantanamo?
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: Probably about the same time Dick Cheney feels remorse for his actions as vice-president.
beltane
Rolling Stone caught all kinds of holy hell for merely publishing a picture of the Boston Marathon bomber.
Russ
Some people who watch pron ascribe their actions and attitudes to ………….just sayin’
Violet
There’s a column about the issue by someone named Eric Wemple in the Washington Post. Excerpt:
I’m sure all our esteemed members of the media follow this no-stone-unturned style of journalism all the time, right?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@John Cole +0:
That’s been standard journalistic practice with all crimes and for a very good reason.
beltane
@Violet: I’m assuming that one of the higher-ups at the Washington Post is closely related to one of the alleged rapists. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I’m sure everyone was okay with the police leaking the video of Michael Brown inside the convenience store and the press just running it without any attempt to provide a chance for rebuttal, right?
the Conster
Shorter: don’t fuck with the white male privilege paradigm, or you’re going to live to regret it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet: Eric Wemple knows what scores points in the Village. So he’s basically trolling for some face time on a Sunday show.
ShadeTail
At the risk of giving undue credit to the likes of the Washington Post, isn’t giving the accused a chance to defend themselves one of the central tenets of the American justice system? How many people have been railroaded on false charges by using real or virtual perp walks in front of a compliant media? I’d be willing to bet those WaPo and New Republic writers have different motives than standing up for fair and impartial justice, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
aimai
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Show me where any person was named or shown in a video?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Eh?
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I’m with you on this one. Advocacy journalism is fine and good, but when covering an *alleged* crime it’s routine and, I presume, right, based on our adversarial legal system, to get a statement from the accused or a representative. It’s one of the few cases where “both sides have something to say” is actually valid.
That said, I’m talking about what journalism is supposed to be.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Eh?
Have you read the Rolling Stone piece?
A piece in Rolling Stone isn’t a trial in a court.
Cheers,
Scott.
aimai
@ShadeTail: There is absolutely nothing–NOTHING–stopping any individual who thinks he has been accused falsley of rape from coming forward and telling his side of the story. This is not a legal situation at all–there is neither a “presumption of innocence” which applies to legal proceedings nor any need to pander to the rights of violent rapists by the woman telling her story or a journalist covering the climate of rape and fear at UVA. The story is broader than a single accusation and involves multiple people telling multiple stories. If any individual frat boy wants to come forward and speak up about how X didn’t happen, or he personally was not involved, he is at liberty to do so.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I can’t even figure out what everyone’s objection to asking the accused for a response is. Cole’s original objection is ridiculous; if the idea of the accused having an opportunity to talk to journalists is enough to prevent someone from coming forward, then the chances seem pretty high that something else would have the same effect. I agree that there are a lot of pressures not to come forward but this doesn’t seem to be a likely marginal line.
Is everyone saying that someone accused of rape should have any access to the media? Because that’s what it seems like you’re saying.
Mike in NC
Will the incoming majority Republican House and Senate — with an able assist from the Supreme Court — pass new laws to define what constitutes “legitimate” rape?
Keith G
@John Cole +0:
I like fairness. I think it is an act of fairness to give all sides of a story a chance to respond.
Edit
@ShadeTail:
It seems to be a central tenet of the American view of fair play (and justice) only if one doesn’t hate the type of alleged actions of those suspected.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I think the gist is that it wasn’t RS’s responsibility to seek one out. With which I would disagree, though not fervently, since it’s Rolling Stone we’re talking about.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Who is “the accused” in the RS piece?
Cheers,
Scott.
Shana
@aimai: And, as a regular WaPo reader (I live in the Virginia suburbs of DC) who also read that article this morning let me add this: the author of the RS story says several times in the article that she tried multiple times and multiple methods to contact the frat boys. The closest she got was a comment from the PR person at the national headquarters for the frat. She also mentions that the woman whose story is told at the beginning of the RS story didn’t want her to push any harder than she already had to try to get anything out of the frat boys.
srv
I like that the top discussion link is your old pal JeffG.
This planet can’t make real progress as long as there is a Sith to your Jedi.
aimai
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I can’t even figure out what you think you are arguing. On what planet has the right of any individual man who may think he is accused not been protected–how was he prevented from speaking to Rolling Stone? Or publishing his “side” of the story in the press, or calling up any of the various right wing/men’s rights outlets which are literally begging to publish his imagined side of the story?
As for the RS reporter–they don’t have a duty to publish “both sides” at all–people are really confused about what Journalistic duty is here. If your story is that there is an obvious rape culture on campus, in which numerous women have been assaulted, interviewing men who say that such a culture “doesn’t exist” or “exists but it wasn’t me” isn’t even particularly meaningful–and they did interview such guys, btw.
At any rate the argument that someone should have interviewed unnamed subject X is absurd. If some other journalist thinks that’s the real untold story there is nothing preventing them from hunting these guys out and interviewing them. I urge them to do so!
ShadeTail
@aimai: Are you telling me that you think responsible journalists, which the Rolling Stone writers are alleged to be, should not be expected to be fair to the people they’re writing about? Are you telling me that you think that such fairness is “pandering to the rights of violent rapists”? Are you telling me that you think someone who was, perhaps, falsely accused by such a loud megaphone could possibly over-come that to be heard fairly?
Because if that’s what you are telling me, then I’m just going to roll my eyes at your incredible naivete and move on.
aimai
@Keith G: Blow it out your ass. I read the RS article and the journalist did, in fact, try to get a story from the frat boys but of course like everyone dealing with frat violence/drunkenness she was blown off by the national frat system which is designed to frustrate attempts to interview individual members. This has nothing to do with how the mean old women hate rape so much that it clouds their reason and sense of justice. Read the fucking article and don’t be so gullible. Just because right wing defenders of the status quo are throwing themselves into the fray with the usual bleating of victimization doesn’t make that the actual fact of the matter. The RS reporter did her due diligence. If they want to publish a counter narrative they are free to do so.
Major Major Major Major
aimai & Shana,
Didn’t actually make it through the article, I could barely stomach starting it. Didn’t know those details, thanks.
Gotta stop skimming shit…
aimai
@ShadeTail: They were fair. Read the article for yourself.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@aimai:
This is complete horseshit. The article may have been a look at rape culture, but it used as its centerpiece a specific incident. If you are going to do that, you cannot then claim that the article isn’t about that specific case.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shana: What? You mean Eric Wempel didn’t read the story he’s criticizing?
How can that be? He’s employed by that paragon of journalistic integrity, Pravda on the Potomac!
the Conster
@Keith G:
No – it’s that women are automatically deemed to be unreliable descriptors of the nature of their experience, and that the only way to “fairly” assess her claim is to have the male perpetrators peddle their
bullshitside of the “story”.Villago Delenda Est
@aimai: Right on, aimai. Right on.
Marc
@Shana:
Thank you.
For anyone who is questioning Cole’s call on this one: never, ever, ever assume that TNR or the WaPo are acting from journalistic principle. Or even basic journalistic competence.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@aimai:
Not unless it’s been edited into the story after it was published. She said in a Slate interview after it became controversial that she had tried to contact them but it wasn’t in the original story.
skerry
@the Conster: Exactly.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster: Well, the bitch wanted it and needed it so why is there all this fuss?
Amiright or what?
EthylEster
@Major Major Major Major:
OR you could just sit quietly and read the comments.
Mandalay
@the Conster:
Somewhat, but not completely O/T, in Britain today politicians bizarrely amended the 2003 Communications Act to explicitly prohibit female ejaculation in pr0n films.
So to be clear, it will remain OK to produce a film of a group of guys having sex with a woman, then ejaculating onto her face, but a filming a woman alone who brings herself to a climax is to become illegal. Male ejaculation?….good! Female ejaculation?….baaaaaad!
That’s white male privilege for you.
kc
@John Cole +0:
Why do you find that ridiculous?
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Because all the bitchez be lyin’. See: Cosby, Bill.
Major Major Major Major
@EthylEster: tried to read the RS article in question, failed, read some responses, read the comments, joined in due to interest, learned something due to joining in and changed my opinion.
Not really a mortal sin
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster: Prezactly.
EthylEster
@Shana:
Some ambiguity about what “that article” means. If you mean in the RS article, then posting a link to the place in the RS article where the author states that might be helpful. If you meant “in the WaPo article”, you might want to make that clearer. Otherwise we’re looking at a 500 comment thread with people “screaming” at each other about what the RS author wrote where. Which is not really the point..or may not be the point…or something.
Boots Day
The attacks on Rolling Stone have been very carefully written to make it sound like the reporter never tried to interview the perpetrators, which many people in this thread have been snookered by. Re-read the criticism in the Washington Post: “The charge in this piece, however, is gang rape, and so requires every possible step to reach out and interview them, including e-mails, phone calls, certified letters, FedEx letters, UPS letters and, if all of that fails, a knock on the door. No effort short of all that qualifies as journalism.” He’s not saying Erdely didn’t try to get to them; he’s saying she didn’t try hard enough. That’s a huge difference.
And it sets up a pretty neat dodge for the alleged rapists. If you rape someone, and then refuse to talk to a reporter about the incident, I guess they’re honor-bound not to write about the rape at all. That seems to be the Washington Post’s position on the whole thing.
Baud
@Mandalay:
I’ve never been happier we declared our independence from them.
Poopyman
Allllllright, who did it? I’m getting an Amazon ad for a certain Toscano Meditation Grotto with a statue of Jeebus what’s been shot through both palms. Probably by Darren Wilson.
That thread has to be 3 or 4 days ago, but the ad just showed up tonight.
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: that is… bizarre. Especially since most of that is undoubtedly viewed by straight white males…
Thoughtful David
Well, it was in The New Republic. What did you expect? Although somehow they didn’t manage to work in how this rape in Charlottesville and frat boys were weakening America’s resolve on Israel. She won’t last long at TNR if she can’t manage to work those things together.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
This is the RS article in question. I just went back through it and did not find any statement to the effect that the reporter tried to talk to the accused. However, I was skimming through and could have missed it. So someone else might find it.
That said, the arc of the reporter’s responses doesn’t make any sense. First she says she didn’t try to contact them because the victim made that a condition of talking to her. Then she says that she did try to contact them. As I often do with Rolling Stone pieces, I’m getting a bad vibe off of the reporter.
EthylEster
@Major Major Major Major wrote:
No mention of a mortal sin.
Merely a suggestion….made by Pascal centuries ago.
J’ai souvent dit que tout le malheur des hommes vient de ne savoir pas se tenir en repos dans une chambre.
the Conster
@Mandalay:
You are so right – that is Exhibit A of the paradigm. WTF is that all about? There’s several psychology/sociology doctoral dissertations in that ruling – that women’s bodies exhibiting sexual release is to be reviled, scorned and outlawed to watch by white males in power because that act of viewing sexual release is a privilege for men, by the men, and of the men. Women must be made mysterious and objectified at all times, and never to be considered equal. I have a newfound love and admiration for Margaret Atwood, who fucking nailed it.
Mnemosyne
@dickbutt:
Uh, they did get their day in court. Their lawyer presented the DNA evidence that showed they could not have been the rapists, and the case against them was dismissed. Not really sure why people love to bring up the Duke case when the charges against them were dismissed based on the evidence. Shouldn’t you at least find some poor bastard who had to spend more than a couple of nights in jail to spend your sympathy on?
cthulhu
I have a bad feeling in my gut about this story and it’s not just because of the horrific nature of the crime. It worries and puzzles me that no other news outlet has been able to confirm the story (please let me know if this is not the case).
