Even the kookburgers that left comments on the NYTimes site mentioned this.
Apologies all around, but no firings, and certainly no apologies to the actual victims. The falsely accused frat members.
I think that if they apologized, it would be an admission of guilt, so their lawyers told them to specifically NOT apologize.
I can't figure the non-firing of Erdley, though.
Hell, even "fake but accurate" Rather got canned.
Lawyers constantly tell their clients never to apologize.
Saw an interesting study that this “strategy” is usually, though doubtless not always, counter-productive.
Most people who have been actually wronged want, above anything else, to have that recognized, most especially by the person who wronged them. If they don’t get that apology, they may pursue getting that recognition in court, at immense cost to everybody but the attorneys involved.
What the study showed was that refusing to apologize greatly increased the chance of the dispute going to court, and that surprisingly it usually did not hurt their defense if the apology was rejected. In fact, it seems likely juries are more sympathetic to defendants who apologized than to those who didn’t.
So, Surprise!, it turns out the “no apology” strategy is best for attorneys, not usually their clients.