Not only is Ms. Erdely a journalist who has written many articles about sexual crime, the majority of the journalists who have attacked her writing over and over don't have anything like the knowledge about crime reporting that she does. Not only that, but the July 22, 2016 court filing for Dean Eramo tries to use Ms. Erdely's years of crime reporting against Ms. Erdely, as if Ms. Erdely is someone who has made a living from persecuting innocent people rather than trying to help victims of sexual abuse.
Yet another male journalist whose main background has nothing to do with crime reporting has gotten published as if he is an authority about sexual abuse, its investigation or reporting. His article at the Columbia Journalism Review includes many of the lies already told for months in the service of the inaccurate discrediting of the Rolling Stone article. Did he do any actual investigating, or did he accept at face value the story told by all the non-crime reporters, most of whom are also men, and then take it as a given that Rolling Stone should lose the remaining two lawsuits against it?
That's the address of an article that was published yesterday at the Columbia Journalism Review. It's called "Is Rolling Stone about to get throttled in court over UVA rape report?"
The author is Bill Wyman.
This is a picture of the end of the article:
These are pictures of the beginning of his Twitter:
Ms. Erdely, a conscientious journalist, is getting her career ruined by inaccurate, biased male journalists who aren't qualified to report about the situation.
I didn't think that the Columbia Journalism Review would publish an article like the one that was published yesterday. It never seemed to me that the people who wrote the Columbia Journalism Review's April 5, 2015 report about the Rolling Stone article were dishonest, snide or lazy; I have always thought that there were some things that they didn't know and that they didn't put together. They did not seem to be familiar with or to have researched the tactics of fraternities that are trying to evade prosecution, such as not telling the host schools at all about the parties that fraternities have where people are drugged, hazed and raped, so that the fraternities can deny that the parties happened if there are investigations. They did not seem to have understood from the March 23, 2015 statement from the Charlottesville Police Department that it is more probable than not that the Charlottesville Police Department did everything that it could to intimidate Jackie and to protect the rapists, and that the Charlottesville Police Department colluded by inaction with the refusal of the University of Virginia to disclose records that probably would lead right to the rapists or at least to Drew. Drew is a real person. The Charlottesville Police Department questioned him. It is more probable than not that his financial and work records corroborate that he took Jackie to dinner on September 28, 2012 and that he then facilitated her gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi house.
This is the address of a March 23, 2015 Washington Post article called "Full text: Charlottesville police statement in U-Va. sex assault case":
The writers of the 04/05/15 CJR report did not ask why Drew was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia and a fraternity member in 2006 and also an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in 2012, facts stated by the Charlottesville police. They did not consider the possibility that Drew was a serial rapist who was suspended from the University of Virginia for sexual assault in or after 2006 and then rematriculated at the University of Virginia years later so that he was a junior in 2012.
These are pictures of part of the Rolling Stone article:
The writers of the 04/05/15 CJR report did not question the veracity of what was told to them by those of Jackie's former friends whom they interviewed. Months after the publication of their report, called "Rolling Stone's investigation: 'A failure that was avoidable,'" transcripts of the texts between Jackie and Ryan were disclosed to the public. The transcripts showed that Ryan had lied to the writers of that report when he told them that he "hadn't seen Jackie or communicated with her since the previous April."
This is a picture of part of the 04/05/15 CJR report:
Ryan had communicated with Jackie; he had texted her after the Rolling Stone article was published, to apologize for his insensitivity.
This is the address for the 04/05/15 CJR report:
These are pictures of part of Mr. Wyman's article:
Rolling Stone was intimidated into retracting Ms. Erdely's article, by a flurry of media attacks led by the Washington Post and finalized by the Columbia Journalism Review's 04/05/15 report. It was after the 04/05/15 report was published that the lawsuits against Rollling Stone were filed.