I read Jonah Goldberg’s column about it today expecting his standard laziness and incoherence. And he didn’t disappoint in that regard. But what was strange was what seemed to me to be unusual confidence in that this was a fake story and, of course, this concept is making the rounds on the wingnut side.
Maybe someone can enlighten me as to the history of the author. Obviously RS has had some great reporting over the years and I would hate to see some lax journalism or perhaps some sort of set-up undermine confidence in their reporting or in rape allegations more generally (I was seeing positive signs in that regard in the case of Bill Cosby).
Shana
@EthylEster: Right you are. I meant the article in today’s WaPo.
dickbutt
@Mnemosyne: I can only believe you don’t remember the details of the story. Refresh yourself before you attempt to speak again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case
Mike J
@EthylEster:
Agreed. As it stands this is a blog circle jerk. I didn’t even know RS had done a story and I’m supposed to be frothing mad at NR’s response to it. This post would be better with links to both so I can know why I’m so angry beforehand.
Ripley
Privilege has spoken, case closed then!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@cthulhu: There’s a history of things like this at UVA. It’s not just an isolated case.
Consider this story from March.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Dangerman
@efgoldman:
Seems to me that example, and the rest, have this little thing called evidence.
I didn’t read the RS article, but I understand this allegedly happened years ago; ergo, no evidence. Not saying the accuser is lying, but when there is no evidence because of the passage of time … this is a problem.
Suzanne
Aimai and VDE, and others, are 110% right here.
The piece was at its core about rape culture, not a specific incident, and as such, not all of the details are pertinent, though they would be if the piece was attempting to convince readers of the guilt of specific people. As these people weren’t even named, their responses are unnecessary. One could even make the case that whether or not this specific incident occurred is irrelevant, as rape culture exists when the threat of rape is widespread, even if the crime itself is not. This is similar to racism and crime paranoia leading to cultural pants-pissing, even though crime rates are down.
I will also note that one of the specific features of rape culture is DISBELIEVING THE VICTIM, or holding her to a ridiculously high standard for proof, higher than that to which we hold victims of any other crime. So thanks to all those commenters who chipped in on that. (If I hear about Duke lacrosse one ore time, I may hurl.)
Mnemosyne
@dickbutt:
Yes, let’s go to the Wikipedia article, shall we?
It’s just so tough to be declared innocent of all charges by the courts, isn’t it? Man, you gotta feel for those kids, what with them not only not going to jail, but also having to go through the ordeal of being publicly cleared of all charges.
the Conster
While we’re discussing male privilege, Loujain Hathloul is one amazing brave warrior – she DROVE A CAR ALL BY HERSELF OMG – who needs all of our support.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
You mean like maybe Yeardley Love’s family, who had a loved one murdered? Or George Huguely, who’s going to spend at least the next 30 years in prison because nobody at UVa made it their business to make sure that he got the help he needed with his alcohol problem? It was common knowledge in the lacrosse world–to everyone, it seemed, except Dom Starsia and his staff–that Huguely had an alcohol problem and was a violent drunk, but as long as he showed up for practice every day, hey, no worries. And so Yeardley Love ended up dead.
The culture at UVa has been toxic for as long as I can remember, and probably a lot longer than that. I can’t believe anyone would let their daughter go there.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
That’s a complete cop out. The frat was named. One of them was identified as a junior who is also a lifeguard at a specific pool. The individuals in question are readily identifiable.
And the idea that this article wasn’t about the specific incident is also crap. It may have used the incident to make a larger point, but that incident was described in detail and was the centerpiece of the article. Saying that it isn’t about that case, in addition to being about other things, is a gross misrepresentation.
the Conster
@burnspbesq:
Did you let eemom know that? Her daughter goes there. I’m sure she has an opinion.
FlipYrWhig
I read the article in its entirety. I don’t remember there being an “accused” or a “charge.” Based on my recollection, it’s not like the story said, “And it was all the doing of one Tad Morbelstone of Glen Burnie, Virginia.” It was mostly about how the university and its staff failed the victim, not much about the assailant at all. I don’t get where the critics want to take this. It’s like they’re still talking about those flyering campaigns to shame alleged campus rapists circa 1989.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I have to say that I find it a bit questionable that you’ve written a book about a fictional teenage girl who is a victim of sexual abuse, when you haven’t really been that sympathetic to real-life victims of rape and domestic violence.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Best estimate is that the Evans, Seligmann, and Finnerty families collectively paid about a half mil in legal fees. So nice to hear that that’s insignificant.
J R in WV
While I agree that the US justice system is based upon the ideal that defendants are presumed innocent, and have their chance to respond to the accusations, Rolling Stone is not part of the justice system!!!
Rolling Stone is a rock-n-roll magazine, alternative media, reporting on America from the perspective of hip rockers, not a District Attorney nor a defense attorney. No criminal lawyers were consulted in the creation of this story! Maybe some first amendment media lawyers, but criminal defense lawyers? Non!
I read the RS article. It is about the experience of women who have been attacked when they had every right to feel secure. People invited to social events who were drugged, and gang raped. By people who plan to become part of the Power Elite running the country!!
Those frat rats are despicable, immoral, amoral, unAmerican monsters who deserve eternal prison sentences. In Brazilian prisons.
Those who are calling the RS article incorrect, I ask why did the administration of UVa finally close the frats down? After years of letting them slide, why are they closed today? Could it be that the UVa President was kept unaware of the magnitude of the criminal activities of her Fraternity bros on campus?
Was she horrified to see the true magnitude of the Frat Rats violation of the Honor Code? Did she pick up on the fact that their honor code didn’t mention treating fellow students with respect? Not RAPING them over and over????
Remember, UVa serves the offspring of those who fomented Treasonous rebellion against the Constitution of the USA, in support of keeping slavery a major part of life in the south!
How could they be expected to not be a cesspool of horror? Founded by a famous guy found to have a lifestyle of rape of his favorite slave…
I used to have a lot or respect for Thomas Jefferson, but that seems to be fading, right along with any respect for any institution in old Virginia.
Ronnie Pudding
Slate now has an article about this that I’d encourage people to read. It tries to explain what the RS writer did, although they don’t know. It isn’t clear how much effort the RS writer put into trying to reach the alleged rapists.
burnspbesq
@the Conster:
Sometimes, as a parent, you just have to swallow hard, let the kid make his/her own mistake, and pray that it doesn’t come back to haunt them.
FlipYrWhig
@Ronnie Pudding: they put in a lot of effort into talking to various deans and deanlets, who responded on record, and that was what the story was actually about, IMHO.
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig: YES. It is about the rape culture on campuses and the lack of meaningful institutional response.
FlipYrWhig
Incidentally, if you were doing word association with “white privilege,” rest assured that “Duke” and “lacrosse” would come up both separately and together.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: Exactly. Frankly, the story could be entirely a “she said” and _still_ be lacerating about how rape _accusations_ are handled on campus. Because that’s who was shamed by the article: the university and its social morés ETA and disciplinary system, not an assailant or assailants.
cthulhu
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yeah, I know about UVA’s history – I am not saying it couldn’t have happened there or a lot of places really.
Even if true, I wonder if the article does more harm than good. The wingnuts/MRAs get to scream “lies!” uncontested and nothing may change at UVA without some clear evidence/people willing to go on record. Obviously I understand the victim’s reluctance to take it on but in some ways the article is at the level of gossip as it stands.
If only rape victims had consistent back-up from non-university authorities, that would help, but they usually don’t.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Ronnie Pudding: Maybe you’d like to look at Jezebel’s take:
See the original for the embedded links.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@cthulhu:
I would look for a political angle there. A big part of the piece is about how the Obama Admin has opened investigations into 68 colleges on Title IX sexual violence allegations.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne: I haven’t said a single thing about the victim. What I have said is that the reporter screwed up. She screwed up badly.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@FlipYrWhig: That’s a part of what the story was about. But when you report a specific incident in excruciating detail and describe at least one individual accused of gang rape in more than enough detail to identify him, the story is also about that specific alleged crime. Quit splitting hairs on that.
cthulhu
@Suzanne:
Well, I would argue that’s bad journalism. An alternative is to say you a creating a composite of stories that your interviewees have told you but that no incident happened exactly as described.
FlipYrWhig
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Sorry, all I’m hearing is “actually, it’s about ethics in gaming journalism.”
Ronnie Pudding
I think it is naive to say that because the article is about race culture, the central incident is treated differently by the reporter.
Suzanne, above you said that one could argue that it doesn’t even matter if this incident is true. I disagree.
J.D. Rhoades
You know, the accused’s side of the story might just be that “that never happened.”
WTF? Does the accusation equal guilt now?
kindness
Shakespeare had he lived today would have said
First kill all the idiot media people.
Kay
@cthulhu:
Another part of the piece is what I thought was the author’s (implied) expectation that UVA would be MORE concerned and responsive than some of the other 68 schools on the list because they’re also on another, smaller list:
the Conster
@J R in WV:
Rolling Stone broke open a cone of silence around a revered institution, and obviously it hit the target because of the squealing. Didn’t local media do the same thing at PennState? Alternative and local media does the job the “both sides” national media won’t do, and this story needed to be told BY THE VICTIM. All the bullshit and noise around this story is just kicking up dust to distract from the failure of UVA to deal in good faith with their female students (who pay the same to attend, the last time I checked). Because UVA made a calculation that their voices weren’t powerful enough, Rolling Stone saw an opportunity with their reporting to create a reckoning. It’s not Justice in the legal sense, but it’s a rough justice, and as women that’s what we’re used to settling for.
Ronnie Pudding
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The Slate article actually makes the point about the victim not wanting the RS reporters to name the perpetrators (“Drew” was a fake name). It’s more sympathetic to the writer than the WP or TNR.
FlipYrWhig
@Ronnie Pudding: I disagree with your disagreement, though I’m not concerned that the story will turn out untrue. It’s a story about how a serious accusation was handled. The truth of that serious accusation isn’t especially material _to that story_; it would be to another one. For instance, consider a news story about a terroristic threat that was laughed off rather than taken seriously. Even if the threat was bullshit, the flawed response would still be newsworthy.
Lit3Bolt
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Exactly. Some conservative white guy says he doesn’t believe it, so therefore:
Climate change? Case closed.
Keynesian economics? Case closed.
Police brutality? Case closed.
Evolution? Case closed.
Healthcare reform? Case closed.
Higher minimum wage? Case closed.
Torture in the United States Government? Case closed.
Israel committing war crimes? Case closed.
Guns cause far more deaths than they save? Case closed.
The existence of misogyny and rape culture? Case closed.
The burden of proof for something a white American man doesn’t want to believe is insurmountable. Away with your statistics. Begone with your sources. I just don’t believe it. And that’s my right. I’ll humor you your “debate,” but it just comes down to the fact that I don’t believe you, and never will. Amen.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Here’s the thing: Erdely chose to lead the story with the most sensational charge she could. It’s so sensational that someone who studies this has never heard an accusation like it. She lists other incidents in her article on which there was much better documentation and which would have done an equally good job of demonstrating the uselessness of UVa’s administration. And she does a very good job of pinning down that uselessness.
