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CHARLOTTESVILLE — A federal court jury decided Friday that a Rolling Stone journalist defamed a former University of Virginia associate dean in a 2014 magazine article about sexual assault on campus that included a debunked account of a fraternity gang rape. The 10 member jury concluded that the Rolling Stone reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was responsible for defamation, with actual malice, in the case brought by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator who oversaw sexual violence cases at the time of the article’s publication. The jury also found the magazine and its publisher responsible for defaming Eramo. The $7.5 million lawsuit...

When Rolling Stone published a brutal account of a fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia, the magazine relied on the recollections of the young woman who said she was assaulted. Quoted by the nickname “Jackie,” the tale of her assault was used to exemplify the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses and was the crux of an argument that university administrators who handle such claims can be indifferent to them. Jackie told Rolling Stone in explicit detail aspects of the night she described as the worst in her life: Sept. 28, 2012, when she said she was assaulted...

If “yes, to my great regret” has become the stock answer for remorseful Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, then her protagonist in the now-discredited gang rape tale—the one who sent a college into chaos two years ago—has found a mantra of her own: “I don’t remember.” Before a hushed courtroom in downtown Charlottesville, a federal jury and a gallery of 24 spectators gathered Monday to hear over two hours of Jackie bobbing and weaving around questions in her videotaped deposition. This wasn’t the chatty Jackie of yore, the one who enthralled the visiting Erdely over dinner at the College...

For a second day, former Rolling Stone fact-checker Elisabeth Garber-Paul took the stand to explain why she believed Jackie, the student whose fake gang rape story sent the University of Virginia campus into uproar two years ago. “She seemed to really care about getting this story right,” testified Garber-Paul. “She was totally comfortable with having her peers know she was the Jackie in the story.” Unlike other witnesses in this trial, now in its eighth day, Garber-Paul turns directly toward the jury to explain that she conducted a pair of two-hour conversations with Jackie. “Four hours in one week is...

A former White House college sexual assault task force member appears to have been gunning for a University of Virginia fraternity smeared in a Rolling Stone article about a now-debunked campus gang rape, newly released emails show. “I want to see these guys gone and I want to keep it as legally sound as possible,” UVA alum Emily Renda wrote to Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely in July 2014, several months before the Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus” was published. At the time, Renda was working in a gender-based violence prevention program at the school. That spring...

Rolling Stone journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely spent five months investigating a shocking claim of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, and the 9,000-word account of the brutal attack published online on Nov. 19, 2014, sent a tremor through the Charlottesville campus and beyond. Then, on Dec. 5, at 1:54 a.m., Erdely sent an e-mail to the magazine’s top-tier editors, Will Dana and Sean Woods, with a simple subject line: “Our worst nightmare.” The body of the message detailed how Erdely no longer trusted the primary source for the most striking anecdote in her article: a U-Va. junior...

Lawyers representing a University of Virginia student at the center of a debunked gang-rape allegation have acknowledged in court papers that the student has ties to a fake persona she once named as the ringleader of the alleged attack. Filed in federal court Tuesday, the papers are part of an ongoing lawsuit a U-Va. associate dean filed against Rolling Stone magazine, arguing that the magazine published a defamatory account of how the Charlottesville school handles sexual assaults. The legal team representing “Jackie” acknowledged that they had recently accessed a Yahoo e-mail account for “Haven Monahan,” who the U-Va. student alleged...

The Obama administration disclosed Tuesday it first learned about Rolling Stone’s ill-fated story on campus rape in Sept. 2014, about two months before it was published, when reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely called seeking information on the government’s investigation of the University of Virginia’s handling of sexual assaults. The revelation from the Department of Education came the same day that a media watchdog group asked congressional oversight committees to start an investigation into what the administration may have known about the story before and after it was published and what it did to address the concerns raised in the article “The...

