Picking Up the Pieces After the UVA Story

A lot to get to.

A very important point: It is not proven that "Jackie's" claims are false. Just One Minute blogger Tom Maguire continues to believe that "something" happened, for example.

And friends of Jackie's say that she spoke of a sexual assault at the time it happened. That's not proof that something happened, but contemporaneous accounts are still considered positive evidence, to one extent or another.

Note, however, where he contradicts Sabrina Rubin Erdley's claims about Jackie's account, too.

A student identified as "Andy" in the Rolling Stone article said in an interview with The Post Friday night that Jackie did call him and two other friends for help a few weeks into the fall semester in 2012. He said Jackie said that "something bad happened" and that he ran to meet her on campus, about a mile from the school's fraternities.

The student, who said he never spoke to a Rolling Stone reporter, said Jackie seemed "really upset, really shaken up" but disputed other details of that article’s account. Rolling Stone said that the three friends found Jackie in a "bloody dress," with the Phi Kappa Psi house looming in the background, and that they debated “the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape” before advising against seeking help. He said none of that is accurate.

"Andy" said Jackie said she had been at a fraternity party and had been forced to perform oral sex on a group of men, but he does not remember her identifying a specific house. He said he did not notice any injuries or blood but said the group offered to get her help. She, instead, wanted to return to her dorm, and he and the friends spent the night with her to comfort her at her request.

One thing I hate about commentators -- I would say "bloggers," but idiots in the allegedly mainstream media do this all the time -- is cultivating the most black-and-white opinions with little evidence for them.

I think it's pretty clear that Jackie's story has been contradicted by enough people -- including those that Erdley claimed to corroborate her -- and is shaky enough that Rolling Stone shouldn't have published this account. (Indeed, Jackie herself didn't want it published -- but Erdley told her it was being published anyway, with her consent or not. How's that for irony.)

But that's not the same as knowing for a fact that no rape happened, and that Jackie is making everything up.

But there are some people who seem to have decided they know everything, and are acting as if they do, publishing Jackie's full name, pictures of her, etc.

For God's sakes, we've just been reading about these events for a week (or two, if you were an early adopter).

I don't know what it is about people which repulses them so much about saying I don't know what I don't know.

What makes the Hysterical Rape Accusers appear so foolish (and vicious) is their lunatic conception that they can ascertain facts through ideological sifting. They don't have to contact witnesses and dig through details. They know who the Bad Guys are thanks only to the purity of their ideological convictions.

It is equally hysterical, lunatic, and vicious when those opposed to the SWJs insist that they too can tell Who the Bad Guys Are simply by paging through their Enemies' Lists.

Meanwhile, Jackie's dad insists his daughter is telling the truth, but greatly undermines her by confessing how much she must be admitted to have been wrong about in order to say there's still some she could be right about.

The 61-year-old told MailOnline his daughter had been 'crushed' by accusations that she had made up the testimony that she had been gang-raped at a UVA fraternity party in 2012. The father said his daughter - known as Jackie - had wrongly identified the Phi Kappa Psi as the fraternity where she had been attacked as she had only started the university two weeks before.

...

Jackie's father told MailOnline: 'She told the truth. She did not know the details [of the fraternity] because she had been there for two weeks and she was 18 years old.'

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Her father's comment that she did not know the fraternity name come after Jackie herself told the Washington Post that she had not known the name of the fraternity and had not told Rolling Stone that she did.

In fact, she said, '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'.

It's pretty major that she does not seem to know where she was raped and, by extension then, who it was who raped her, after previously having been specific about these things.

Or at least -- she was specific in Sabrina Rubin Erdley's account. Did Ms. Erdley push her towards specificities she herself wasn't comfortable with?

In one of the more incredible things said of the story -- incredible not because it's shocking that people believe this, but incredible because it's shocking someone admitted to believing this -- resident MSNBC fool Zerlina Maxwell actually wrote in the Washington Post that no matter what the truth of Jackie's claims, we should automatically believe all rape claims.

Automatically. Always.

No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims Incredulity hurts victims more than it hurts wrongly-accused perps.

Now you say, "Ace, that says generally believe; where are you getting this "automatically" crap from?

Well, from the article's URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/no-matter-what-jackie-said-we-should-automatically-believe-rape-claims/

What happened there?

Well, forgive me for suspecting that Ms. Maxwell originally suggested we should "automatically" believe all rape claims, and an editor stepped in to try to make her sound Not Quite As Deranged.

But he didn't do a very thorough job of it:

Now the narrative appears to be falling apart: Her rapist wasn't in the frat that she says he was a member of; the house held no party on the night of the assault; and other details are wobbly.

Actually, Ms. Maxwell is pretty sloppy in her recounting of the facts, even against her own interest; the frat claims no party was held on the night of the assault, but that has not, as far as I know, been independently proven.

Many people (not least U-Va. administrators) will be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is "innocent until proven guilty." After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.

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The accused would have a rough period. He might be suspended from his job; friends might defriend him on Facebook. In the case of Bill Cosby, we might have to stop watching his shows, consuming his books or buying tickets to his traveling stand-up routine. But false accusations are exceedingly rare, and errors can be undone by an investigation that clears the accused, especially if it is done quickly.

The cost of disbelieving women, on the other hand, is far steeper. It signals that that women don't matter and that they are disposable --not only to frat boys and Bill Cosby, but to us. And they face a special set of problems in having their say.

You can read the rest of that, if you want. Interesting, not a single comment -- not one! -- in the first couple hundred even nodded in the direction of supporting her.

She's a hysterical raving Witchcraft accuser, and she will not have you undermining her determination to see All the Witches burned at the stake.

Including the ones who aren't witches.

It occurs to me that no matter how absurd and horrible a claim the Institutional Left needs made, there is someone in the "Activist/Journalist" (a contradiction in terms, note) ranks who is willing to make it.

And they will never suffer for having made such extreme, and frankly Stalinist, claims. Because the left protects its own -- and there are no enemies to the Left.

Anyone on the right making such absurdly unfair and dangerous propositions would soon be out of a job, as far as appearing on news chat shows. His venomous lunacies would, properly enough, make him radioactive and unfit for the style of allegedly polite, cool-headed analysis favored on TV and by major print media.

But if someone on the left "goes there"? It's not an issue at all. Witness Andrew Sullivan continuing to be accepted as a respectable member of the chattering classes, despite his bugfuck insane ravings about Sarah Palin's Fake Pregnancy Fat Suit.

Finally, the absolute best piece you'll read this week. Slate's "Dear Prudence" Emily Yoffe writes a thorough and absolutely hair-raising expose on the true state of the Sex Panic destroying young men's lives on campuses.

I really cannot urge you strongly enough to read this in full.

You're probably thinking, "Well, if a woman writing at Slate has so thoroughly exposed the unfair and frankly frightening Cult of Accusation festering on our campuses, surely the Social Justice Warriors are taking her article seriously...?"

Indeed they are:

posted by Ace at 07:00 PM

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