But, as Rolling Stone is so very prone to, she absolutely had to make it as sensational as possible. That approach frequently leads to bad journalism and it’s done so here. And given that the reason the administration had never launched an investigation was that the victim didn’t want to do so, it’s a problematic case even to make the point that the administration is useless. It’s the duty of the administration to report what they found out to the police but, of the various cases Erdely could have used, she went with one where there is actually a sympathetic take on why the administration sat on their hands. Again, Erdely’s own reporting shows that there were better cases to base the story on.
As for sympathy for the victim, I have plenty of it. If you listen to her friends, something clearly happened. And one of my objections to this story is that I think it serves her poorly. As skittish as she seems I’m not sure she was really ready to go all out public on it. And to put it out there for everyone when you’ve done such a lousy job of reporting is an extra disservice to her.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@FlipYrWhig: Then you’re not listening. As I said, Erdely quite effectively identified an individual that she’s accusing of gang rape. That makes this quite unlike any of the GamerGate shit.
glasnost
@John Cole and everyone else:
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/12/02/but-what-if-its-a-lie/
The blog post that semi-started this kerfuffle was from an editor who was once fooled by Stephen Glass. His observations are posted here.
http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/
I believed the Rolling Stone story when i read it, precisely because it seems very plausible to me that UVA does a terrible job prosecuting sexual assault.
However, I found Richard Bradley’s observation of apparent factual inconsistencies in the allegations, as reported by the RS reporter and presumably described by the accuser, to be fairly convincing.
They don’t prove that something bad didn’t happen to the person, or that a sexual assault did not occur.
However, the observations would lead me to be unsure about what happened if this was some other crime. Like say, a three-hour beating.
I don’t fully trust this story anymore myself. A lot of right-wing trolls are piling on, but it did not start with them.
It’s completely possible that there’s explanations for the odd things about the story, or that the parts of the story are false that are basically trivial and the gist of it is true. But it’s certainly something to be looked into.
I want to see UVA conduct a transparent and thorough investigation, and I certainly want them to take allegations of sexual assault a hell of a lot more seriously, obviously and especially in cases remotely resembling physical coercion.
But I think that Jebezel post jumped the shark at people who are reasonably performing sober assessment of the story itself. I’m sorry, but no matter how horrible the story is – maybe especially when it’s horrible – it’s neccessary to use critical thinking to examine if the story is true. It’s actually especially important with horrible stories, because horrible stories have power.
That’s always going to make people angry that one dares question the horrible story. But questioning, done politely, is not the same thing as denouncing someone who comes forward, or accusing them of lying. And it’s a necessary thing to do.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): The reporter didn’t screw up at all. She reached out to the accused. She didn’t make talking to the accused a condition of publishing the story, in order to be sensitive to the victim’s feelings and at her request. This is why I don’t think you’re showing sympathy to the victim here.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s the biggest pile of fatuous bullshit I’ve read since . . . well, actually, since some of Suzanne’s comments earlier in the thread. If you effectively identify an individual, then the truth is really fucking material to your story.
J.D. Rhoades
@Mnemosyne:
Because it stands for the proposition that not everyone accused of rape is guilty.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne: Then she should have used one of the numerous other cases she mentioned in the story as her lead. If the victim will not let you perform basic journalistic ethics, you don’t use that case as your lead.
And, again, this involves the reporter changing her story as to whether she reached tried to contact the accused. Either she honored the victim’s request not to or she tried to contact them. Which is it? It can’t be both and the fact that she’s told both stories doesn’t inspire confidence.
beltane
OK people, who stole the brains? http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/zombies-or-dumb-students-about-100-brains-missing-university-n260351
Kay
@the Conster:
I’m a little blown away by the menu of options described; report to police, or do that strange mediation or whatever it is where the alleged victim tells the accused what she feels…what is that?
I just think it’s odd. I don’t know what I would think if I were told “we can go to police or we can just conduct our own quasi-legal proceeding, your choice!”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@ShadeTail: No defense attorney worth a license to practice will permit a client accused of a violent crime to talk to the media. A right to defend oneself is a right that pertains to proceedings in court. anyone accused – even before possible criminal charges – is sensible to obtain counsel, and heed advice from counsel. Anyone accuse of a violent crime would be foolish to talk to the press.
Nor do I believe a journalist is required to present the view of the accused. Don’t confuse reporting with a trial. And a sane/sensible accused would not provide a view.
drkrick
@The Dangerman:
Except the account of the (alleged) victim. Some of us believe that’s not nothing.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@glasnost: The Virginia Attorney General, Mark Herring, appointed an independent investigator to investigate the incident and UVA’s response.
Reuters:
It doesn’t sound to me like the University and the fraternity are expecting the RS story to be wrong…
We’ll see what the investigator finds.
Cheers,
Scott.
eemom
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
fwiw, I agree with you. I haven’t had time to study this thread in depth, but from a quick skim of the comments, a lot of the reactions are half-assed, uninformed, knee jerk bullshit.
Yes, my daughter goes to UVA, and she knows the victim. I’ve discussed this with her at some length. And one thing I’ve tried to impress on her is this: EVERY allegation of sexual assault must be investigated and prosecuted if there’s evidence to support a prosecution, and there is NO excuse for that not happening, ever.
However, it is equally true that the presumption of innocence until proven guilty is NEVER to be discarded either. Sorry, but the RS reporter finding the victim “credible” is not a substitute for due process.
FlipYrWhig
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): So sorry to disappoint your otherwise high standards and exemplary judgment.
FlipYrWhig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
IOW, it’s true that there was a report. Which they handled for shit. Which was the story.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): First of all, she didn’t breach journalistic ethics. And second of all, why is the burden of proof higher for rape than for ANY. OTHER. CRIME?
As mentioned before, if someone says they got burgled and their laptop got stolen, a reporter could ethically report that as fact without talking to the burglar. Shit, people are found guilty of MURDER in the absence of a victim’s body. In every crime, we can give the victim the dignity of an assumption of honesty, even if we can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the assailant is guilty. But not rape. Rape is different.
Again, even if the story is untrue, the injustice being exposed is UVA’s lack of adequate response and protection.
myiq2xu
John Cole’s transition to the dark side is now complete.
danielx
@Mandalay:
Next thing you know they’ll outlaw steam.
Seriously, I read the whole RS article from beginning to end. It was a few weeks back and I’m not as up on the details as I was, however…
The reporter attempted to contact the (alleged) assailants, but was unable to do so. Would it have been better for her to write that “John Doe, James Roe et al are among those who the female student identified, but they refused to speak with this reporter”, or words to that effect…? If the reporter identified someone who wasn’t guilty, would that open the reporter and RS liable for damages, etc?
Also too – if not naming them makes the guilty sweat (and I have no doubt that the events/crimes were as written), well, I admit to having trouble finding a downside here.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@FlipYrWhig: The standards don’t have to be very exemplary for a claim that the truth is immaterial to an accusation of gang rape to fail to meet them
beltane
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I am amazed at just how many people are confused by this. How many media stories involving criminal investigations feature a “fairness doctrine” approach? Did the young men wrongfully convicted of rape in the Central Park jogger case receive fair treatment at the hands of the media? If the fraternity feels they and their members have an actionable complaint against Rolling Stone, they are perfectly free to sue them for libel. Our media regularly convicts people in the court of public opinion without any consequence to themselves. Only when frat boys at a snooty college are involved does anyone get bent out of shape about it.
eemom
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
But that’s exactly what’s being done here.
@danielx:
Holy shit.
drkrick
Presumption of innocence is the correct standard for the legal system. There’s no evidence that the system has breached either that or the need for due process. Those of us outside the legal system are free to believe what we believe on whatever standard of evidence we choose. No one’s calling for vigilante justice that I’m aware of.
However, if I was on the UVA campus I’d be giving a pretty wide berth to anyone associated with that fraternity and any other organization with a similar reputation based on even the flimsiest of rumors.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Because it’s not. There may be murder convictions without a body, but vanishingly few of them. Convictions for burglary without being able to demonstrate that something was taken are equally rare. The problem isn’t that the burden of proof is higher in rape cases; it’s that the nature of evidence, particularly if the victim waits an extended period before filing a complaint, isn’t very clear. Discussing the ways in which the judicial system fails rape victims, and there are, without understanding just why rape is such a problematic crime to prove, is a waste of time. In the end, it largely depends entirely upon the credibility of the victim because there isn’t any other evidence. That’s a fundamentally different situation than most crimes.
Sure, but if they identify the burglar, as this article effectively did, then they are ethically required to try to contact the accused. This story went far beyond just stating that a crime was committed.
Actually, people who claim that there was a crime without any evidence beyond their word are disbelieved all the time. The difference is that if a victim can present some other evidence of a crime being committed we are a lot more likely to be believed. And that’s the problem with trying to figure out what happened.
And it’s a really good example why, of all the cases Erdely could have used to frame her expose on the UVa administration, she picked absolutely the wrong one.
danielx
Somehow, I doubt that a pompous bad review (or bad pompous review) from the Villager Voice is going to trouble Erdely to any great extent.
Unless the whole thing was made up from whole cloth, which I seriously doubt.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@beltane:
Uhm, no. And if that’s your defense of this story, you just surrendered, because the media was legitimately roasted for that.
And you think the proper response to that is to defend that sort of reporting in this case rather than to condemn it in the others?
beltane
Due process rights have absolutely nothing to do with a magazine article or Nancy Grace or anything else that happens in the media. If they did, the only crime stories that would ever be covered would be post-trial or even post-appeal.
the Conster
@Kay:
Yeah, if UVA had a best practices system in place, they would have encouraged her to report to the police AND provided her and the police with information that they could have gleaned with some minimal investigation, but they didn’t. They could have supported her in her attempt to obtain legal justice, if that were her choice, but they didn’t. They repeatedly dismissed her. Instead, UVA is no different than the Catholic Church, or Penn State – circle the wagons and play defense until they can’t anymore. There’s an implicit admission of their failure by their mea culpas as evidenced by suspending frats and the whole soul searching hand wringing response. They chose… poorly. Now, they’re known as that rapey school. Well played, UVA.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Um, the Central Park Jogger stories were reports on five teenagers who had been arrested. Did the RS story name any names? Has anyone been arrested?
You’ve picked a really strange hill to die on in this thread, IMHO.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
glasnost
@suzanne:
I know it’s hard to respond to many different points of view all at once, but I don’t have a problem with, in general, a reporter reporting about rape on the word of a credible victim. You’re right, that stuff happens with other crimes.
It’s also fair for other people to open the question of whether the reporter did a good job reporting, and whether anything about the story that seems inconsistent should lead us to question what happened.
Personally, after reading this, I think a reasonable person could be uncertain if the story is completely accurate.
And if the story isn’t completely accurate, it’s natural to wonder if the reporter did enough due diligence.
http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/
That doesn’t mean that it’s inherently wrong to publish a story about rape based on a victim’s story as the primary evidence. Of course not. On the other hand, if the story claimed that someone was raped – or mugged, or sold fraudulent insurance – by illegal immigrants on the white house lawn, it probably wouldn’t be published without overwhelming proof. Rightly so.
The details of this situation are shades of gray. Ignoring the rightwing trolls, I’d like to know if a story that certainly captured my emotions when I first read it is true. Not everyone is out to establish a witch and burn them, including people asking questions (and also, people who think the story was right to be published). I have a foot in both camps, myself. I think the story was defensible to be published. But I don’t think I feel sure what happened anymore.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
With the information they provided, they may as well have.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I am not talking about the way the legal system fails rape victims. I am talking about the way society at large fails rape victims. Quite frankly, there is no innocent-until-proven-guilty in the court of public opinion, no due process.
