Rape culture

On November 2014, the Rolling Stone magazine published a story that is now considered one of the largest journalistic failures in recent history. In this 9000-word article titled “A rape on campus”, contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely tells the highly-dramatized story of University of Virginia freshman “Jackie”, who is lured by a junior student to a frat party where she is horribly gang-raped and beaten, with the trauma bringing her from straight-A student to suicidal—and she also has to endure her friends’ callous minimization of her problem (in a textbook example of ‘rape culture’), the unhelpful faculty and a climate of “misogyny” symbolized by things like rauchy anthems. Erdely proceeds to basically describe rape as a routine event at the campus, and accuses UVA of actively covering it up to preserve their prestige and wealthy students—with actions such as discouraging victims from reporting, lying to them and even refusing to install on-campus lighting to facilitate rape.

The article spread widely, caused several investigations and the immediate closing of the accused fraternity, but its credibility was soon questioned, with information progressively emerging to contradict it completely: among others, the party where the alleged rape happened never took place, the junior accused of luring Jackie to it didn’t exist, faculty members and Jackie’s friends contradicted her version of the facts and stated Erdely had never talked to them, though she claimed to. Eventually, a police investigation concluded there was no reason to believe any rape had taken place at the fraternity, as Rolling Stone went from defending the story to progressively retracting it, finally publishing an apology and third-party report about their mistakes—which didn’t stop the accused faculty and fraternity from filing lawsuits, while managing editor Will Dana left the magazine.