The initial impact of Rolling Stone’s in-depth article, “A Rape on Campus” was profound, but in the months since has led to at least three different lawsuits against the magazine and writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The 9,000-word article that described in detail the gang-rape of “Jackie” by fraternity brothers at the University of Virginia was thoroughly debunked, a fact acknowledged in print by Rolling Stone’s editor.
The lawsuit most likely to prevail was filed against Rolling Stone and Erdely by University of Virginia Dean Nicole Eramo, who was mentioned by name in the article. Reporting for the Washington Examiner, Ashe Schow says that even though Jackie is not named in the suit, Judge Glen Conrad has ordered her to hand over all documents and communications related to the case.
New developments in the Rolling Stone rape hoax – https://t.co/Vexl9zDFEd
— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) January 14, 2016
Here’s what we know so far about Jackie:
Reporting from the Washington Post’s T. Rees Shapiro discovered what appears to have actually happened to Jackie in the fall of 2012. As it looks now, Jackie was infatuated with a fellow freshman named Ryan Duffin, who didn’t reciprocate her feelings. So Jackie made up a fake student, named “Haven Monahan” and created a fake texting account to talk to Duffin to convince him that Jackie was worthy of affection.
When that didn’t work, Jackie told Duffin she was dying of some kind of terminal disease. When that also didn’t work, Jackie claimed she was going on a date with Monahan, and later called Duffin crying to tell him her date had led her to a fraternity party where several of his pledges forced her to perform oral sex on them.
@AsheSchow tl;dr: LADY IS CRAZY
— Christine Rousselle ??♀️ (@crousselle) January 14, 2016
“This is a big development for Eramo’s lawsuit,” Schow concludes, “and could help shed some light on just how many pains Erdely had to take to ignore Jackie’s credibility issues.”
Editor’s note: The first paragraph of this post initially contained an error, reading “University of West Virginia” rather than “University of Virginia.” We apologize and have corrected the mistake.
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