I am talking about how, if I hear that a friend gets in a car wreck, i don’t need to see a picture of the FUBAR car to believe that it’s true. If a coworker tells me that his house got broken into, I believe him, even if no one is convicted. Culturally, there is no presumption of doubt.
But a woman says she’s raped, and WOOHOO, it’s a shitshow of picking her story apart, of needing multiple witnesses and video evidence. And in the absence of that, well, tough shit. How many women have accused Bill Cosby, and yet some people STILL will never believe that he’s a rapist?
This is intrinsically cruel to victims of sexual abuse. They don’t even get a basic assumption of credibility.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/11/26/uva-brett-sokolow.html
Another take that puts the actions (or inactions) of the school in a different light.
beltane
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): They weren’t “roasted”. The NY Post and the rest are still in business and no one but the young men involved suffered anything for what happened. If you want to propose a blanket rule forbidding all pre-trial reporting on criminal cases, fine, but to have such a shrill and strident response to this case and not to the assistance of pre-trial media coverage in general is a little curious.
Kay
@the Conster:
I don’t know, but I thought it was pretty clear the author’s intent was to “write it backward” with the most recent allegation recounted first back to the actual confession/ conviction in 1983 (?) because she sought to show how they haven’t made any progress. Her point was it’s as bad now as it was in 1983. That’s how it read to me.
The “didn’t give them a chance to speak” is also confusing, because one of the defenses is there is no “Drew” or “Andrew” and no one from that fraternity ever worked at the pool. The whole point of the “didn’t give them a chance to speak” is these people are identifiable from that story. Apparently they’re not.
The part that’s hard to square with it being a total invention is how the university didn’t treat it as an invention. They didn’t do a good job with the process, but they employed their whole intervention strategy or whatever it is. Either they thought it happened or they were pretending they thought it happened.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): So the answer is no.
The issue isn’t whether someone with knowledge of the student body at UVA and the fraternity at the time could make inferences. There are always people who can make inferences about any event.
The RS piece doesn’t name “Drew” and his brothers and pledges who (allegedly) raped the woman. They’re free to come forward and tell their side, if they want, and if they feel they must defend their names. Names that 99.9999+% of the people in the country don’t presently know…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mandalay
@the Conster:
Right, because at heart it’s really all about power and control. The scariest thing to those creeps must be a woman ejaculating without any man involved: a woman enjoying sex, and climaxing without the slightest need of any dick, or even any male participation, and certainly not any male dominance.
No wonder they have banned it.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Your analogies are pathetic. Do you really not see the difference between you believing personal friends who are making claims that they could easily verify and people believing complete strangers who can’t? Culturally, there are all sorts of presumptions of doubt. I routinely think stories I hear are complete bullshit and so do you, so stop pretending otherwise.
Suzanne
@glasnost: I think it is reasonable to look for inconsistencies in Erdely’s work, or to see if or where she went wrong. But she did not go wrong by not speaking with the alleged perpetrators. That was not an ethical violation, IMO, and in fact I think it would have been unethical in the larger sense to not bring this shit to light. There is a very definite need-to-know here.
Rape was a huge problem on my college campus, as well. My best friend was raped leaving the library, and our university didn’t do jack shit about it.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So would you let your daughter go to a party at that fraternity? After all, you can never discard the presumption of innocence, and if she doesn’t go to the party, she’s presuming they must be guilty.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Okay. Just remember that the next time the media does a hit job on someone without giving them a chance to respond, you’ve forfeited your right to complain since they weren’t under any obligation to get the other side of the story.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Yes, there is. Again, that’s why she should have used one of the much better sourced cases that she had available to her and that she mentions in the story. And one of the reasons why this was a terrible case to use as the centerpiece was precisely that she wasn’t in a position to do the things that it was her responsibility to do.
And I notice that you don’t seem at all troubled that her story on this has varied with different tellings.
Kay
@the Conster:
I have trouble with “if this was her choice”. I know that’s how the university treats this, part of the reason they’re having so much difficulty is they’re trying to let the victim lead, but that isn’t how the criminal justice system works, and it’s a really profound difference. It isn’t the victim versus the perpetrator. It’s the state versus the perpetrator.
I always have trouble with this. Remember when they were going to charge that film director for raping a 15 year old and people were saying “but the victim doesn’t want to prosecute”. That isn’t what prosecution is about. The victim isn’t a party. The offense is against the state, the public.
Victims rights gets really tricky. I think we can include the victim I just think we have to keep the overarching structure in mind. If she had gone to the police it would be “State of Virginia versus alleged rapist”. Victims do lose control of the process. That’s intended, and structural. The whole point of the thing is we’re all in this, we’re all harmed.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Kay:
Where are you getting this from? I haven’t seen that anywhere. Is the claim now that Erdely fabricated details about the perpetrator?
Edit: And looking back over it, that would mean that the victim is fabricating events that happened later. I’m not really sure this is where you want to go.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): The problem is, you seem to regard the RS story as a “hit job on someone without a chance to respond”. I don’t.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
cthulhu
@Suzanne:
Exactly this.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
From what others (especially Kay) are saying here, the “problem” seems to be that the reporter actually took some pains to conceal the identities of the accused and make them less easily identified, and people are grasping onto those inconsistencies to assume the whole story is bogus.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So, wait, first you’re indignant that the reporter would discuss details about the alleged perpetrators, and now you’re indignant that she may actually have taken pains to conceal their identities?
Make up your mind: is it horrible to identify alleged criminals or not? If it is, then you should be pleased that the reporter tried not to make the alleged rapists easily identifiable.
the Conster
@Gordon, the Big Express Engine:
That’s an interesting take by an independent observer… wait, what? He’s the UVA sexual assault compliance consultant? Never mind.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
@Kay: is it the school’s responsibility to “force” the victim go to the police and make sure the perps are prosecuted? Or does the school’s responsibility fall more on providing counseling (in whatever form appropriate) and engendering a school wide culture that leads to a few incidents as possible?
Kay
@the Conster:
My point is, in a way I think it’s better for the victim if there’s a public, less personal element. That’s a crime. It’s an offense against everyone. Then we can get away from the idea (particularly with rape) that the victim is somehow responsible for what happened. I think the whole “victims rights” thing (how it’s currently done) is making it worse. Why is she given this menu of options? Is it a crime or not? If it’s a suspected crime then it’s an offense against all of us. It takes it off her. It seems to me like they may have been well-intended trying to “empower” the victim with “choices” of how to proceed, but really they’re putting a lot on these people.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Yes. Go read that article again. Some of the victim’s story hinges on aspects of those details. If the reporter is fabricating them, that’s also bad.
If that’s what she had to do, it only reemphasizes that this was the wrong case to use as her lede. Either way, it’s bad reporting, particularly when she had so many other cases she could have used.
As I said, Rolling Stone, as is often the case, cares a lot more about being sensational than it does about doing quality work.
grandpa john
@Gordon, the Big Express Engine: Based on the actions reported taken by the university, they
don’t exactly agree with him
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Well, holy shit again, because I frankly thought you were better and smarter than a pathetic bullshit response like that.
Thankfully, my daughter is.
Mandalay
The biggest problem (of several) that I have with the Shulewitz article in New Republic is at the very end where it baldly states “This article has been updated” without any further information.
It’s a bit rich to take the sanctimonious high ground with Rolling Stone on their journalistic conduct, but then allow your critique to become a living document, without telling the reader what changes have been made to the original article, and why.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): There is no way I would have ever okayed a client talking to the press when I did defense work. It is quite possible that I might bow out if I client chose to do it against my advice.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So revealing the identity of an accused rapist in a larger story is bad, except when it turns out that some of the details were deliberately changed in order to conceal the person’s identity, which is also bad.
I really have no idea how you’re able to hold those two completely contradictory notions in your head and still claim to be using a single vestige of logic.
grandpa john
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Hey, trolls gotta troll.
This is referring to your reply to another “unnamed” post
smintheus
@John Cole +0: No, the argument is that you need at least to try very hard to get their comments before you make lurid allegations. The author made minor attempts to contact maybe just one of the supposed perps, and then decided to give it up. The reason the author gave for dropping the whole evidence-gathering stage was that her source said she didn’t want the author to identify them. So the author was totally controlled by what her source told her, and accepted that – but didn’t tell readers that that was part of the deal. Only later did she reluctantly admit that she viewed her job as just presenting the alleged victim’s story, because as she said she found her to be credible. That’s not journalism; that’s dictation.
Kay
@Gordon, the Big Express Engine:
I think it’s really tough. It came about because victims were treated horribly and completely ignored except as far as they were useful to prosecutors, so that was bad and untenable, but you have to be careful because it gets all screwed up.
We have a judge here who said it straight out. He said “they’re making the victim a party and that isn’t how this works”. I get what he’s saying. He’s insisting it stay within the more impersonal “state versus alleged perpetrator”. He’s trying to protect that idea that it’s not solely or even mostly about the victim getting justice. It’s about the public getting justice.
So the prosecutor could go forward without the victim, they do that here with domestic violence (eventually, with repeat offenders) but in THIS case that would be impossible. Possible, but fruitless. So should they just send her to the cops? I don’t know. I don’t think it should be completely up to her whether to report to police though. That’s just not her job. That’s a huge burden.
I know what we’re trying to do with this, with “choice”, I’m just not sure it’s helping.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So your daughter is happily partying with those guys because, after all, presumption of innocence?
Note that we’re not discussing presumption of innocence in a court of law right now. We’re discussing presumption of innocence on a social level. People are arguing here that public opinion should have to follow the same rules as a court. So which side of your mouth are you talking out of when you talk to your daughter about this?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne: That’s because you’re deliberately being an idiot.
1) Writing a story in which you effectively identify someone being accused of gang rape without giving them a chance to respond is bad.
2) Writing a story in which you are describing a gang rape and its aftermath by fabricating information, including multiple incidents that are meant to describe the trauma the victim has gone through, is bad.
Those are not mutually contradictory. There are multiple things you have to do to make a good story.
Do you not recognize how far down the rabbit hole you’ve gone when you are defending making shit up in a story like this?
draftmama
I am so tired of this bullshit. Statistically 1 in 3 women in the US are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. For me it was as a child and then again in my 30’s. We live with this. Apparently society – i.e. the MSM – doesn’t understand this.
My mother wouldn’t stop my father, the police didn’t believe me. 95% of girls in Egypt have their genitals mutilated. Millions of young women and children in India are enslaved. What the fuck is wrong with this world.
I’m in my mid 60’s and nothing has changed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Her daughter is an adult. eemom cannot command her to go or not to go to any party.
ETA: If eedaughter chooses not to go to a party at that fraternity, it does not mean she made any kind of decision about guilt or innocence wrt the situation in question. It is silly to suggest that it was such a thing.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Sure, I hear plenty of things that are bullshit. Like this toothpaste will leave my teeth feeling fresher than EVAR, like Shrub was a compassionate conservative. But in general, if people say they experienced something bad, I believe them. It is damaging for someone to experience pain, to experience victimization, and then to be told that it did not happen, or that it wasn’t a big deal, or that they brought it on themselves. And what’s more is that the vast, VAST majority of the time, those people are telling the truth. Do you think all women lie? Only rape victims?
I am less troubled by what you think are Erdely’s inconsistencies than I am by the fact that once AGAIN, rich white male privilege is acting to wash away anything threatening.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: This.
