Rolling Stone Rape Story Challenged by Students

Not long ago, Rolling Stone magazine published an article about an alleged sexual assault of a female student at a fraternity at the University of Virginia, in which it was basically assumed, as is typically the case with rape accusations, that the accuser was truthful and the accused guilty, an exception to the enlightened legal principle of presumption of innocence. The presented narrative implied that the school's culture was essentially indifferent to rape, an absurd conclusion when one simply compares the sheer availability of resources to victims on all major university campuses in America—from 24-hour crisis hotlines to expert rape centers to in-house adjudication—to the actual victimization rates, which are minuscule. However, the printed account has now been contravened by the students who responded first to the distressed accuser, and the publication has been forced to internally review the story.

U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault

It was 1 a.m. on a Saturday when the call came. A friend, a University of Virginia freshman who earlier said she had a date that evening with a handsome junior from her chemistry class, was in hysterics. Something bad had happened.

Arriving at her side, three students —“Randall,” “Andy” and “Cindy,” as they were identified in an explosive Rolling Stone account — told The Washington Post that they found their friend in tears. Jackie appeared traumatized, saying her date ended horrifically, with the older student parking his car at his fraternity, asking her to come inside and then forcing her to perform oral sex on five men.

In their first interviews about the events of that September 2012 night, the three friends separately told The Post that their recollections of the encounter diverge from how Rolling Stone portrayed the incident in a story about Jackie’s alleged gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity. The interviews also provide a richer account of Jackie’s interactions immediately after the alleged attack and suggest that the friends are skeptical of her account.

The scene with her friends was pivotal in the article, as it alleged that the friends were callously apathetic about a beaten, bloodied, injured classmate reporting a brutal gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The account alleged that the students worried about the effect it might have on their social status and how it might reflect on Jackie during the rest of her collegiate career and that they suggested not reporting it. It set up the article’s theme: That U-Va. has a culture that is indifferent to rape.

“It didn’t happen that way at all,” Andy said.

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Discrediting the veracity of the article will not deter mindless "Take Back the Night" rallies across the nation on its behalf, of course.

Unfortunately, false rape allegations on campuses around the country are common, so much so that mothers of accused college rapists are fighting back. Male students should be wary of their interactions with women, especially as the modern university environment can be hostile toward them. Young college women lie about sexual assault for various reasons, but whatever the motivation, the consequences of an accusation are disastrous for a man's life. Regrettably, the reckless character of the American college experience, with the prevalence of obstreperous Greek houses, excessive alcohol consumption, and wanton "hookup" culture, will continue to ensnare naive young men in potentially life damaging situations, including permanently besmirched reputations and potential loss of liberty for crimes they did not commit, sent to a prison system where the likelihood of being raped themselves is much higher than on any college campus in the Western world.