UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

OK. A real victim.

 

Charles Johnson's "correction" on what turned out to not be a photo of Jackie claiming to have been raped in 2011:

(Warning: Jackie's real name and photo are at this link, in the event you don't want to know.)

http://gotnews.com/breaking-fraud-jackiecoakley-cried-rape-uvahoax/

"Unlike Rolling Stone, I’m not going to wait days or weeks to retract what seems to be a mistake(.)"

And it gets better from there.

 

True. But, at this point we're trying to prove a negative.

She may very well have been raped, or assaulted. I'm willing to believe this, but we don't have nearly enough information to make this judgement.

The story as told in RS is false. That incident did not happen. And, it appears that if something did happen, it didn't happen in the Fraternity house that was mentioned, and the members of that Fraternity were not involved.

That's a pretty big deal.

If Jackie was assaulted/raped, I really hope she gets help. That kind of trauma can really fuck with someone, and can take years to get to a place where it's not a daily/hourly focus of your brain, despite all attempts to not think about it. Triggers are everywhere.

Sexual assault can lead to so many negative consequences for its victims. A lack of self confidence and self worth, alcoholism, drug use, depression, promiscuity, eating disorders, cutting and other attempts to physically hurt oneself, all the way to suicide attempts can all be traced back to sexual assault. And, even lying.

 

Nice job of claiming the higher moral ground.

When someone can out a potential victim of sexual assault, and misidentify her in a picture, which you use to make further -- false -- claims, and still make a case that they handled things better than Rolling Stone, then you know how fucked up a job Rolling Stone did.

 

I really don't care. This is an Internet message board and I'm no longer a journalist, so I'm glad to admit I think frats are stupid and dangerous and serve little purpose.

The reason I think so is because of the literally mountains of evidence that shows just that.

 

I would guess that the percentage of fraternity members who have committed sexual assault and/or rape is less than their peers of a similar age, who are not members of fraternities. (Including those who attend no college at all.)

 

You don't have mountains of evidence. You have evidence.

That said, you've thought this through, so I can respect that. I think some people call them "frats" because they think that's common usage, but it's not.

 

Back to Jackie, I was somewhat surprised at how attractive she is. The way she talked about herself in the Rolling Stone story - she was so surprised that this older boy talked to her! - I wasn't expecting that. But that kind of insecurity is probably pretty common among 18-year-old women.

 

What I've read of the studies that claim frat bros are three times more likely to commit sexual assault than other men is pretty sound, if mislabeled slightly. They basically claim not that frats turn men into rapists, but that men predisposed to sexual assault are drawn to the fraternity lifestyle and enabled once they are there.

 

Can you link to such a study? The Slate piece said that college women are 1.7 times less likely to be victims than non-college women.

 

"Bros, please take the following survey:

Personal Question #1: Where in public would I want to have sex?
Personal Question #2: Who's my favorite artist?
Personal Question #3: If I could rape someone, who would it be?"

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/17/us/vermont-rape-survey/

 

And I meant "anecdotes" instead of "evidence."