Edith
@glasnost:
Except that link is a link to a post by a complete fucking moron who doesn’t know the first thing about rape; which he fully admits. Maybe he should have stopped after admitting that. For instance, he dismisses as “silly” the claim that one in three women at UVa have been rapes. Below is a link that summarizes a study from the best researcher in the field. It talks about one particular study, but other people have replicated it elsewhere with similar results.
yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/c
Basically, 6% of college-age men are self-admitted rapists (as long as you describe the action and don’t call it rape). These men have an average of six victims apiece. 6×6 is ~36% of women, given relatively even numbers of men and women. Now some of those rapes probably pre-date college attendance, but still, 1 in 3 is plausible, not “silly”, It’s probably at the high end of what other surveys of women have found, which tend to be about 1 in 4 college women, but people tend to congregate with people who are similar. If she works as a victim advocate, her anecdotal experience is going to skew her perception to the high end. It doesn’t change the fact that he made a wildly inaccurate statement of the basis of bullshit he pulled out of his ass, and his “feeling” that it can’t possibly be right.
Then he claims that if gang rape as frat initiation were common, we’d have more stories about it. Maybe he doesn’t remember any, but I do. It happened at this very goddamn frat house 30 fucking years ago. The only reason that woman got a conviction is because one of the pieces of shit who raped her sent her a letter of apology after 20 years as part of his 12-step program.
http://www.nbc29.com/story/27455060/30-years-later-uva-rape-victim-speaks-to-lack-of-progress
My first year at Smith there was a terrible gang rape at UMAss at Amherst. Now, it may not have been an “initiation”, but really? That somehow matters so much. If you pay attention to these things there have been a steady stream of gang rape allegations of varying degrees of provability over the last 20 years (about how long I’ve been paying attention), so many I can’t even remember them all anymore. Was it in Kentucky that one of the girl’s guy friends saw what was happening, rescued her, and got a conviction because they had an eyewitness other than the victim or was it in Tennessee? I think I remember one from Georgia were they were able to get a conviction long after the fact, but I can’t remember any more because after awhile they start to blend together. That Richard Bradley has been able to avoid sullying his beautiful mind with these things doesn’t mean they haven’t been reported elsewhere. It speaks more to his aforementioned ignorance than anything else. So yeah, his arguments are shit.
eemom
@Kay:
Thank you for (characteristically) injecting one of the few notes of coherence into this mess of a thread.
To the extent the focus of the article is on the failings of the University, your #151 nails it: rape is a fucking CRIME. Why isn’t the response of the University, plain and simple, to tell these young women that, and encourage them to report it to the police?
Another thing I haven’t seen asked much here or anywhere, which I also mentioned to my daughter: where is the concern for potential future victims, if an incident like this is not reported and investigated?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Neither. Your assumptions are running away with you.
Well, anything threatening other than the special prosecutor that just got appointed to investigate this.
wetcasements
And of course Andrew Sullivan chimes in with a link to a “ballsy” attack on UVA victim’s credibility.
Jesus, the sooner he goes off to die in a fire the better.
the Conster
@Kay:
In the instances of rape claims which I’m assuming are all (effectively) women making the claim, I just keep going back to the sheer number of complaints – dozens in the case of UVA – that are made, versus the small number that are actually advanced up to the highest level. Academia is like every other established white male institution when it comes to serial rapists – that it takes so. many.women.victims. until things FINALLY start to stick. The tone of this thread shows why – the women will be denied their own experience if it doesn’t fit the rape narrative that men understand, and the women who are looking for help surely are made to understand, implicitly or explicitly by the institution, that it only matters how men understand it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Is there any reason that you think that smearing eedaughter is justified? I am sorry, but that last comment is well beyond the pale. You should take a a step well back.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you.
Mandalay
@Suzanne:
There is an interesting but obnoxious offshoot of that group who fully realize that he is a cold rapist, but still shake their bowed heads and say “This is so sad”, and “I really find this story really disturbing” , and “I find myself not wanting to believe this”. Even after it is blindingly obvious that Cosby is a serial rapist who repeatedly performed the act with very careful planning, their reaction is still all about their own feelings and how Cosby had that great TV show that they grew up with. Not a word about the victims.
Cosby is a watered down version of Jeffrey Dahmer. He didn’t kill his victims or eat them, but he sure as hell drugged them then raped them.
danielx
@eemom:
It’s true that I have no doubt. That is, of course, a hell of a long way from definitely knowing that events did transpire as written in the article. Hey, I wasn’t there, so my beliefs are just that, beliefs. No facts, no testimony under oath, no arrests, no indictment, no nuthin’.
But given what I’ve read of fraternity life of late, it sounds all too plausible. I’m well aware that there are a lot of great kids in Greek life (probably a majority), who don’t participate in gang rape, are tomorrow’s young leaders, public service contributors and so forth and so on.
The sad part is that like many others, I’m all too ready to believe every word written in the article because what I’ve read previously about fraternity misdeeds – alcohol poisonings, pledges dying, sexual misconduct as described here, or at Georgia Tech, or at Cal State San Marcos – has made me ready to believe it.
Suzanne
@Mandalay: But we won’t know anything until we hear Bill Cosby’s side of the story!
SNARK.
Kay
@Gordon, the Big Express Engine:
And then she struggles with exactly what you’re talking about thru the whole piece, because she’s worried that she didn’t report to the right person or persons or “have the courage”.
If it’s true it’s not fraternity hijinks. These people are walking around and they’re rapists. I just don’t know how we got to the point where this entire thing is up to her. I’m not at all clear that was the intent when the focus on victims rights started.
I guess it’s “empowering” but it’s also a huge responsibility for an 18 year old (alleged) rape victim.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne: We’ve heard Bill Cosby’s side of the story. It is, frankly, not credible. So I’m not sure what your comment is trying to say, even with the snark tag.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Silliness is silliness. Mnem is off on an unsupportable tangent. Calling it is no big thing.
Mandalay
@draftmama:
For the vivid examples you provided, the basic problem is clearly that the world is run by men.
Quaker in a Basement
Seems like at least one of the writers complaining that RS didn’t contact the frat boys would have taken the trouble to show us all how easy it is.
grandpa john
@eemom: What is happening here is exactly what we see in these type of threads. it what we saw in coverage of Darren Wilsons actions, that is, an attempt to gloss over the repeated criminal acts of some privileged people, obfuscation of the underlying wrong by bringing in nitpicking and irrelevant history, blaming the victims and applying negative purposes to those who point out the injustices.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I’m saying that we didn’t need to hear his side of the story to know that it wasn’t credible. And we don’t need to hear “no comment” from these clowns to know that UVA has done a shitty job dealing with rape on their campus, either.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Quaker in a Basement: Actually, they pointed out a number of ways that it would have been very easy to demonstrate that Erdely had tried, none of which she apparently did. And that’s really the problem. They may well have refused to talk to her; the lawyers in the house have given a lot of good reasons why they might. But she didn’t try sending them an email, despite those addresses being easy to find. She didn’t try going to the frat house, which also would have been easy.
That said, if what Kay says about there being fictionalized details in the story (which I have not seen any sourcing on and Key’s comments here are the only places I’ve seen this suggested), then there are much bigger problems than not trying to contact the suspects.
eemom
With further gratitude to Omnes — and since, as it happens, eedaughter’s birthday is about to happen — I’ll just say that she has more sense at age 20 than some people on this thread will ever possess should they attain age 120.
I worry about a lot of things — but never that she will speak/write, on any topic, the kind of mindless, knee jerk, and/or disingenuous bullshit on abundant display here this evening.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne: And, as I’ve said over and over again, it would have been really easy to demonstrate the flaws of the UVa administration without screwing up the story. The reporter opted to do shoddy work because it was more sensational. That’s bad work on her part.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe you when you say that you go ahead and believe all stories of people who say that they have been victimized. You couldn’t function in society if that were true.
A large part of the reason why it is so obvious that Cosby isn’t credible is that you have a lot of specific allegations about him as an individual. In the UVa case, we don’t have that. We have one allegation about the individual in question. And, sorry, I don’t conclude that someone is a violent gang rapist based just upon that.
eemom
@Suzanne:
Do you not understand the difference between UVA doing a shitty job of dealing with rape on its campus, and assuming guilt of those accused?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@eemom: I think she just has a lot less experience with people flat out lying to her as the rest of us do. In which case, I’m jealous.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I don’t have kids, but I would be damned pissed if someone said something about my my nephew or niece along the lines of what was said about your daughter. It is simply wrong.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): We have NO allegations about anyone specific. NONE. These people have not been identified. Say it with me….HAVE NOT BEEN IDENTIFIED.
We have a story about a woman who needed help from her educational institution, and didn’t get it. THAT IS THE STORY. That’s the problem. And we’ve heard from the University’s rebuttal.
eemom
fwiw, also, I’ve been told by a credible source that y’all’s hero RS reporter lied to the victim about what she was going to publish — including the victim’s real name.
Still no breach of journalistic ethics?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): You’ve built a truly amazing edifice with your extensive clairvoyant comments in this thread. I’m impressed – er, maybe astounded is a better word….
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@eemom: I do. Do you understand that assuming that the woman is telling the truth is the absolute first step in getting more women to report these incidents, which you say you want?
Once again, since these men were not identified, I can simultaneously believe the woman and not aim my laser death ray of suspicion at anyone specific.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Yes, one has been, unless you’re claiming that Ederly fabricated details. Your refusal to admit that she provided more than enough detail to identify one of them if those details are accurate is hopeless.
No, that really is not the whole story. That is a part of it and a part of it that would have been told much better by a competent journalist.
Suzanne
@eemom: The item up for discussion is the attempted discrediting of the story based on the reported not speaking with the unnamed alleged assailants. If she committed a different breach of ethics, we can talk about it then. But it was nice of you to try to mock anyone who disagrees with you.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I’m not sure how else to respond to someone who can say, “Culturally, there is no presumption of doubt,” with a straight face. It’s clearly someone who has a very different set of experiences than I do. Or someone whose statements here don’t really match up with the way she lives her life. Or someone who gets taken advantage of constantly.
Linnaeus
For folks wondering why rape victims might not go to the police (and why care must be taken in encouraging them to do so), here’s an example. Here’s another. And here are some other factors involved as to why.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne: A part of your problem is that you don’t see the line between thinking that the reporter did a terrible job and thinking that the victim must be lying that anything happened. As far as I can tell, you don’t see any ground at all between taking everything in the article as gospel and believing that rape is nothing but a made up story. Well, sorry, but there is a fuck load of ground there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: She might be a bit pissed off about the fact that people chose to fuck with one of her kids on this thread. You might want to factor that into your judgment. I seriously doubt that eemom is a defender of rape culture (no matter what weird shit is okayed at Yale).
Kay
@eemom:
I don’t love the piece, partly because there’s 68 schools on the list and I know she wanted to make a point about how this happens in this great school, but because I was aware of the broader civil rights focus and the point behind the investigation of the 68 schools it seemed a little shoddy to put it in that really well-worn groove. I would have liked it better if she had resisted that and instead maybe brought out how varied the schools are, focused on the universality of this complaint- “this happens at Brown AND at this state college in Alaska, which is also on the list”. There’s a common element and it isn’t the easy point, the “elite school/fraternity” story. The common element is all these people are saying they’re being assaulted at schools in every state and selectivity and income group.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): There is far more reason for women to not discuss their rapes publicly than there is for them to falsely come forward. Quite frankly, because of the character assassination and disbelief they experience, far, FAR more women do not come forward than do. And false reports of rape are statistically rare, and rape is statistically very common. So it is quite logical, in the absence of other evidence, to assume that someone who says she was raped is telling the truth.
eemom
@Suzanne:
If by “assuming that the woman is telling the truth” you mean treating the woman and her allegations with respect and — again — investigating EVERY allegation properly pursuant to law, that’s what I want.
