DAILY BEAST re WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE: The friends of “Jackie,” the young woman featured prominently in Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone article on rape at the University of Virginia, tell a different account of the night she was allegedly raped—and say the magazine never contacted them. Andy, Cindy, and Randall, as they are referred to in the Rolling Stone piece, spoke to The Washington Post. Erdely’s article describes them as discouraging Jackie from reporting her alleged assault, but they told the Post they encouraged her to report it to the police.
Jackie’s friends say she gave them the phone number and name of a junior-year student she said she was meeting the night that she later told Rolling Stone she was raped. Her friends say they were exchanging texts with him before the date occurred. UVA said that name does not match anyone who was enrolled at the university. Similarly, photographs this student sent of himself to Jackie’s friends were in fact of a high-school classmate of Jackie’s. That ex-classmate said he has not spoken to Jackie in six years and was out of state on the night of the alleged attack.
More recently, Jackie gave a second, different name of her attacker to different friends who gave it to the Post. When the Post gave that name to the three friends mentioned in theRolling Stone article, they said they had never heard it. However, a man “whose name is similar to the second one Jackie used for her attacker” said he worked as a lifeguard at the same time as Jackie, but never met her in person and had never taken her out on a date. He also said that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi, where Jackie says she was gang-raped… (more)
EDITOR: We normally do not cover crime stories, but this one provides an important lesson concerning the lack of sophistication of the public and media. They oscilate between extremes. The hot story of the day is sexual predators, which is a good subject for thoughtful review. The media responds with food for a feeding frenzy, be it a young and possibly troubled university co-ed or the far less excusable Bill Crosby.
All through the University of Virginia hysteria, NewsLanc maintained that there are two types of alleged rape: The one violently inflicted upon another which should be immediately reported to both university officials and the police; the other resulting from dating and social gatherings that are nuanced and better reviewed by persons trained in such matters, be they with the university or the criminal justice system.
The concept of verbal consent at best makes it difficult to define what is clear verbal assent (“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my!” as contrasted with “Let’s have intercourse”, something that wives seldom clearly say to their husbands because it lacks romance) and at worse leads to murky circumstances, confusion or dissembling that can be ruinous to the male (or lesbian female for that matter), at times unjustified, possibly motivated by animosity, or even caused by mental problems.
Evolution has designed males to be aggressive; females to protect themselves from pregnancy. Yet nature (passion) drives them towards copulation.
Moreover the use of condoms, birth controll pills, and the possibility of the “morning after” pill has reduced the fear of pregnancy on the part of both parties. So stating is not to triviliaze the potential psychological damage, but to place matters in contemporary context.
Except when perpetrated outside social circumstances in a threatening or violent situation, sorting out the facts and circumstances, determining responsibility, and administering appropriate penalties requires knowledge and mature judgment.
