A story in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone (Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl is on the cover) painted a horrible picture of rape culture at the University of Virginia, and other US colleges and universities.
It centred on the story of Jackie, a freshman who said she was gang raped by seven men in a fraternity, in an even more terrifying and brutal experience than the description suggests. Her friends wanted her to keep it to herself so she didn’t “wreck her reputation”. Two years later, she still hasn’t named her attackers or gone to police.
When I read it, my bullshit detector went off a couple of times, but only faintly. Many women don’t confront their alleged abusers and certainly don’t publicly name them unless they’re Bill Cosby. What my spidey senses couldn’t make sense of was a woman who described herself as being so fragile and broken but she stayed in school and suffered without end. I’m not saying she wasn’t attacked. It’s just that the details of her story are falling apart.
Now Rolling Stone has apologized for the article, saying their “trust in Jackie was misplaced”. The article’s author didn’t even try to talk to any of the alleged attackers which is job one in journalism. She should have, and if she had, the story would have fallen apart before it ever made it to the editor’s desk. Jackie described the house where the attack took place, only there is no such floor plan among frat houses on the UVA campuses. She said the leader of the attack was a lifeguard with her at the school pool but there was no one from the fraternity on staff at that time. Also, she alleged the attack was an initiation however there were no new pledges at Phi Kappa Psi at that time of year.
Some writers are so eager to believe a victim that they forget they’re supposed to work without bias and to tell a story, not vilify people unnecessarily. One doesn’t have to approach the alleged victim with outright skepticism but they’re duty bound to thoroughly research the issue before committing it to print.
Jackie is sticking to her story and outraged that she might not be believed. Rolling Stone doesn’t blame her for convincing them to not talk to the men she says attacked her. The magazine says the failure in judgment was theirs, not hers, and they’re right. In much smaller incidents of less importance, I’ve had interview subjects ask me, essentially, to not check out their story. That’s ludicrous and if little ol’ me here knows that, it ought to have been obvious to those running a magazine with the influence of Rolling Stone.