However, judging by your comments on this thread, “assuming the woman is telling the truth” according to you means it’s fine to assume the accused are guilty. I’m not okay with that.
Nor am I persuaded to think it’s okay because the accused HAVE NOT BEEN IDENTIFIED.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): The only point that you have to defend your assertion that “she did a terrible job” is your belief that she breached ethics by not trying hard enough to contact the alleged assailants. I vehemently disagree, for reasons I’ve already explained, but most especially because we would not expect to hear from an assailant if she had been the victim of any other sort of crime, and the point of the article is the institution’s shitty response when a student came to them in need.
If you have some other reasons to think she did a crappy job, other than your “bad vibe”, I’m all ears.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: FWIW, Mnem has posed a hypothetical situation to me invoking one of my Spawns, and I didn’t take it as any personal attack, merely a thought exercise to encourage me to examine an issue from another POV. I know that we are all sensitive about our kids, and understandably so, but I am happy to give Mnem the benefit of any doub., as I think she’s proven herself to be an intelligent and kind person for the most part. I really don’t think she intended to insult eedaughter. My two cents.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
It is vitally important to understand what those means and what they don’t. I will agree that it is logical to engage in what I call provisional assumptions about what is and isn’t true based upon that but it is critical to understand that that doesn’t mean that it is certain. A lot of people, and I think that at least on this issue you are one of them, confuse something being statistically likely with it being true. As soon as the word “statistics” or any of its derivatives comes up, you are dealing in a world of uncertainty. And if you can’t keep a certain amount of skepticism in mind when dealing with these kinds of questions then you really shouldn’t be engaging with them.
Categorically concluding someone’s guilt to the point that you don’t care whether they get to speak based upon one statistically likely accusation is a terrible, terrible idea.
Very true. But, as I said at the very beginning, if someone is so skittish that a journalist wanting to even talk to the other side is a dealbreaker, then there are probably other things keeping her from coming forward. This is where the possibility that Ederly broke confidence with the victim is entirely relevant to this question. What it sounds like is that (and I got this vibe off of the story itself, not just what has been said here) the victim was really uncomfortable with the whole idea and Ederly talked her into it. At that point, the dictate not to contact the perps at all is a giant red flag that there is all sorts of other hinkiness going on.
Ederly wanted sensation. She got it and left a lot of damage in her wake.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I most likely would have moved to withdraw in that event. A client that difficult wouldn’t get any easier as the
eemom
@Kay:
That too. And that’s yet another another reason I’m inclined to agree with JMN that the RS article is shoddy sensationalism motivated more by the author’s self-promotion than by concern for her horrific subject matter.
And, at this point — and being who I’m the mother of as set forth above — anyone who thinks that pointing that out amounts to trivializing the issue of college rape, can frankly kiss my ass.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): case progressed. Better to bail sooner than later. @eemom: I am appalled by the comments about eekiddo. It’s uncalled for and tasteless.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Well, sure, if you ignore all of the other things I’ve mentioned throughout this thread.
Every example you’ve used to explain this is a poor analogy, either because there is no individual targeted or because there is other available evidence besides just one person’s story. I would love for you to find me examples in which a news story makes a serious allegation against an identifiable individual based upon nothing other than one person’s word and didn’t make a serious attempt to contact the other side. Then you would have a valid explanation.
Which could have been much better demonstrated without using this case.
Then my suggestion is to scroll up rather than down.
Suzanne
@eemom: Well, since I believe she’s telling the truth about being raped, I believe that there’s at least one rapist. I have no reason to doubt this point, and in fact it’s incredibly statistically likely that it is so. False accusations of rape are rare, but rape is common. However, since they haven’t been IDed, I don’t have anyone to point that toward, and as such, don’t think that any specific students deserve to be treated with suspicion by the general public (their friends, maybe, depending on how much of this is known on campus). And I also believe that even the shittiest rapist deserves due process. But I don’t believe that someone has to be found guilty in court for me to hold a negative opinion about their character.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I don’t recall the situation in which Mnem used your children in a hypothetical. It may or may not have been appropriate. In this situation, I think her references to eedaughter were shameful. YMMV.
eemom
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Thanks.
The bottom line is, I’m a lot smarter when I don’t waste my time in this idiot zone. Don’t know why I did it tonight.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@eemom: How would it be in Erdely’s interest to write things that weren’t true? She’s been writing for Rolling Stone for 4+ years. She knows how these things work. She knows that an institution as powerful as UVA will check every detail of her story. She knows that the woman’s name and probably more details will come out. Do you really think she would throw away her career to intentionally write a “shoddy sensational” story?
I don’t, myself.
That isn’t to say that I accept the RS story as the 100% unalterable truth, of course. Reporters make mistakes. But I believe she wrote the best, most accurate story she could.
YMMV.
Maybe Herring’s independent investigators will put some of the doubts in this thread to rest…
Cheers,
Scott.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
What is your response going to be if someone puts the clues together and publicly announces who it is?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Yeah, because no one who has written for an established publication for several years and has a reputation on the line has ever been shown to have opted for writing a sensational story over doing good journalism. It certainly isn’t the opinion of the vast majority of the commentariat here that this happens routinely.
Did you even listen to those words as you were typing them? If so, how did you keep from giggling?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Oooh. I’m mortally wounded. Alas! You have defeated me!
:-/
‘night.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I understand that something being likely doesn’t make it so. What you need to understand is that something being likely probably made it so. And what is especially important is that there is an important cultural element of privilege at play when we expect certainty in some circumstances but not others. For example, when we are SO SO SO SO SO concerned about voter fraud that we require ID, what we’re really doing is disenfranchising black people and poor people. And when we assume, as a rule, that victims of crime are telling the truth (especially whites accusing blacks) but that rape victims need to be held to a higher standard before they even get taken seriously, before we can even talk about rape as a problem, what we’re really doing is telling women that they are going to be treated like lying sluts if they come forward. This makes victims less likely to seek justice, because they lose friends and support networks, and people often believe that victims did something to deserve their trauma. So it is very harmful.
This is why, as a course of action, I believe that it is vital to grant rape victims the dignity of credibility in the public realm, and that goes away only if evidence surfaces that would cast doubt on their claim. This is not to say that we assume guilt until innocence is proven.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): If the alleged assailants are identified, because of information in the story or just by someone else, we can hear from them at that point. At that point, there’s a real allegation against a person. Right now, there is not, so hearing a defense is unnecessary.
jonas
@Kay: Good point. Why that Dean wasn’t on the phone to police the second the student came in to report what had happened is beyond me — much less after Jackie revealed that she believed *two* more students had been assaulted at the same fraternity. And while everyone is piling on the reporter for not getting the accused rapists on the record, the point of the story is why was the administration apparently so sanguine about what appears to be a gang of sociopathic serial rapists active on its campus. I guess the frat was relatively secure in the knowledge that even if someone did come forward about what it was up to, the administration would conduct a very hush-hush, no worries “investigation” and no one would call the real cops. Which is precisely what I hope Jackie does.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
There is a difference between granting credibility and accepting everything uncritically. They deserve the dignity of having their claims investigated but that’s not what you seem to want. You seem to think that to do anything less than just act as if there is no doubt is the same thing denying them credibility. That’s just not the case. But you can’t take the blinkers off long enough to avoid making over the top exaggerations that other people have no sympathy for the victims or that, by expressing uncertainty, they clearly just think all women lie about being raped.
Those are not true and you do not help either your case or your
reputationcredibility by insisting that they are.Edited to remove poor word choice.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
This just baffles me. Which part isn’t real? The accusation or the person?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@jonas: One of my fears is that this story is going to make it less likely that Jackie goes to the police.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Rape victims deserve more than having their claims investigated. Jesus. This is not about the law.
They deserve the basic fucking human empathy that we freely give to people who are going through a really hard time. And they don’t get that AT ALL. They get raked over the fucking coals, insulted and maligned. This has the effect of tacitly encouraging rape by discouraging coming forward, even to friends or family.
gwangung
I thought that was the point of the article. “Giving both sides of the story” seems to me a tangent, and, in fact, was specifically NOT done by the schools in question.
gwangung
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I think you’re quite mistaken.
gwangung
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I think you have exactly backwards.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
I’m not sure why you think I disagree with any of this. But, again, you seem to think that that can only be done by accepting every claim uncritically. Talking with you would be a lot less frustrating if you could understand any sort of distinction that anyone tries to make. That’s not just a feature of this discussion, either. Every time I try to engage with you, it seems that you need things to be really, really simple. We have to accept rape accusations uncritically. Any attempt to say that we need a system more complex than an employer getting to fire their employees for whatever they want, you shout down. No nuance at all.
Sorry, but that’s not the way the world works.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
eemom said at #114 that not only is her daughter a UVA student, but that her daughter is acquainted with Jackie, the woman in this story who says she was gang-raped.
I’m not sure why it’s out of line for me to ask questions based on the information that eemom posted in this thread.
jonas
I would think if the defendant(s) were actually identified by name, then it would be appropriate to seek comment from them or their counsel. That’s just basic journalistic practice. But since 1. Jackie has not actually filed a formal complaint and 2. the perpetrators remain (for now) anonymous, their “side of the story” really isn’t pertinent. The frat president is on record denying the allegations. Think the individuals would say anything more illuminating? I’m more surprised that the reporter didn’t follow up with the supposed “friends” who told her not to go to the hospital or report the attack to the police when it happened — those people should have been given the opportunity to explain their callousness and confirm whether or not the victim had the injuries she claimed to have. The article states that the reporter did contact the other two girls Jackie identified as victims of Phi Psi gang rapes, but they refused to talk. Maybe these people will come forward now.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@gwangung: A lot of my fear is based upon the opinion I’ve had since I first read the story, and that has only been reinforced as more of Ederly’s behavior has come out, that she really wasn’t ready to go public with this and probably now feels betrayed by someone she thought was on her side. I afraid that she’s going to retreat from this and decide that she doesn’t want to be a part of the circus.
And, yes, it’s one of the things that makes it very hard for rape victims to come forward. And it’s one of the reasons I’m so down on Ederly.
Nick
This is a really sad comment thread — I’m amazed at the people here who seem to see it as an instrument for demonstrating their purity, and don’t realize the obvious fact that if the gang rape at the centre of this story is false, that is a huge goddamn disaster for everyone who is raped at college. Believing the woman is what police should do; it’s what friends should do; it’s what family should do; it’s not the job of the reporter! Isn’t that obvious? The job of the reporter is to distinguish fact from fiction, and if this reporter has managed to throw one of the rare cases of a false rape report front and centre in her piece, well . . . Christmas just came early for the MRAs. I don’t know where people got the idea that a reporter’s job is to hold the woman’s hand and write what she says without checking it, but you are fucking morons. Stop defending this reporting and start howling for Erdeley’s ass, because her failure to do due diligence is setting back sexual assault awareness on campus by 50 years.
4jkb4ia
I thought the entire reason the story was written was that these guys are not being sued.
