UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

So, the WaPo has a specific reason for not naming her. What about everyone else? Are we doing anyone any favors by still treating this woman like a victim of sexual assault?

In the 14 months since her story shocked the world, Jackie has been at the heart of a national debate about sexual assaults on college campuses, has become embroiled in a media scandal, and is the central figure in a series of defamation lawsuits.

Yet there’s one important fact missing about Jackie, the young woman who concocted a harrowing story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity: her full name.

News organizations have declined to reveal Jackie’s full identity since her now-discredited story appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in November 2014. Her single-name identity — just Jackie — is in keeping with a long-standing journalistic convention against identifying alleged victims of sexual crimes to protect the accuser’s privacy.

As a result, news accounts of rape or sex-related crimes almost never name an accuser without their explicit permission, making it the only class of crime involving adults in which this practice is observed.

But that standard arguably doesn’t apply in Jackie’s case. Her story has been shown repeatedly to be false, both through news reporting and an extensive police investigation. Rolling Stone has withdrawn the article, “A Rape on Campus,” and apologized to its readers for publishing an account that a Columbia Journalism School report called “a story of journalistic failure.”

Even so, Jackie has remained nearly anonymous. No mainstream media outlet has reported Jackie’s full name. Investigators for the Charlottesville police, who found no evidence to support Jackie’s story, haven’t revealed it, either. Her identity has also been redacted in documents by a court hearing one of the lawsuits against Rolling Stone.
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The Washington Post, which broke many of the details that led to the unraveling of Jackie’s story, hasn’t named Jackie for a particular reason: The newspaper made an agreement with Jackie not to do so. In exchange for discussing her story with Post reporters, The Post agreed in late 2014 not to report her full name.

“We told her we wouldn’t name her, in large part because we thought she was a sex-assault victim at that time and we don’t name victims of sexual assault without their permission,” said Mike Semel, The Post’s Metro editor. “That agreement for anonymity needs to be considered until we are absolutely certain that there was no assault at all.”

Jackie’s rape story was false. So why hasn’t the media named her by now?

Funny thing is, if you read the comments, her full name comes up about two comments in. You'd think they would have anticipated that, and not allowed comments.

Chuck Johnson reports that she got married in October. Good luck to that guy.

 

I just clicked on that link and it looks like there are no longer any comments on it.

 

Wise move, but a little late.

 

That's, unfortunately, a very uncontroversial position. In fact, any deviation from it is considered controversial .

 

Not sure if you read the link, but she wrote the definitive Washington Post piece on believing rape claims, no matter what Jackie's case may have taught us.

Hard to understand how she could support Hillary, or how the press can ignore the contradiction.

 

OK, but it's different. These women were bimbos and floozies.

 

Maybe even trollops and tarts.

 

They were, specifically, bimbos and floozies, according to the front-runner for the United States presidency.

 

I just like to show off my vocabulary sometimes. Indulge me.

 

Some might even have been clams.

 

Eh, could be worse. Rape victims who don't want to come forward could always be threatened with perjury if they don't recant their subpoenaed affidavits.

Oh, wait ...