Worse and Worse: Rolling Stone Admitted There Were A Few Minor Problems with Its UVA Rape Story Just as Washington Post Was About to Drop the Nuke on Them

Rolling Stone doesn't appear to have dug into the details of its story (the details of which already should have been confirmed) on its own.

Rather, it seems that the Washington Post dug into the details, asked Rolling Stone for comment, and Rolling Stone, realizing it had an indefensible story (and I do emphasize the word "story") on its hands, not to mention a likely hundred million dollar defamation lawsuit, scrambled to say Oh we totes got taken in by our source.

You can read Allah's digest, or go to the Washington Post's expose of the false Rolling Stone story.

Several key aspects of the account of a gang rape offered by a University of Virginia student in Rolling Stone magazine have been cast into doubt, including the date of the alleged attack and details about the alleged attacker, according to interviews and a statement from the magazine backing away from the article....

A group of Jackie's close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he did work at the Aquatic and Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie's name. He said, however, that he had never met Jackie in person and had never taken her on a date. He also said that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

The fraternity -- which has been vilified, had its house vandalized and ultimately suspended all of its activities on campus after the Rolling Stone article -- said in its statement Friday that it had immediate concerns about the story and has been working to figure out what happened.

...

Phi Kappa Psi said it did not host "a date function or social event" during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012, the night that Jackie alleges she was invited to a date party, lured into an upstairs room and was then ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.

The fraternity also said that it has reviewed the roster of employees at the university's Aquatic and Fitness Center for 2012 and found that it does not list a member of the fraternity -- a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post -- and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account. The statement also said that the house does not have pledges during the fall semester.

...

Earlier this week, Jackie revealed to friends for the first time the full name of her alleged attacker, a name she had never disclosed to anyone. But after looking into that person's background, the group that had been among her closest supporters quickly began to raise suspicions about her account. The friends determined that the student that Jackie had named was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi and that other details about his background did not match up with information Jackie had disclosed earlier about her perpetrator.

The Post determined that the student Jackie named is not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

...

Jackie’s former roommate, Rachel Soltis, said she noticed emotional and physical changes to her friend during the fall semester of 2012, when the two shared a suite on campus.

"She was withdrawn, depressed and couldn’t wake up in the mornings," said Soltis, who told The Post she was convinced that Jackie was sexually assaulted. Soltis said Jackie did not tell her about the alleged sexual assault until January 2013. Soltis said she did not notice any apparent wounds on Jackie’s body at the time that might have indicated a brutal attack.
...

Jackie said early in the week that she felt manipulated by Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, saying that she "felt completely out of control over my own story." In an in-person interview Thursday, Jackie said the Rolling Stone account of her attack was truthful, but she also acknowledged that some details in the article might not be accurate.

Jackie contradicted an earlier interview, saying on Thursday that she did not know if her main attacker actually was a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

"He never said he was in Phi Psi," she said, while noting that she was positive that the date function and attack occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on Sept. 28, 2012. "I know it was Phi Psi because a year afterward my friend pointed out the building to me and said that's where it happened."

Well.

This is very Salem Witch-hunt like. We have one likely hysteric make an implausible accusation, one involving ritual rape as a core institutional recruitment tool, and when people say, "That seems somewhat implausible to me," there come the shrieks from the other hysterics: Then you are a Rape Denier!

How is this different from Salem?

"I saw Goody Hauptman Dancing with the Devil."

"Um, that doesn't seem very likely to me."

"Do you deny the Devil's works?! Are you in fact a Devil Worshipper yourself?!?!"

As Allah concludes, no lessons will be learned from this, except, I think, this one:

The Hysterical Accusers now know they have to make even more hysterically defamatory accusations to shut down any kind of skeptical inquiry at an even earlier stage.

If you permit people to ask questions, then they will eventually come across the truth.

Hence, you must cow them from ever even considering asking a question in the first place.

The only problem here, from the perspective of the Hysterical Shrieking Accusers brigade, is that they were too moderate and too soft in their nonstop hysterical accusations.

Exit quotations:

posted by Ace at 03:58 PM

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