I forget who linked to this (I suspect it was Sully) but I remember with possibly misplaced confidence seeing that at least some sexual assault survivors don’t necessarily want their assailant to go to court, or even be thrown out of school. They wanted the assailant just to admit what they did was wrong. No idea if this survivor is in this group, but the reporter might have gotten an admission like that.
I’m at a big disadvantage because of where I am and because I didn’t read the original story.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
That’s a pretty big “if.” If the details are deliberately not accurate in order to protect the identity of the accused rapist … that’s even worse, according to you, because Reasons.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne: The way you went about asking that question was loaded and ridiculous. If you had done so at all politely, you likely would have gotten a different response.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne: You really don’t read, do you? I’ll ask you again: do you really not see the problem with this story if it relies upon fabricated details? Do you really not see how telling a story about how “Drew” confronted Jackie while they were both lifeguarding if he isn’t actually a lifeguard shreds the credibility of the story?
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Because society seems to be able to grant empathy to some people freely and uncritically, but not others. The lack of uniformity in response just oh so coincidentally lines up with white male privilege. I’m sure that’s an accident.
I’m really done with your insults of my intelligence.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
You didn’t “ask a question based on the information that [I] posted in this thread.”
You asked:
Which was an obnoxious, sneering question on its face.
Violet
@4jkb4ia:
That is exactly how a friend of mine handled it when a guy she knew came into her room after she’d been drinking and raped her in her own bed. She didn’t want to prosecute him, but she did want him to admit he was wrong. She told him she wouldn’t prosecute him if he agreed to get counseling. He did and she didn’t pursue the matter.
This happened when she was in college and given her religious background she didn’t feel comfortable at all going public with it. The slut shaming she would have endured from her family and fellow students would not have been worth it to her. They would have destroyed her because she was drunk. And not a virgin. She had a serious boyfriend at the time and they were sexually active. She knew all that would be dragged out in public and it would destroy her life in many ways. She just wanted him to admit he was wrong and get counseling.
eemom
It was a moronic question too, but that’s not really relevant.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
You’re trying to have it both ways. Either it’s a problematic story because people who read it will be able to identify the alleged perpetrators, or it’s a problematic story because the writer took steps to protect their identities by changing some details that could have identified them. At first, you thought the writer had given enough details that people would have been able to identify the alleged rapists, so you hated the story. Now you’ve found out that she changed some details to protect their identities, and you still hate the story.
Other people in the story, including Jackie’s three friends that she talked to after the incident, are pseudonymous. Doesn’t it completely shred the credibility of the story to not know everyone’s real names?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
I wish you’d bother to actually process what I write. I never said that we shouldn’t offer empathy uncritically. I said that offering empathy uncritically isn’t the same as treating all accusations uncritically. But, again, that’s where you seem to need to keep it simple.
Part of the reason I’m criticizing is because I suspect that you aren’t nearly as simple as you are presenting yourself in these threads. Because if you really behaved the way you are describing here, uncritically accepting every story of victimization you are told, you wouldn’t make it through the week. I very much suspect that your actual behavior is quite a bit more critically sophisticated than you are letting on. What I don’t know is whether or not you believe you are that uncritical.
Mandalay
@Suzanne:
Here are some hard numbers on rape from yesterday’s Guardian. They relate to actual prosecutions for rape, and actual prosecutions for false accusations of rape (which are prosecuted much more vigorously than here):
– In 2012/13 there were 3,692 prosecutions for rape in England and Wales, resulting in 2,333 convictions.
– At least 109 women have been prosecuted in the last five years for making false rape allegations in the UK.
So that is about 1,166 prosecutions a year for rape, and 22 prosecutions a year for false accusations of rape. False accusations of rape do exist, but are only a tiny fraction (~2%) of actual rapes.
Of course there are all kinds of caveats that come with those numbers, but one conclusion is inescapable: people are raped far more often than they lie about being raped.
(As an aside, for those who are undecided about Cosby’s guilt, think about the statistical probability that all of his accusers are independently lying based on those statistics – it is infinitesimally small.)
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
You may not have liked the way I put it, but you seemed to be trying to have it both ways — telling your daughter to avoid going to parties with those guys, but insisting that they were innocent until proven guilty.
Frankly, I think the sensible thing to do when there are multiple (if unprosecuted) accusations about a particular frat house is to avoid that place like the plague, but I don’t also think that I need to pay lip service to “innocent until proven guilty” when giving that advice to a young woman.
Violet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I haven’t read the article, but based on your comment, I don’t see why it matters unless lifeguarding itself is somehow relevant to how the rape happened. If the swimsuit is a relevant detail, maybe they both worked as sailing instructors or children’s swim coaches or bathing suit models or some other activity where they were wearing swimsuits. If it’s just the working together that’s relevant, maybe they worked at the same restaurant or had the same internship. Is there something specific in the article about lifeguarding that makes it an essential detail to how the story unfolds?
I think it’s possible to change some details like that and still get the gist of the story right. Again, I haven’t read it so I’m only basing my comments on your comment.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Quit pretending you’re a moron, because I know that you aren’t. As I keep describing, the details she changed, if that is true, do more than protect their identities. They mean that she created fictitious scenes between Jackie and “Drew.”
And even if all she had done was change just enough details to protect their identities, it still points to the fact that she used the wrong case to lede her story. If you want to write a story that accuses the UVa administration of fostering a rape culture, you absolutely do not use the most poorly sourced case that you have, one in which you need to create fictitious details. All that does is wreck things. You want that core case to be absolutely rock solid, and she had plenty of those. But they weren’t the most salacious case she had.
And that’s why it’s a fucking horrible story: she opted for generating controversy rather than making her best case. If (and, as I keep saying, it’s still very much an if) she made up details of her core case, she’ll have ended up harming the cause she claims to want to support, because she couldn’t keep herself from being sensational.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Violet: It’s not relevant to how the rape happened, because the fictitious encounter is supposed to have happened at least a year after the rape. It’s meant to show how Jackie was traumatized by having to continue to interact with her rapists.
But where’s the line? If the author is going to create fictitious details without telling the readers that she has done so, and there is no indication in the story that she has changed them, how do we have any idea where she drew the line on what to create and what not to? That is terrible, terrible journalism. Don’t lie to your readers, and if she changed those details without saying that she was doing so, then she lied to them.
Linnaeus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
For what it’s worth, Erdely says Jackie was quite willing to tell her story:
Erdely also says that Jackie’s reaction to the story itself is positive:
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
As Violet pointed out, how does moving a scene from one workplace to a different, less identifiable workplace suddenly make it a “fictitious scene”?
I really find it ironic that first the reporter is accused of ruining the lives of the accused rapists by putting in identifiable details, and then when it turns out she changed some details to make the accused less identifiable, now the whole story is accused of being fictitious. She just can’t win, can she? Unless the reporter’s story includes an airtight, prosecutable case complete with full names, times, and details, she’s not even supposed to write about it.
Violet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Like I said, I haven’t read it. I have read plenty of articles and stories where the author puts in a disclaimer like “some details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.” Often there’s an added disclaimer about the details that have been changed not affecting the substance of the story.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): IANAL, and neither are you. And my role as a concerned member of society at large, is to work toward greater meaningful freedom for people. As such, I typically take people at their word when they say they’re crime victims, because I’m not in a position to make any meaningful judgments about it, and it costs me nothing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And it costs a great deal to treat people in the public realm as if they’re full of shit when they’re not.
Look, maybe this reporter totally made this shit up. I doubt it, because the incentives are not on her side. At this point, with the evidence I’ve seen, I think she got much of it right, though I agree that she was looking for something sensational.
jonas
@4jkb4ia:
The dean essentially offered Jackie this option — to hold a mediated hearing where they would try to get the perpetrators to at least admit what they had done and apologize. But in return, they would not be expelled. She declined.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Violet: There are no such disclaimers here, other than saying that she changed “Drew’s” name. But if he isn’t a lifeguard, then the two of them weren’t co-workers and the nature of the story, in which she leaves work because he’s there, too, is different. And we have no way to know.
Again, if that’s what happened. I’ll repeat again that other than Kay saying that the details were changed, with no sourcing, I haven’t heard that anywhere else.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
So if it turns out that Jackie had to continue to interact with her rapists at (for example) her job at the library instead of her job at a swimming pool, that means that it’s a “fictitious story” that she had to continue to interact with them?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, fuck off. I’ve said over and over again how she could have won: use one of her better sourced stories where she wouldn’t have had to either make shit up or avoid contacting someone she’d accused of gang rape. That you have yet to address this option betrays just how pathetic your case is.
She had a good story to tell. She had good cases to use to demonstrate that story. And then she chose to use a case that was much weaker, on a number of axes, because it was more sensational. Please address that.
Violet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I don’t understand how that can be true. They could have been co-workers somewhere else.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Suzanne:
Fine, but we aren’t really talking about you. We’re talking about a reporter and whether she treated the accusations with a critical eye and that is very important for her to do, because her judgements are meaningful. She isn’t in the position of detachment that you are.
jonas
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): You’re probably right. Two years on, whatever evidence they can gather is going to be weak. Unless of course there are witnesses who can be questioned/deposed.
All of which makes the dean’s actions that much more inexplicable.
Suzanne
@jonas: Good for her. Why shouldn’t they be expelled? I mean, people get expelled for cheating. Rape is a far greater danger to the student body.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mnemosyne: Where the hell is the line? If the reporter doesn’t mention that she has made up new details, how can you trust her? Because now you’re positing that she created fictitious details about Jackie, which she explicitly said that she did not do.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Violet: Only if she also created fictitious details about Jackie, without providing any indication that she had done so.
And as I keep pointing out, she had plenty of cases where she wouldn’t have needed to do any of this.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I need to go home and go to bed, so I’m out. But, really, if you think that the only, or best, way to write this story was to use a case where these contortions were necessary, I have no idea what you’re thinking.
Suzanne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I believe I and others here have laid out why it is important to give rape victims the benefit of the doubt, as well. Even for reporters, since damage to one’s reputation is a primary reason women do not come forward, and journalists could do a great deal of damage if they reflexively behaved as if their sources were untruthful. Also, Erdely and her editor said they fact-checked for weeks and found Jackie credible. The University also seems to think that this is real. So why are we supposed to assume that she’s full of shit at this point?
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
At this point, I’m going to have to revise my previous opinion as to your intelligence. You are a fucking idiot, and a lying one one at that.
First you asked if I would “let” my daughter attend a party at the frat in question. Now you assert that I told her to “avoid going to parties with those guys.”
Neither is true. As Omnes pointed out, my daughter is an adult, and I can’t tell her what to do. Nor have I tried to do so.
Nor do I need to do so. Believe it or not, some young women aren’t interested in partying with drunken assholes….totally apart from presumptions of guilt or innocence.
More to the point, the presumption of innocence I was talking about above has nothing the fuck to do with the choice a female UVA student might make to not go to a party at a particular frat house, based on the story at issue.
You either don’t understand that — in which case you’re an idiot — or you’re deliberately conflating such an individual decision with the presumption of innocence I was talking about — you know, that minor detail at the heart of our criminal justice system — in which case you’re as intellectually dishonest as the worst of any right wing bobblebot ever mocked on this blog.
4jkb4ia
Well, John is getting utterly roasted by people who are far smarter than I am. That’s something.
