Rolling Stone has admitted fault in the reporting of their article on the alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia (UVa) fraternity house.
The magazine posted a statement to its website Friday admitting that "Jackie," their primary source and the victim of the alleged rape, was not entirely trustworthy. At Jackie's request, Rolling Stone did not attempt to contact any of the men responsible for her rape, which the magazine acknowledged to be a mistake.
According to the Washington Post, the magazine's admission came after a month of increasing scrutiny as discrepancies in Jackie's story came to light. Using a false name to protect her identity, she told Rolling Stone's Sabrina Rubin Erdely that seven men raped her at the UVa Phi Kappa Psi house after she was lured there by one of the offenders.
At Jackie's request, Erdely and Rolling Stone's editorial team did not contact the man who led her to the party, nor did they attempt to contact any of the alleged offenders. After the Phi Kappa Psi UVa chapter denied the allegations and submitted to cooperating in the following investigation, new details of the story came forth.
UVa launched an investigation into the matter after the publication of the Rolling Stone article, as did the Charlottesville Police. UVa also became the latest high profile example of a school that mishandled a case of sexual assault on campus.
For one, the fraternity said in a statement there was not an event at the house on the night in question and that the man who Jackie said led her to the party was not a brother.
Jackie's friends, advocates for improved sexual assault policies at UVa, told the Post her story gradually changed. They said Jackie told them who led her to the party, a student lifeguard who belonged to a different fraternity.
That man spoke to the Post and said he was familiar with Jackie, but only by name, but he never took her out on a date. Jackie also spoke to the Post and defended her story, but said she "never asked for this [attention]."
"What bothers me is that so many people act like it didn't happen," she said. "It's my life. I have had to live with the fact that it happened, every day for the last two years."
UVa President Teresa Sullivan said the new information does not alter the school's stance on reforming sexual assault practices in higher education
