Long story short: On the evening of Easter Sunday, Rolling Stone retracted Sabrina Erdely’s 9,000-word, single-sourced article about a fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia. Erdely apologized to everyone affected by the lie, except for the actual victims. All involved in the publication of the lie will keep their jobs.

The single source of the false story is a UVA student known only as Jackie. The Columbia Journalism Review has done a meticulously thorough investigation of this trainwreck, exposing Rolling Stone’s bias, groupthink, shoddy journalism, stupidity, and galactic self-delusion. But at no point does CJR identify Jackie, or even question the idea that she should remain anonymous.

Why?

As Robby Soave of Reason magazine notes:

Given all the (entirely fair) criticism Erdely has taken for failing to vet the story, I was most struck by the undeniable fact that the author actually did press Jackie for key details about the identities of the perpetrators. In this sense, she possessed at least some of the right impulses. She believed Jackie, but she knew she needed names in order to corroborate. The problems came when Jackie simply refused or dodged these key questions…

When Erdely told Jackie that she really did need to know the name of Jackie’s date (the lifeguard who supposedly masterminded the attack), Jackie stopped answering her phone calls and texts for about two weeks. Eventually, Erdely left Jackie another voicemail in which the writer agreed to stop trying to contact the lifeguard and instead use a pseudonym, Drew. After that, Jackie magically reappeared, calling Erdely back “quickly,” according to the report.

Jackie, in fact, displayed impressive levels of self-preservation and rational behavior—at least, from the perspective of a highly disturbed person whose goal was to spread an incredible lie without exposing it as such.

There’s plenty of blame to go around here, but Jackie [No last name given] isn’t an innocent bystander. She’s the perpetrator of this hoax. She lied, she went to great lengths to safeguard that lie, and she allowed it to go out to the whole world.

Now she’s being treated like a victim.

That’s the underlying assumption you’re going to see in most of the reporting about this: Yeah, this is pretty messed up, but we can’t blame this poor woman. She’s been so traumatized. Isn’t she the real victim?

No, she isn’t the real victim. She’s not a victim at all. She told a massive, cruel lie, and she’s hurt a lot of people.

She did this. She went out of her way to do this. She could have stopped it at any point in the process by simply telling the truth.

Concealing her identity isn’t doing anything to protect rape victims. It’s only protecting liars. And liars shouldn’t be protected, even if they lie about the type of frat bros you hate.

If there’s a good reason Jackie [No last name given] shouldn’t be held to account for her actions, I’m listening.

Update: Has Kirsten Gillibrand commented on this yet?

Update:

Jann Wenner: Jackie the Gang-Rape Liar is "a really expert fabulist storyteller." No, dude, you just didn't check her story. @RollingStone — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

.@RollingStone's Jann Wenner: We're great journalists, but we're no match for a 19-year-old college kid with a story we wanted to believe. — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

Facts. MT @RollingStone Rolling Stone and rape at UVA: What went wrong? — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

Other than that… MT @WSJ Rolling Stone story on UVA rape case cited for faulty "reporting, editing, editorial supervision & fact-checking" — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

Remember: The same people who repeated @RollingStone's #UVA story uncritically are now calling #MemoriesPizza bigots. — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

.@RollingStone isn't firing anybody over the #UVA debacle. That pleasure will be reserved for the magazine's next owners: @PhiKappaPsi. — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

.@PhiKappaPsi's official magazine is called The Shield. Soon it will have a new name: @RollingStone. — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

Richard Bradley didn't think @RollingStone's #UVA story smelled right. He spoke up and was attacked by "journalists." http://t.co/lLQGBJwM6Q — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

.@RollingStone won't name the "fact-checker" who said of the #UVA gang-rape lie: "I did not have doubt." http://t.co/pY6fnRJPzd — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

"An alarm bell went off in my head." — @SabrinaRErdely, AFTER publishing horrific lies about the @PhiPsi house at #UVA — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

"Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim." — @SeanWoods12 of @RollingStone, regarding a woman who made up a gang-rape — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

"If this story was going to be about Jackie, I can't think of many things that we would've been able to do differently." — @SabrinaRErdely — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

"The angrier this makes you, the more important it is to find out whether it’s true." http://t.co/XO9DGoZ4cE #UVA — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

Even when they're 100% wrong, they still insist the victims of their malfeasance aren't "the real issue." http://t.co/ipJxV3g4PU — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

"In retrospect, I wish somebody had pushed me harder." — @SabrinaRErdely on the difficulty of writing things that are true — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015

"It's not like I think we need to overhaul our process." — @wdana, RMS Titanic — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 6, 2015