Random thoughts–
The Jed Rubenfeld (Amy Chua’s husband) op-ed might be influential for the people criticizing the story. If the story is written to criticize the university for not doing more about rape, and the university is not subject to the standards that a court would have, a logical step is to ask if the reporter is using the standards that the court would use. Otherwise the reporter may just be encouraging the university to use a process that is flawed in a different way from doing nothing.
Just because of what a court is, the accused will get the chance to tell their story if the rape victim comes forward. But it might be worth it if the rape victim has a reasonable expectation that the accused will be punished. If you expect that the court is biased against you or has conflict of interest in punishing the accused even without the accused saying a word, you won’t come forward.
Gian
I read the original RS article, and a Slate piece or two on it.
My thoughts were the school needs to adopt a version of West Point’s honor code.
“A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
“A student here, and the administration, will not rape, nor tolerate those who do”
way back when the football team was a thing of pride at West Point they kicked out a bunch of cadets, including if memory serves, the coach’s son for cheating.
What the article was trying to do as far as I can see was use a first person story to illustrate an institutional problem. This is done all the time, the story of the family killed by the firestone tire and ford explorer issue, etc. It’s a technique to get past Stalin’s line about one death being a tragedy and a million a statistic (to paraphrase)
where one gang rape is a tragedy but 68 schools with serious issues of a statistical rate of sexual violence is a statistic.
This one story hits an emotional spot for a lot of people, and to that extent, I think the RS reporter did as intended.
4jkb4ia
There is no way to make that first sentence in 263 nice. But it is not the shiv. It is more like “The 4jkb4ia “consistently wrong since 2002″ meter goes off very quick. Everyone knows it. But here it seemed to go off for people John can respect.”
moderateindy
Cole, would your opinion be the same if it was boys from the frat you mentor that had been accused in a national publication, and the reporter didn’t make a serious attempt at getting their side of the story?
Also, the people that don’t get how f’d up it was for the reporter to make up the whole lifeguard part of the story are deluded. Making up specific details to make something more dramatic when just generalizing about how she had to deal with him in a situation as a coworker would have sufficed is crappy reporting at best, and calls the whole story into question, which is a disservice to the victim
balconesfault
After all – one of the frat boys might be able to refute her claim that she was penetrated by a beer bottle.
Perhaps it was actually a vodka bottle, or a wine bottle. Maybe even an old-style Coke?
We need these details from the perpetrators to ensure journalistic integrity.
Keith G
@aimai: Swearing at me once again instead of dealing thoughtfully with the issues at hand.
Anger does not equal thoughtful argumentation.
John Cole +0
@moderateindy: She did try to talk to them. They refused.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I was thinking about domestic violence, though, and the treatment of that has evolved in ways that are helpful. Part of what they did was take it out of the personal and put it squarely in the “crime” category.
I wonder if the focus on the victim in the investigatory or fact-finding phase is counterproductive.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Linnaeus: Thanks for reminding us of what’s actually in the article rather than TTP(JMN)’s phantasmagorical retelling.
I think it’s a lost cause at this point, though.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Kay: I can agree with you on that. However, I also think that the disbelief of rape victims and the subsequent character assassination they endure is widespread enough to be a form of systemic, gendered violence that undergirds the common trope of women lie/are hysterical. We could get past that with a basic assumption that shie’s telling the truth until proven otherwise, and I’m talking about society at large here. Cross-examination is reasonable for a witness stand, but not necessary or desirable for typical daily interactions with people I meet, yanno?
Walker
For everyone saying “Why doesn’t the University report this to the police?”
There is currently a (controversial) push to get universities to institute policies regarding sexual assault as part of their honor code. Plagiarism is not a crime, but we regularly expel students from the university on it. There is a hearing, but not a criminal trial.
Sexual assault victims believe, rightly, that the criminal justice system has failed them. Even if we know the sex occurred, all the rapist has to do is convince a jury that it was consensual. This plays a huge burden on the victim. Unless the victim was so violently raped as to be disabled and they have matching DNA evidence for the assailant, police will never, ever bring a rape accusation to trial — ever. Just look at how many people in this thread think the student may be lying.
In addition, our law does not recognize simple things like “being drunk means you cannot consent”. But this latter issue can be handled as part of the honor code at a university. Heck, BYU can expel for any premarital sex. It is certainly within the bounds a university to expel someone for sex if one partner is drunk and the other is not. So sexual assault victims see an avenue for relief.
However, this has completely opened the floodgates for just how much you can cram into the honor system. Hence the controversy.
Not saying this is a good thing. I am just saying what is happening.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I agree, I just remember with domestic violence the fear was if it was treated more like a crime and less like a societal ill then fewer people would report. But that didn’t happen. They did report. If there was contact, an assault, they came to know the aggressor was getting arrested (because that’s standard now- there’s an arrest if there’s contact) and they still reported.
It became less about the victim “why do you have this violence in your home? Why don’t you leave?” and more about the perpetrator and the act.
There’s a kind of banality to a focus on a routine process that can act to shield people from stigma and shame. Once it became routine to remove domestic violence perpetrators from the home after an incident it became less about “victim versus perpetrator ” and more about “everyone versus perpetrator”
The way these sexual violence allegations and events are portrayed feels misguided to me, like we got off track about what this is about. If you go to someone and tell them you’ve been raped there should be two tracks, not one. There should be a track for fact-finding and investigation re: the alleged perpetrator and then help for the victim to get thru the process. The UVA process feels unbalanced to me, like they put the whole thing on the victim in an attempt to shield the victim.
It’s not a blanket comparison. Obviously there’s a whole consent aspect with sexual contact that doesn’t happen with a punch in the face, but I wonder if there’s anything to learn from how we treat domestic violence because that’s been fairly successful.
Kay
@Walker:
But to an outsider, this leaves the university open to the suspicion that it isn’t about protecting the victim but is instead about protecting the university. That’s all but stated in the piece. The clear implication is UVA was protecting their reputation by handling this “in house”.
They may not have been doing that. They may have genuinely set this up along the lines of “victims have rights and they need to have more control of the process” but one can clearly see it the other way too, that they’ve set up this in-house menu of sanctions to avoid the public sanction of a criminal case.
Paul in KY
@eemom: What do you think about that song ‘Rugby Road’? Had you ever heard it, before your daughter went to UVA?
Paul in KY
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): If names & stuff have been changed, what does it matter (in the story, not a legal case) that he said what he said, when they were working in the library, vice lifeguarding?
Paul in KY
@jonas: If what she said happened, happened, then several young men need a long stretch in jail.
Paul in KY
@Gian: People who will rape, will not heed an ‘honor code’.
Peter Akuleyev
The fact that “liberals/progressives” are so quick to defend what seems like a fairly implausible, poorly reported story speaks volumes about the extent to which politics has degenerated into my team vs. your team. Campus rape and sexual assault is a very serious problem. If the rape in Erderly’s RS article happened as described, then America is far more psychopathic than I ever suspected. But if the story proves not to be true in its specific details, then Rolling Stone has just given ammunition to every frat boy and manosphere asshole to deny every date rape and drunken assault for the next 10 years. And by doubling down on a ludicrous story, liberals are just making the impact of the eventual revelation of fraud that much worse.
The sad part is, I believe the woman in the story was raped by UVA students, and probably brutally. Emotionally her story rings true. The problem is that her counselors and now Erderly have encouraged her to embellish and dramatize the story to the point where it no longer fits the facts This woman will now be called a liar in public forums and have no way to defend herself or bring charges against her rapist(s), since her story doesn’t meet the legal findings of fact. I find Erderly’s role in this unconscionable. She has used a rape victim to promote herself and her writing.
Peter Akuleyev
@Nick: exactly.
Gian
@Paul in KY:
but those who don’t rape but tolerate it may think twice. which is the point. “or tolerate those who do” of the code.
that you can be disciplined for tolerating the act.
Alex
@John Cole +0: John, that is not accurate. The reporter, and her editor, have admitted that they purposefully refused to contact the main assailants at the behest of the victim.
EthylEster
@EthylEster wrote:
Well, it has not reached 500 comments yet but I assert that “…or something” is spot on.
NOTHING has been accomplished by this not-discussion.
If this is the best the internet can achieve, who needs it?
Nutella
@Peter Akuleyev:
Your claim that the reporter
is based what ‘facts’? The only facts we have are what Erderly reported that the victim recounted to her. There are no other facts presented by anyone at all, just people claiming that the victim’s story doesn’t sound right to them because what they imagine is possible is different from what the victim said happened.
Your assumption that the story is fraudulent, based on no evidence whatsoever, is disgusting.
Paul in KY
@Gian: See your point. It might help get people talking.
Paul in KY
@Nutella: Peter seems to have a idyllic view of drunken frat assholes.
kc
@Kay:
But. Buried in the article is the information that “Jackie” reported the rape to the school administration months after it happened, at the end of the academic year, and was clearly given the option to go to the police (which she certainly could have done without reporting to the school administration).
From the article:
“Coddling” is an interesting word choice.
Nutella
@Paul in KY:
And/or he’s concern-trolling. His sneer at “liberals/progressives” is probably indicative.
Karla
@Mnemosyne: Exactly. Your question was not at all “beyond the pale.”
Gvg
Seems to me that I am seeing a variation on victim blaming. Call it reporter blaming for when people are uncomfortable hearing a story. The attacks seem very similar from the routine we always hear about any rape victim. this is how we get victims to shut up. Take away all their avenues.
The idea that any reporter could get a possible rapist to give his side of the story is just silly misdirection and not a reasonable request. as several lawyers have pointed out already they would not allow a client to speak to a reporter no matter if they thought the client guilty or innocent. too much risk of damage for no gain that can be used against the client in a real trial. I knew that and I am not a lawyer. it is something we all have noticed observing all similar media stories in our lives. Being falsely accused by media is unpleasant but it’s not as bad as going to jail falsely so therefore the higher concer is avoiding giving the justice system evidence which means accused in this type of case don’t talk to journalists. demanding nothing be published without getting both sides to talk is therefore a way to prevent anything ever getting reported which means all the power would be with accused rapists….No No No.
I have read plenty of non rape stories that didn’t have the accused sides statement. It’s not always appropriate and in this kind of case I don’t think it is even slightly called for. checking her story would mean things like verifying she was who she said, was there, didn’t have a history of lying….things like that. getting the accused rapist to talk would probably make the story even more sensational but realistically fat chance.
Peter Akuleyev
@Nutella: There are good reasons why in a just society we don’t just believe accusers who present no evidence, and tell horrific stories that not only confirm everyone’s preconceptions but ratchet them up a notch . Maybe you should reread “The Crucible” or revisit the day care sex abuse hysteria in the 1980s. My sneer quote is because I think the left wing keeps going all in on “narratives” and keeps giving the right wing ammunition to make the left look foolish. Sure, the right wing has their own stupid fact free narratives like “knock out game”, but for the most part the media doesn’t take their narratives seriously.
Peter Akuleyev
@Paul in KY: I am not letting the frat guys off the hook. I assume Jackie was in fact raped, and is a traumatized person. Her story as presented by Erdely just doesn’t make any sense. Jackie’s story is probably emotionally and subjectively true as to how she feels, but that won’t cut it when the “Slates” and “Washington Posts” start tearing the story apart on the facts, and Erdely should have understood that.
Paul in KY
@Peter Akuleyev: What doesn’t ‘make any sense’? Her response? I’ve read many times where women respond in the manner she did. I, personally, would try to murder them (after going to the police). She chose a different path.
myiq2xu
Oops!