Posted on 12/07/2014 1:10:07 PM PST by Third Person
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.— It was a near-unanimous reaction: shock, but not surprise. Disgust, but not doubt. Those were the feelings that characterized the endless conversations I had as a University of Virginia student following the Nov. 19 release of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article, “A Rape on Campus,” in Rolling Stone.
“There was this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach in [reading] the whole thing,” fourth-year student Anna Burke told me. “I have never been through something like that myself, but it was a refrain I had heard before. There was a sort of familiar sadness to it.”
There was some anger at what many perceived as mischaracterizations of student life, student standards of integrity and the University administration. But in speaking to students across the grounds — men and women, Greek and non-Greek, first and fourth years — not one sought to challenge the validity of then-first-year student Jackie’s rape, either as a whole or in part.
In all honesty, I didn’t either.
Then, suddenly, the story fell apart. After a wave of media criticism questioned Erdely for failing to interview the alleged perpetrators of the assault, the University’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter released a statement pushing back on the allegations, citing specific factual inconsistencies. Not long after, Rolling Stone posted a statement admitting there may be discrepancies in the story, withdrawing their unilateral support. Their trust in Jackie, they said, had been “misplaced.”
Misplaced is a good word for how I feel right now. Two weeks into a process of healing and concerted action, the only shared conviction now is one of profound uncertainty. The campus — relatively oversaturated with emotion after a semester of significant trauma — feels as if it is on stand-by, poised in anticipation of where the next torrent of news will take us. I am drained. I am confused. But I keep returning to one question. If everyone here believed Jackie’s story until yesterday — a story in which she is violently raped by seven men at a fraternity house as part of a planned initiation ritual — should we not still be concerned?
There was something in that story which stuck. And that means something.
The University of Virginia — like most American universities — has a problem with rape. Current estimates, cited earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, hold that one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college. That means that in my 200-person politics lecture, roughly a full row will be filled with survivors. In my 20-person major seminar, there are at least two. That is not a calculus I should have to work out in the margins of my Marx-Engels reader.
What does it say that we read an article in which an 18-year-old girl was pinned down, graphically violated by multiple people in a house we pass almost every day — and we thought, “That just may be right?” “If we are being honest with ourselves, no matter if specifics of the article are true, …reading the article as a college student, you were thinking, ‘This could happen,’” said Rex Humphries, a second-year who pledged a fraternity last spring. Your first reaction is not, ‘This is preposterous.” I asked if he thought Jackie’s story could be true. He paused and said, “Yes.”
For 17 days, we by and large believed Jackie’s story, maintaining only a few fragments of doubt. We were frustrated by the repeated use of the “Rugby Road” song, which appeared to make fun of the rape culture on campus but which most students, in fact, had never heard. We were angered by the portrayal of administrators we had worked with and personally trusted. We were slightly apprehensive at the article’s claim the rape had taken place as part of pledging, noting that pledging takes place in the spring and not the fall. But on the whole, we did not question Jackie herself. And that’s because, when we sorted through Erdely’s snide tone and some small missteps, we found something in that article that struck a chord with us.
This is not to say that it does not matter whether or not Jackie’s story is accurate. There is now a police investigation into the incident. Brothers of Phi Kappa Psi were moved out of their house after students threw bricks through the windows. Dean Nicole Eramo has received death threats. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the story that blew the lid off campus sexual assault has some major, major holes. Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.
“These events undoubtedly do occur here,” first-year Maddie Rita told me. “And while this report has clearly had factual flaws as well as rhetorical missteps, there are plenty of other fully corroborated accounts not only at this university, but at every university around the country.”
Only eight to nine percent of sexual assault reports, at most, are later determined false. This statistic will not change, even if Jackie does lie with the minority. One of five women will be assaulted while in college. One case, however prolific, does not change how it felt to lie in my friend’s bed and have her tell me through tears what her “first time” was really like.
That same friend, a few days after the article was released, publicly identified herself as a survivor for the first time. People were talking, and the issue — which too often hides in locked dorm rooms, in upstairs bedrooms and the dark corners of a fraternity basement — was finally being thrust out into the open. Survivors felt comfortable sharing their stories, and there was hope that reporting would increase. With the crux of the story now wholly in doubt, this progress is threatened. Where we had the opportunity to move 20 steps forward, I fear we will be pushed 20 steps back.
“I’m worried that because of the inconsistencies in this story, this will challenge the precedent of believing a survivor,” said fourth-year student Gianfranco Villar, a member of all-male sexual assault peer education group 1 in 4. “This belief is vital to improving reporting rates and maintaining a survivor’s health. It is very disappointing.”
It is no accident that the article came out, and it became apparent almost immediately that there were very tangible things we needed to discuss.
Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth.
What do you mean we, paleface?
From the second I heard it, not only did I know it was a lie, but I knew it was an obvious, transparent, and ridiculous lie.
Let us ask you one question, Julie. Did you believe the Duke lacrosse players were guilty? Yes? ‘Nuf said.
Julia Horowitz, like so many other clueless leftist idiots, is Walter Mitty personified.
She imagines herself to be a glorious warrior in the service of everything that is good and true and righteous, fighting against Nazis and slaveholders and racist Tea Party Neanderthals.
