The three students agreed to be interviewed on the condition that The Post use the same aliases that appeared in Rolling Stone because of the sensitivity of the subject.
They said there are mounting inconsistencies with the original narrative in the magazine. The students also expressed suspicions about Jackie’s allegations from that night. They said the name she provided as that of her date did not match anyone at the university, and U-Va. officials confirmed to The Post that no one by that name has attended the school.
Also, photographs that were texted to one of the friends showing her date that night were actually pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a junior at a university in another state, confirmed that the photographs were of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hasn’t been to Charlottesville for at least six years.
The friends said they were never contacted or interviewed by the pop culture magazine’s reporters or editors. Although vilified in the article as coldly indifferent to Jackie’s ordeal, the students said they cared deeply about their friend’s well-being and safety. Randall said that they made every effort to help Jackie that night. […]
The Rolling Stone article also said that Randall declined to be interviewed, “citing his loyalty to his own frat.” He told The Post that he was never contacted by Rolling Stone and would have agreed to an interview.
The article goes into further detail about Jackie and Randall; but it appears that Jackie’s romantic interest in Randall wasn’t returned and that was when Jackie may have “created” another romantic interest in an attempt to get Randall’s attention.
Intrigued, Jackie’s friends got his phone number from her and began exchanging text messages with the mysterious upperclassman. He then raved to them about “this super smart hot” freshman who shared his love of the band Coheed and Cambria, according to the texts, which were provided to The Post.
“I really like this girl,” the chemistry student wrote in one message. Some of the messages included photographs of a man with a sculpted jaw line and ocean-blue eyes.
In the text messages, the student wrote that he was jealous that another student had apparently won Jackie’s attention.
“Get this she said she likes some other 1st year guy who dosnt like her and turned her down but she wont date me cause she likes him,” the chemistry student wrote. “She cant turn my down fro some nerd 1st yr. she said this kid is smart and funny and worth it.”
Jackie told her three friends that she accepted the upperclassman’s invitation for a dinner date on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012.
Curious about Jackie’s date, the friends said that they tried to find the student on a U-Va. database and social media but failed. Andy, Cindy and Randall all said they never met the student in person. Before Jackie’s date, the friends became suspicious that perhaps they hadn’t really been in contact with the chemistry student at all, they said. […]
Randall provided The Post with pictures that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in 2012. The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.”
The man said he was never a U-Va. student and is not a member of any fraternity. Additionally, he said that he had not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was in another state participating in an athletic event during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.
“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.
Outside of Jackie’s own hysterics the night she claimed “something happened” every detail has been proven to be invented, from the fraternity initiation to the man she claimed to have taken her out on the date.
Whether Rolling Stone’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was complicit or incredibly gullible is currently unknown. But the elaborate lengths Jackie took in inventing a fake suitor and creating different narratives for different audiences about her alleged assault that took just a bit of diligent digging to uncover demonstrates a breathtaking negligence of responsibility on the part of Rolling Stone‘s editors – even for such a demonstratively biased media outlet.
Get out the popcorn, the third act curtain has yet to rise.
I think it’s not unreasonable to believe that whatever Jackie didn’t make up, Erdely did.
And heads should roll at Rolling Stone.
journalists and their campus rape fantasies are ruining christmas
Unrequited love and an adolescent attempt to get attention. Once she claimed to have been attacked, the whole think began spiraling out of control, and she didn’t know how to stop it.
And BTW, the “texts” from chemistry class guy to her friends sound incredible. I cannot imagine a person texting heretofore unknown persons who claim to be friends of my romantic interest discussing that interest in detail, especially where those texts insult one of the “friends” in question. This whole thing sounds like “a very special ‘Different Strokes'” episode.
“I really like this girl! So I had her gang raped.”
Sounds plausible.
UVA’s Jackie: Emotionally Disturbed or Mentally Ill? (There Is a Difference)
As Insty (PBUH) is fond of saying, it’s Potemkin villages all the way down.
I have four sons, as I’m sure most of you know, and this scares hell out of me. Every chance I get I have to remind them that they need to be alert and on point and choose wisely because their life could be ruined in an instant.
