"According to the lawsuit, Elias lived in a second floor bedroom of the fraternity at the time of the alleged attack, which led members of the U-Va. community to intuit his involvement in the crime."
That's a quote from a Washington Post article from July 29, 2015, called "Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members sue Rolling Stone over retracted rape story."
That's the address for that Washington Post article.
As a result of the public, mistaken discrediting of the Rolling Stone article, instigated by biased and inaccurate reporting by the Washington Post, three lawsuits have been filed against Rolling Stone. One is by Dean Eramo. Another is by Phi Kappa Psi. The last is by three men who were members of Phi Kappa Psi in 2012, who claim that their reputations were unfairly damaged by the Rolling Stone article.
The Washington Post article that I have quoted today is by a Post-described "Education" reporter, T. Rees Shapiro, who is a graduate of a private high school in Virginia and also Virginia Tech, and who has done most of the Post's reporting about the Rolling Stone article.
Unless there was only ever one bedroom on the second floor of the Phi Kappa Psi house, and its resident was George Elias IV at the time that Jackie was raped, there is nothing having to do with the description of the bedroom where Jackie was attacked that specifically identifies the room based on its being on the second floor.
All of the identifying information from the article is about what happened in the room; the furniture, the people, their nicknames, their behavior.
Was there a glass table in Mr. Elias's room at the fraternity house up to and including the night of September 28, 2012? Was that the last night that the table was seen by anyone except for the fraternity brothers who, I'm guessing, took the pieces of it to a garbage dump as soon as Jackie left the fraternity house? Was the disappearance of that table from the room in 2012 one of the things that caused people who knew Mr. Elias before the assault to later "intuit" that the assault happened in his room, after they read the Rolling Stone article that was published in November of 2014?
The article twice includes a quote by Mr. Elias to the Washington Post about ritualized abuse. The quote is:
"It assumes that everyone that is part of the frat had to do that, and that hurt a lot of us."
Why would false allegations that "everyone that is part of the frat" had to participate in ritualized abuse hurt "a lot" of the members of Phi Kappa Psi? If the allegations are false, why wouldn't they hurt everyone who was a member of Phi Kappa Psi? Is Mr. Elias really saying that gang rape happens at Phi Kappa Psi, that some members of the fraternity are required to participate and some aren't? Isn't what he's really saying not that it doesn't happen, or that it hadn't happened while he was a resident, but that it does happen and did happen but that he doesn't want to be blamed for it?
Was the reported rape of a female student by two men at a fraternity at the University of Virginia, this year, in 2016, the result of ritualized abuse or were those two fraternity brothers just having some of their frat's version of spontaneous fun?
That's the address for the "Safety Announcements" page of the University of Virginia's Police Department. The gang rape is not the only sexual assault alleged to have happened to female students at the University of Virginia this year.
"University Police received a report that a female student had been sexually assaulted by two unknown males at a student organization on Rugby Road."
That's a quote from the first "Safety Announcement" about that incident. "A student organization on Rugby Road" means a fraternity, doesn't it?
There's also an "update" about the incident. It says:
"The University Police Department has now been informed that the sexual assault reported on Sunday morning did not occur at a student organization on Rugby Road, but rather at a residence within the City of Charlottesville. As a result, police jurisdiction for investigating the report has been transferred to the Charlottesville Police Department."
How many times have Jackie and other rape victims throughout the centuries been accused of changing their stories and therefore being unreliable? Yet, here's the University of Virginia's Police Department changing the location of a reported sexual assault, at a time when a gang rape occurring at a fraternity at the University of Virginia is the last thing that the administration of the University of Virginia would want to be public knowledge, and the last thing that its police department would want to have to investigate.
What is the "Just Report It" system at the University of Virginia? Just report it, so that you get called a liar and everyone gets told that nothing happened, if anyone is told anything at all?
At which fraternity did the gang rape of 2016 allegedly not happen?
The article by Mr. Shapiro says that it includes the full text of the lawsuit of the three young men against Rolling Stone, Sabrina Erdely, and Wenner Media. I'm reading the document provided by the article.
There is no question that the person referred to throughout the Rolling Stone article as "Drew" is a real person. The Charlottesville police identified and questioned him in the presence of legal counsel, according to the statement that the Charlottesville Police published at its website on March 23, 2015. The Charlottesville police found evidence in Drew's financial records that he had dinner at the place and on the night where and when Jackie said she had dinner with the man who then brought her to the Phi Kappa Psi house to be raped. If Drew had lied to Jackie that he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi, that's not her fault.
That's the address of a March 23, 2015 Washington Post article that says it has the full text of the Charlottesville Police Department's March 23, 2015 statement.
Jackie got hit in the face by a glass bottle by men who stalked and harassed her for talking about being raped. If Sabrina Erdely tried to investigate the University of Virginia without exposing Jackie to retaliation, that was to Ms. Erdely's credit.
Does it matter if the University of Virginia and Phi Kappa Psi called Jackie a liar before the Rolling Stone article was published or afterward? Records of parties at fraternities are frequently not maintained. Fraternities that want to prevent being implicated by their official bank accounts from post-hazing investigations can easily have secret cash funds which they use to finance their gang rape parties.