Yet she is none of that. Julia Horowitz is a credulous fool, a “pathological altruist” if there ever was one. If Julia Horowitz and her ilk ruled the world, it would be an Alice-in-Wonderland nightmare, where the execution comes first and the trial later on, if ever.
Ponder this, Julia Horowitz - your approach to the subject of ‘rape’ is exactly the same (according to the left’s preferred narrative) as the approach supposedly taken by the folks who lynched Emmett Till. You are clearly in agreement that whatever the truth of the matter was, it did not matter.
Apply your own tortured logic to the Emmett Till case:
“Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.”
After all, Julia, put yourself into the shoes of the lynchers who heard the story of what Till had allegedly done:
“There was this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach in hearing the whole thing,” she told me. “I have never been through something like that myself, but it was a refrain I had heard before. There was a sort of familiar sadness to it.”
See how that works, Julia? Congratulations, you have just joined the lynch mob. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
Hey, Julia, why is it when you have an actual story to report on like a DemocRAT Congressional staffer ((Donny Ray Williams) raping two women and serving no jail time despite his conviction, the story disappears faster than Murphy Brown's baby?
From the article:
Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.”
Leftists are always so reluctant to let actual fact tell a story. They much prefer “narrative”, where facts don’t matter, only good intention. Their good intentions almost always do more harm than good, but they don’t care because they so enjoy their absurd, smug sense of moral superiority. They really are pigs.
If she was forcibly raped by seven men (and resisted), unless she was a married woman who had born a child, she would have had injuries.
That alone should have resulted in a “headsup”.
She doesn’t hear about brutal gang rapes. She hears about drunken sexual encounters with guys in fraternities which her leftist world-view interprets as rapes, whether the drunken young woman in question was so drunk that the law would hold having sex with her was rape or merely took a bit of “Dutch courage” before willingly offering her virtue to some drunken young man in what the law would see as consensual sex.
Apparently the supposed attack on "Jackie" included significant violence, including being punched in the face, knocked through a glass table, and being attacked for hours while glass shards cut her. The story reported that she was bleeding as a result of her injuries.
It seems inconceivable that the first person seeing the victim wouldn't have themselves called for medical assistance and the police. It seems equally inconceivable that anyone hearing the description of the alleged crime did not immediately seek to involve outside professionals, like the police, a rape crisis center, or, if they didn't believe the story, a counselor or psychologist.
Whatever actually happened to the young lady, prompt professional intervention is justified whenever somebody reports such an extreme story.
It was complete fiction.
Sold to a willing and likely knowing buyer.
Excellent point. It's why libs are always describing Tea Partiers as crazy, racist violent criminals when they can't point to one Tea Party event that was violent and criminal. Projection.
“to let fact checking define the narrative...”
As someone with a low opinion of the collectivists that join fraternities, I am open to the idea that frat boys, particularly members of the one named in RS, have committed many sexual assaults against women in the past, present, and will in the future. I do not dismiss the allegation that “Jackie” was gang-raped under some circumstance, just because some details are off. But Horowitz makes it much harder to believe. “Facts” that fit her narrative are hers to use (e.g., “1 in 5 women assaulted while in college” — This is a “political” statistic she sources to that great authority, Joe Biden, like the 45 million uninsured Americans, or 8 million homeless children.), but all contrary facts just aren’t fair. It must not occur to her that ramping up a climate of fear and outrage might almost compel true believers to tell a “composite” story based on experiences of others they have been told about, or heard rumors about, or that occurred in the past. Then Julia Horowitz, et al., can hear how the echo rings true. (I am not saying this is necessarily the case for Jackie, but Julia’s formulation opens the door to inbreeding the “narrative”.)
The only antidote is facts, and due process. If someone is raped, gang-raped, or otherwise assaulted, I hope they can find the strength to report it immediately to the real police, press charges, and force the issue as necessary — however unpleasant all that might be. That, and the fear of that, is the only way to stop criminals. Colleges should expel miscreants, but they are not courts of jurisdiction for serious crimes. Who in the world thinks they should be?
From Wikipedia:
Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, or remember information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or recall information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
I hope that this fraternity has some ferocious lawyer alumni who will not let this crime against their younger brothers drop.
“She hears about drunken sexual encounters with guys in fraternities which her leftist world-view interprets as rapes”
Not quite accurate.
If she seduced a drunk guy who was out of her league with makeup, spandex and bra pads, it was “empowering”.
If Quasimoto seduced her and everyone knows, it was obviously rape.
She repeats the fraud of 1 in 4 or being ‘raped’ !
Actual college statistics for rape are much much rarer.
Most of these rapes are going to fall into the category of, ‘where you drinking when you had intercourse, if so, then you could not consent’.
The main reason it “seemed so believable” is that it accused a “Right-winger” of a heinous crime and they wanted it to be true to level the playing field - it’s just not right that most such crimes are committed by Left-wing minorities.
They believed it because they are morons who believe life in any other country but the USA where they are FORCED to live would be better. Of course they believe anything bad about America because they are what is bad about America.
Unless she, too, was drunk and regretted it the next morning, or after a friend told her that because she was drunk it was rape, in which case, hey presto! her seduction of the young drunk was rape, too.
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