Are American college campuses “rape cultures?” Are they dangerous places where sexual assaults against women are happening at an alarming rate? According to many gender activists, academics and politicians, the answer is yes. Here’s what the Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden, said in 2014. “We know the numbers: one in five of every one of those young women who is dropped off for that first day of school, before they finish school, will be assaulted, will be assaulted in her college years.” Let’s take a closer look at the Vice President’s claim. Rape is a horrific crime, and...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va (WVIR) - NBC29 has confirmed a secret deposition of the woman at the center of a now-retracted Rolling Stone magazine article went through Thursday. The woman known as “Jackie” spent hours getting questioned by attorneys on both sides of a federal defamation lawsuit. Rolling Stone Magazine published "A Rape on Campus" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in its issue for November 2014. In the article, a student known as "Jackie" described being gang raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at UVA in September of 2012. Jackie had previously refused to answer questions about her gang rape claims...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 5 (UPI) -- A woman who made serious sexual assault accusations against members of a University of Virginia fraternity -- which were featured in a sweeping 2014 Rolling Stone magazine article -- will have to testify this week in a defamation lawsuit against the magazine. . . . An independent review by the Columbia School of Journalism ultimately determined that in producing the article, Rolling Stone violated "basic, even routine journalistic practice" by failing to fact-check or corroborate key portions of the woman's story before the piece was published. Police investigators later said there was no evidence...

Virginia judge has ordered "Jackie" of Rolling Stone 's now-retracted expose about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia to appear in court to be deposed. "The court believes that a one-day, seven-hour deposition will be sufficient," Judge Glen Conrad wrote in a court order this week calling for the woman identified only as Jackie to appear in court on April 5.

“Double-secret probation” has been brought to an end at Georgia Tech. The Phi Delta Theta fraternity is no “Animal House.” And Tech President Bud Peterson is no Dean Wormer. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that arguments over frat-house behavior and student justice rarely spill over into the holy confines of the state Capitol. But that’s what’s happening. And the fraternity may be winning. Last August, an African-American woman lodged a complaint against Phi Delta Theta, alleging that members of the fraternity shouted racial slurs at her from the windows of their campus house. The fraternity denied that any such...

In the 14 months since her story shocked the world, Jackie has been at the heart of a national debate about sexual assaults on college campuses, has become embroiled in a media scandal, and is the central figure in a series of defamation lawsuits. Yet there’s one important fact missing about Jackie, the young woman who concocted a harrowing story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity: her full name. News organizations have declined to reveal Jackie’s full identity since her now-discredited story appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in November 2014. Her single-name identity — just Jackie...

Ryan Duffin was a freshman at the University of Virginia when he met a student named Jackie. Both teenagers were new to campus in September 2012, and the pair quickly became friends through a shared appreciation of alternative rock bands such as Coheed and Cambria and Silversun Pickups. Early on, Duffin sensed that Jackie was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with him. Duffin valued her friendship but politely rebuffed Jackie’s advances for more. Just days after he met her, Duffin said, he was goaded into a text message conversation with a U-Va. junior named “Haven Monahan,” whom Jackie said...

Nineteen Harvard Law professors have written a letter condemning "The Hunting Ground," a film purporting to be a documentary about campus sexual assault. The film has been getting some Oscar buzz, and CNN is preparing to air the program next week. In a press package for the film, CNN singled out a story in the film about a sexual assault accusation at Harvard. The press packet named the accused student, even though he was not identified in the film. The 19 professors want to be sure viewers are aware that the film is highly misleading. The accusation involved former Harvard...

RICHMOND, Va. – A University of Virginia associate dean is seeking more than $7.5 million from Rolling Stone magazine in a defamation lawsuit stemming from a debunked account of an alleged gang rape on campus. The suit was filed Tuesday by Nicole Eramo, who is the top administrator dealing with sexual assaults at the Charlottesville school.

Stacy McCain has written an important article A Coven of Liars: Sabrina Rubin Erdley, Emily Renda and Catherine Lhamon that starts to connect a few of the dots that may help explain the why and wherefore of the UVA Rape Hoax. How did this thing get started, who facilitated it and who is even now trying to cover their tracks? Here are three dots: The UVA rape hoax did not suddenly appear - ex nihilo - from the fevered fingers of Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She was looking for a story that would support her narrative of a campus "Rape Culture"...

A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.” Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Groves’ letter was included as a footnote to the Columbia deans’ report, which was released on Sunday...

"When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. 'Grab its motherf---ing leg,' she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped." Thus started a 9,000-word article in Rolling Stone magazine about the supposed rash of campus rapes across America. The writer, Sabrina Erdely, began with the horrifying story of Jackie, a college girl who found herself raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia while two other men, including her...