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"A Rape on Campus" is a retracted, defamatory Rolling Stone magazine article written by Sabrina Erdely and originally published on November 19, 2014, that describes a purported group sexual assault at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rolling Stone retracted the story in its entirety on April 5, 2015. The article claimed that a UVA student Jackie Coakley had been taken to a party hosted by UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity by a fellow student. At the party, Jackie alleged in the article, her date led her to a bedroom where she was gang raped by several fraternity members as part of a fraternity initiation ritual. Jackie's account generated much media attention, and UVA President Teresa Sullivan suspended all fraternities. After other journalists investigated the article's claims and found significant discrepancies, Rolling Stone issued multiple apologies for the story. It has since been reported that Jackie may have invented portions of the story in an unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a fellow student in whom she had a romantic interest. In a deposition given in 2016, Jackie stated that she believed her story at the time. On January 12, 2015, Charlottesville Police officials told UVA that an investigation had failed to find any evidence confirming the events in the Rolling Stone article. UVA President Teresa Sullivan acknowledged that the story was discredited. Charlottesville Police officially suspended their four-month investigation on March 23, 2015, based on lack of credible evidence. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism audited the editorial processes that culminated in the article being published. On April 5, 2015, Rolling Stone retracted the article and published the independent report on the publication's history. UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and several fraternity members later filed lawsuits against Erdely and Rolling Stone. Eramo was awarded $3 million by a jury who concluded that Rolling Stone defamed her with actual malice, and Rolling Stone settled the lawsuit with the fraternity for $1.65 million. Story On November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone published the now retracted article by Sabrina Erdely titled "A Rape on Campus" about an alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia (UVA) student, Jackie Coakley. The UVA student, identified only as "Jackie" by the magazine, had been taken to a party by a fellow student, hosted at UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity during 2012. At the chapter house party, Jackie alleged in the article, her date led her to a bedroom where she was gang raped by several fraternity members as part of their initiation ritual. For anonymity, Erdely only used Jackie's first name and gave pseudonyms to other students discussed in the story. According to Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg's summary of the story, on September 28, 2012, Jackie, a freshman at UVA, had a date with a Phi Kappa Psi member "Drew", a junior at UVA. After the date, they allegedly went to a party at his fraternity house, where he brought her to a dark bedroom upstairs and "a heavy person jumps on top of her. A hand covers her mouth. Someone gets between her legs. Someone else kneels on her hair. And for the next three hours she's brutally raped and beaten, with Drew and another upperclassman supposedly shouting out instructions to the pledges, referring to Jackie as 'it'." According to Goldberg, "It is an account of a sober, well-planned gang rape by seven fraternity pledges at the direction of two members." After leaving the party around 3 a.m., allegedly with bruises and blood stained clothes, Jackie called her three best friends, "Andy", "Randall" and "Cindy", for support. In Rolling Stone's version, Jackie's friends discouraged her from going to the hospital to protect her reputation and because Andy and Randall planned to rush fraternities and worried their association with Jackie might hurt their chances if she reported it. Erdely wrote that Randall was no longer friends with Jackie and, "citing his loyalty to his own frat, declined to be interviewed". Jackie's academic performance reportedly declined, and she became socially withdrawn due to emotional distress. In May 2013, Jackie reported the sexual assault to dean and head of UVA's Sexual Misconduct Board, Nicole Eramo, who, according to a recap in New York magazine, offered three options: "file a criminal complaint with the police, file a complaint with the school, or face her attackers with Eramo present to tell them how she feels". The university would not take further action unless Jackie disclosed the names of the individuals or the fraternity involved. In September 2013, Eramo connected Jackie with Emily Renda, a UVA staff member, recent graduate and leader in the college's sexual assault support group One Less. Two years later, in search of a college student to feature in a story about sexual assaults that occur at a prestigious university, Erdely interviewed Renda, who suggested Jackie for the story and made the introduction. Initial response from UVA community Within hours of the article's publication, UVA president Teresa Sullivan had called the governor's chief of staff and the Charlottesville police chief to start preparing a response. She said her initial reaction was surprise and "a certain air of disbelief" because during her 44-minute interview for the story, Erdely never brought up Jackie or asked about any of the allegations made in the article. Sullivan said: "I was plainly not prepared for what the story looked like. Nor do I think her characterization of my interview was fair." The next day, Phi Kappa Psi voluntarily suspended chapter activities at UVA for the duration of the investigation. A few days later, President Sullivan suspended all Greek organizations until January 9, 2015. UVA's student newspaper The Cavalier Daily described mixed reactions from the student body, stating: "For some, the piece is an unfounded attack on our school; for others, it is a recognition of a harsh reality; and for what I suspect is a large majority of us, it falls somewhere in between." Also within the first day following publication, Phi Kappa Psi's fraternity house at UVA was vandalized with spray-painted graffiti that read "suspend us", "UVA Center for Rape Studies", and "Stop raping people". In addition, several windows were broken with bottles and cinder blocks, and police officials said that the group received "disparaging messages" on social media. A few hours after the incident, several news groups received an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the vandalism and demanding that the university implement harsher consequences for sexual assault (mandatory expulsion), conduct a review of all fraternities on campus, the resignation of Nicole Eramo, and the implementation of harm reduction policies at fraternity parties. A few days later, hundreds of people participated in a protest and mar.... Discover the Jill Geisler popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jill Geisler books.