Posted on 12/05/2014 8:20:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Rolling Stone magazine and its reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely are facing a great deal of skepticism about a story called “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.” The article tells the story of “Jackie,” a University of Virginia student who says she was gang raped at a fraternity party early in her freshman year.
There are solid journalistic reasons to question Erdely’s reporting. She failed, as Slate and others have objected, to get any statements from the accused, while offering feeble and conflicting accounts about why, first saying that the young men were hard to find, and then explaining that the victim was uncomfortable about having them contacted.
Richard Bradley, a former editor of George magazine who’s seen hoaxes, urges skepticism about this story because it fits a little too neatly into a preferred leftist narrative — southern college, white fraternity boys, and the campus rape culture. Fair enough. Others recall the panting eagerness of the press (and members of the faculty at Duke) to believe the worst about that school’s lacrosse players back in 2006.
As someone who believes that campus rape is a genuine problem, I found some aspects of the Rolling Stone tale not credible. The young woman claims, for example, that she was pushed into a glass table that smashed beneath her and then gang raped by seven students on cut glass. She says she then stumbled from the frat house bleeding and disheveled, yet her friends discouraged her from going to the hospital because it might quash their plans to rush at fraternities.
Without knowing more, it’s impossible to say what the truth is about this woman’s experience — though I imagine that something traumatic happened to her. But if, for whatever reason, we learn that all or part of her story isn’t true, it should not be seen as some grand refutation of the problem of rape. “If false, Rolling Stone story could set rape victims back decades” headlined the Washington Examiner. Why?
Tawana Brawley was found to be lying, but her dishonesty didn’t invalidate every rape claim in America. The Left likes to put people in categories: women good; men bad. Black inner-city residents good; white police bad. Environmentalists honest; businessmen liars. And on it goes. For a time, when the nation was gripped by an epidemic of child-abuse hysteria, we were told that “children never lie” about these things, even as coached tots were telling tales of being sexually abused in spaceships with samurai swords. The Left will have its fables, whatever the strain on logic and common sense.
We don’t need “Jackie” to be honest to know that campus rape is real. We have reports throughout the nation, lawsuits, complaints, and word of mouth. One study put the number of sexual assaults at 100,000 a year, which may be high, but good data are elusive for crimes that nearly always entail he said/she said and are accompanied by shame.
Certainly the activists’ demand that campuses handle these cases without traditional protections for the accused — such as the right to confront witnesses or be represented by counsel — represents a gross retreat from constitutional principles, and it’s a separate scandal that many colleges are doing just that. But neither should we dismiss these reports as simply the result of “post-sex regrets” by young women.
For centuries, western civilization recognized that women were vulnerable to sexual violence and abuse. Painstakingly, we erected a complex architecture of mores and laws to protect women from the worst kinds of men. Some of those protections now seem ridiculous — such as the notion that a lady would never permit herself to be alone with a strange man, not even in an elevator. But no one should be surprised that when the guardrails of sexual behavior were swept away in the flood of the sexual revolution, predatory men were handed a golden opportunity. A 2002 study by David Lisak of the University of Massachusetts and Paul Miller of the Brown School of Medicine found that 90 percent of rapes on college campuses are committed by serial offenders. A small percentage of men is committing most of the crimes.
There is a rape culture — it’s the hook-up culture that the Left invented and celebrated as liberation. Until it’s reversed, the rapes will continue.
— Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Tawana Brawley went to UVA?
You know something happened........somewhere.
This is just the recycled Dan Rather argument of "fake but accurate." It isn't the actual facts of the matter; it is the seriousness of the charge that counts.
Ususally Mona makes much more sense than this. Does no one remember the story of the boy who cried “wolf!”?
Campus Rape is real... but ignoring the the Rolling Stone UVA story by focusing solely on campus rape ignores the real issue... that the liberal media uses lies, false flags, and propaganda to use fear and hate to manipulate the population to continue to toe the Liberal line. The media is grotesquely unfair, imbalanced, and does far more to shape opinions that they want, rather than to inform the public. THIS is the real story to be told. While we acknowledging that other bad things, like campus rape and animal abuse and overpriced beer, do still exist, we STILL should focus on that 800 pound gorilla behind the curtain.
As real as Lena Dunham’s memoirs, I can assure you...
Rape has nothing to do with college campuses. It happens every where.
Just like Lena Dunham’s fake story of being raped by a “Republican” in college.
Fathers.
Do you want to send your daughters to a university, away from the protection of your family?
Are you sure?
This goes to the Lena Dunham lie as well. Her “attacker” is almost certainly a complete fabrication.
Eventually, people are going to get tired of Leftists making up outrages in an effort to show that their threadbare cries of oppression still have some meaning. Fake but accurate should never be allowed to justify any story, whether it’s Rather’s failed smear of President Bush, or Crystal Mangum’s clumsy attempt to frame the Duke Lacrosse team, or Tawana Brawley, or any number of lib professors and activists who had to fake up an attack against themselves.
Colleges did their very best to eradicate Christianity, traditional morality from their campuses. Then they are shocked and outraged at the results. They also pushed feminism in all of its extremes. Their feminism mocked the idea that men should protect and respect women. They created a hellhole and don’t have the sense to recognize their responsibility in the mess.
On another thread...we made a point that not too many Frat houses would have glass tables for obvious “party” type reasons(where the rapee was said to have been pushed into which broke under her supposedly). So finding the Frat house at UVA with the missing glass table should be somewhat easy as other male and especially female ‘visitors’ would have noted the table and perhaps its absence on subsequent visits. Pictures might even be available.
Why are we seeing greater publicity and concern about an undocumented and alleged crime involving an anonymous victim and unidentified assailants at the University of Virginia than we are seeing regarding the very real and very recent female student victim (Hannah Graham) of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder at the hands of a University of Virginia employee (Jessie Matthew). In this very real case the accused was apparently involved in multiple prior assaults and murders of college women? Where is the mainstream press and public outrage against the identified man accused of committing multiple brutal criminal acts against women for which there is actual evidence including dead bodies?
The only word I can think of for her is just plain “skank”. The most appropriate word in the English language for her.
Forgot to add the whole “it doesn’t matter if they’re telling the truth” attitude, which was taken by Oberlin regarding the Lena Dunham “rape”.
It’s a reference to Ted Danson’s comment that doing Whoopi was like ‘throwing a hotdog down a hallway.’
Actually a pretty good article.
Redeemed by the last few paragraphs.
The problem is not conservative America having a “rape culture,” it’s liberal America having staged a sexual revolution that allowed actual rapists to operate much more freely.
IOW, those fighting the “campus rape epidemic” have misdiagnosed the problem and are fighting the wrong enemy.
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