Did Mr. Wyman try to contact Jackie, Ms. Erdely or Rolling Stone before the Columbia Journalism Review published his article? Did he ask anyone who was part of publishing the Rolling Stone article if "Armpit" and "Blanket" were pseudonyms or real nicknames? Is there someone who thinks that, if those are real nicknames, anyone who knows whose nicknames they are is going to tell Mr. Wyman or anyone else?
Whom, if anyone, did Mr. Wyman ask about the nicknames "Armpit" and "Blanket"? Did he speak to someone who specifically said that they were nicknames "not known to have been used at the fraternity"? If he did, if he has a source or sources who specifically denied that Phi Kappa Psi or anyone who knew Phi Kappa Psi members or pledges had knowledge of those nicknames, why didn't Mr. Wyman include that specific denial from a source or sources when he wrote the article?
Also; the Rolling Stone article depicts a hazing/rape that happened before the formal rush season. Isn't it possible that the nicknames were of people who decided not to pledge, or who were not accepted by Phi Kappa Psi because of their liability to the fraternity for having participated in a gang rape, even though they were told by fraternity members that they couldn't be accepted by the fraternity if they didn't participate? It could be that they left the school, transferred before Ms. Erdely ever started to interview Jackie. What if everyone who participated in the rape was given a nickname for the night of the rape, so that the rapists could talk to each other and so that Jackie wouldn't be able to identify them from their real names?
Has anyone subpoenaed Phi Kappa Psi's internal emails, emails between Phi Kappa Psi and the University of Virginia's administration, or transcripts of texts among Phi Kappa Psi members and pledges? Has anyone looked for evidence that advisors from the national Phi Kappa Psi organization were contacted by members of the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi chapter about the assault on Jackie or other assaults, and that those advisors told the chapter what to do to minimize the chances of being investigated or prosecuted?
Did Mr. Wyman read the lawsuit filed by the three fraternity members? It's an outrageous document, simultaneously a confession of guilt and a demand for money. Even the lawyers who wrote it probably knew their clients were lying; that's probably why they asked for compensation of thousands of dollars rather than the millions sought by Dean Eramo and Phi Kappa Psi. Probably, they were hoping, and might still be hoping, that Dean Eramo and Phi Kappa Psi would win their lawsuits, and then the winning of the two other lawsuits could be used as supposed proof that Jackie's own rapists should be paid.
It seems to me that, because of the inaccurate discrediting of the Rolling Stone article, and because of Rolling Stone's immediate capitulation to media pressure, the judges for the lawsuits against Rolling Stone are constrained by the parameters of the lawsuits. Unless I'm mistaken, the judges aren't free to determine the truth of the Rolling Stone article as part of the lawsuits; all they can do is decide whether or not the plaintiffs have proven severe character defamation not sufficiently remedied by Rolling Stone's retraction of the article. Even if each judge believes that Jackie was sexually assaulted, all each judge can do in each case is decide for or against the plaintiff based on the plaintiff's arguments within the confines of each lawsuit.
There are few people in the developed world whom I envy less than the judges for the lawsuits against Rolling Stone. Their integrity is being subjected to a test of such magnitude that their decisions will have consequences for rape victims, schools, journalism and governments everywhere. Their careers are also at stake, particularly because the conglomerate has spent 6 years trying to get sexual crimes legalized.
These are also pictures of part of Mr. Wyman's article:
Does Mr. Berlik know that Mr. Wyman probably asked for his opinion not because Mr. Wyman values that opinion, but because Mr. Wyman wanted to exploit Mr. Berlik's name for another obscene, conglomerate joke? Why didn't Mr. Wyman ask a lawyer who has followed the case for a contrasting opinion to the subsequent paragraphs of quotes from Eugene Volokh?
This is a picture of the first of the article's many paragraphs quoting Mr. Volokh:
This is a picture of part of the Rolling Stone article:
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, July 29, 2016 @ 2:18 a.m. I published my preliminary page and similar pages a few hours ago, and will publish them again later today or tomorrow.
