Sabrina Erdely's Rolling Stone article sparked protests against sexual assault at University of Virginia in November.
Credit: Bob Mical , Courtesy of Bob Mical/Creative CommonsOn Monday, Rolling Stone Magazine published an official retraction of a Penn alumna's viral story “A Rape on Campus” along with a rigorous external review of the story by the Columbia School of Journalism.
Published in November 2014, the story was written by 1994 College graduate and former managing editor of 34th Street Sabrina Rubin Erdely and made national headlines for its detailed account of sexual assault cases at universities. Erdely detailed the chilling story of a University of Virginia student known as “Jackie” who described her brutal gang rape at a party hosted by the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. But within a matter of days, the factual accuracy of Jackie’s story began to unravel.
On Tuesday, Phi Kappa Psi announced that they will sue both Erdely and Rolling Stone for defamation.
"After 130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone magazine, today the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi announced plans to pursue all available legal action against the magazine," the fraternity said.
According to the CSJ review of the article, Erdely did not follow up with any of Jackie’s friends to verify her account, failed to identify any of the men accused in Jackie’s testimony and relied too heavily on Jackie’s testament alone for the story.
“Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting,” Erdely’s primary editor Sean Woods said in the report. “We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice.”
The report went on to say that not only could Jackie’s claims not be verified by anyone, but also that the fraternity Jackie named did not even host a party on the night of her alleged attack. The report blamed Erdely for failing to be more forthcoming with information to the fraternity.
If Erdely "had given the fraternity a chance to review the allegations in detail, the factual discrepancies the fraternity would likely have reported might have led Erdely and her editors to try to verify Jackie's account more thoroughly," the review said.
Once it became clear that the article could not be verified, Erdely issued her own apology.
“The past few months … have been among the most painful of my life. Reading the Columbia account of the mistakes and misjudgments in my reporting was a brutal and humbling experience,” she said in a statement. “I want to offer my deepest apologies: to Rolling Stone’s readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the U.V.A. community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article.”
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