This shit isn’t new, BTW. Back in the late 80’s I received a letter at my dorm from a University in the northeast that said I was unwelcome on campus due to a complaint of sexual assault and if I dared show my face I would be arrested for trespassing. Having at that time never been to that University, or even the State in which the University is named for, I ignored the letter like any 19 year old would. About a week later, I got a telephone call from a fine gentleman who was enrolled at that University who told me that if he ever saw me he was going to do terrible things to me for what I did to his girlfriend, and he was going to see me because he was on his way to my school ASAP. I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, or who his girlfriend was, but that I’d be waiting for him etc… etc… Long story short, I probably missed out on the beating of my life, because his GF confessed that she had never met me, was never assaulted (she went to a bar with friends and made out with some dude and was afraid her D1 football playing boyfriend would find out) and had used my name because she had seen it in one of my high school classmate’s yearbook and liked it. I swear to God I have no idea who the dude was who was showing his HS yearbook to girls at college. The steroid dude did call back, which was nice of him and how I know the story, but I never got a follow up letter from that University. I remember him saying, “No hard feelings, dude”, and me and my 90 pound roommate would riff on that for the rest of the year, like, “You killed and ate my mom! I’m gonna gut you like a fish, I’m gonna drink your blood!! I’m gonna eat YOU and shit you out and EAT YOU AGAIN!!!! Oh wait, she’s fine, she’s right here. No hard feelings, dude.” Which doesn’t seem funny, but when you’re stoned to the freaking gills is hilarious.
I never did figure out how any of them found out where I lived or what my phone number was.
Heather McDonald: The Campus Rape Myth . . .
. . . and the shocking claim she makes: “college is for learning.”
@Lost My Cookies
I only have two sons, the elder of whom is a freshman at college. For the last year, I’ve been handing him articles gleaned from the interwebs about what’s going on at college campuses. I pray everyday that he doesn’t afoul of some witch who feels compelled to ruin his life.
The irony is, his mother and I reared him in a “Christianist” world, where sexual intimacy should be reserved for marriage. It would seem, the Sexual Revolution and our denunciation as “prudes” and hopelessly old-fashioned notwithstanding, such an upbringing is the best we could have done given the current climate in academe.
Reading the recollections of her friends…it strikes me that Jackie’s whole thing (the emails to/from the imaginary date guy) may have started out as a way to show ‘Randall’ what he was missing out on after he turned down her advances; then she manufactured the attack story to get ‘Randall’ invested in her and the story snowballed from there. If this girl has such a need for attention, then I’m sure she greatly enjoyed all of the attention she got while talking to those campus anti-rape groups she got involved with later. But she still didn’t get ‘Randall’, who only wanted to be friends.
An afterschool special gone horribly wrong.
Y’know, if your sons don’t regularly exercise their Privilege, it might get flabby and out of shape. And that would be a terrible shame…
shermlaw, BrendaK, your observations sound uncannily like the Lena Dunham – “Barry One” scenario. Almost as if these leftists are sharing a playbook.
If he has any sense, not even that anymore.
Given Erdely’s track record, complicit. She’s hyped up fake rape stories before.
serr8d, the other irony is that “Randall” didn’t act like the Leftist stereotype of a college male, a fact not commented upon by the feminist cabal.
OT: This Twitterspat is kinda fun.
Opening volley: “One day, someone will look back at this era & marvel at how many white people w/ Ivy League degrees attacked others for being privileged.”
I think the problem isn’t “white privilege” or even generic privilege so much as smug privilege.
Oh, and the Adam Weinstein tweet Conor linked in one reply is a perfect example of a veracity bomb reaction.
“One day, someone will look back at this era & marvel at how many white people w/ Ivy League degrees attacked others for being privileged.”
Why would anyone marvel at that? We’ve always had scribes and pharisees and other assorted whited sepulchers.
OT: setting apart any time prior to this, now would be a very good time to call or e-mail your Congresslave to insist upon opposition to John Boehner’s stinking 2015 omnibus bill — and possibly mention opposition to John Boehner as Speaker in the forthcoming Congress, while we’re at it.
We’ve always had scribes and pharisees and other assorted whited sepulchers.
Generations and generations of vipers.
They never recognize themselves, though. That would be no fun at all.