"history of disciplinary infractions involving unauthorized events and alcohol violations."
That is the Providence Journal, from January 20, 2015, quoting Brown University's decision to suspend its chapter of Phi Kappa Psi because, according to the Journal:
"On Oct. 17, Phi Kappa Psi held an unregistered party at Sears House during which two students reported drinking an alcoholic punch that contained a date-rape drug."
This is another quote from that Journal article about Brown University:
"On Oct. 3, Sigma Chi hosted an unregistered party in the basement of Olney House in which one student reported that someone she could not identify touched her in a non-consensual sexual manner after Brown police broke up the party and students were leaving."
Fraternities all over the United States have unregistered parties all the time. They do that so that, if anyone reports being raped or otherwise abused at those parties, they can say that the parties never happened, which is exactly what Phi Kappa Psi did about the party where Jackie was raped, with total, knowledgable, deceitful collusion by the insufferably arrogant University of Virginia and the servile Charlottesville Police Department. It is not possible that the administration of the University of Virginia or the Charlottesville Police Department don't know that fraternities frequently have unregistered parties.
How does a sexual assault happen after a school's police have already been at a fraternity house and have stopped a party? Either fraternity members, particularly at prestigious universities, are so arrogant, or the school police are so restricted from investigating or prosecuting sexual assault, that fraternity members think that they can sexually assault women practically in front of school police officers.
That's the address for the Providence Journal article, which has a sentence about the Rolling Stone article near the end:
"A story by Rolling Stone magazine of an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia and focusing on Phi Kappa Psi there made national headlines, namely because of the flawed reporting of the story."
The Rolling Stone article described the University of Virginia as being worse than a lot of other schools about investigating, prosecuting and preventing sexual assault. It quoted, and named, people who had worked there and who were sickened by the school's tolerance for rape and serial rapists. The Rolling Stone article discussed other rapes that had happened at the University of Virginia, naming the victims. Anyone could contact the named, quoted people for verification of the overall failure of the University of Virginia to foster a safe environment for women. The Rolling Stone article said that, at the time that the article was published, no student in the history of the school had ever been expelled for sexual assault. That is also an assertion that could be verified by all sorts of people, if those people want to know if it's true.
The Rolling Stone article discusses government investigations of the school's failure to stop rape, and the possibility that the school could lose federal funding.
The Rolling Stone article is not only about what happened to Jackie. The discrediting of the article and the public humiliation and financial punishment of the people who published the article are also not only about what happened to Jackie. They are about a school which was in the process of being made accountable for its failures and which is doing everything it can to escape that accountability. It is about the Greek system and its network of power across the United States and around the world.
The Rolling Stone article also discusses the general docility of the female students at the University of Virginia by contrast with their female counterparts at other colleges and universities. While other schools have marches, protests and performance meant to fight sexism, the University of Virginia is place where misogyny and male dominance are so pervasive that they are considered normal.
Did the Providence Journal read the Rolling Stone article? If so, did it occur to the Providence Journal that Phi Kappa Psi and other fraternities at the University of Virginia regularly have unregistered parties, and that the supposed proof that no party had happened the night of Jackie's rape was a total lie by Phi Kappa Psi which was supported by the school's administration, the Charlottesville Police Department, and every major news source in the country and around the world?
Before the Providence Journal harshly judges a reporter who tried to investigate a misogynist university in a misogynist state, a state where a female student was beheaded by an infatuated and jealous male student in a cafeteria at Virginia Tech in 2009, perhaps the Journal could consider being grateful to be in business in a place where the social condition of women is at least marginally better than it is in other parts of the country.
The three friends described in the Rolling Stone article have behaved, since the article's publication, exactly as could be expected from people who acted the way that they were described in the article. One of them even lied to the Columbia Journalism Review about when the last time was that he'd had contact with Jackie, a lie which was later exposed by the transcripts of the text messages between him and Jackie that he initiated after the Rolling Stone article was published.
On page 24, the section of the lawsuit called "Plaintiffs Have Each Suffered Vicious and Hurtful Attacks Due To Rolling Stone's and Erdely's False Claims Against Them" begins. Item 83 of that section says:
"Specifically, a few days after the article was released, Plaintiff Elias was solicited daily for three consecutive days at his own home by reporter Taylor Shapiro of the Washington Post. Plaintiff Elias became nervous and distraught that reporters were easily able to find him and solicit him at his home."
Mr. Shapiro and the Washington Post were the impetus for the discrediting of the Rolling Stone article. They were entirely sympathetic to the University of Virginia and to everyone who attacked the Rolling Stone article, and scathing to everyone who was part of getting the article published. If this is how the reporter to whom Mr. Elias owes his ability to file a lawsuit against Rolling Stone is described by Mr. Elias and Mr. Elias's legal representation, why does anyone think that Sabrina Erdely could have successfully contacted or productively interviewed anyone who was accused by Jackie before the Rolling Stone article was published?
I don't have time tonight to read or write anything else about this tragedy.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, April 11, 2016 @ 8:35 p.m.
