[iamdegaussed]

Excellent comment on Bradley's response article, Fisto. I hope he's moved by your words and those of others to start putting pressure on this.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

(12-01-2014 11:27 PM)Glock Wrote:  

Here's another skeptical article -- from a WSJ writer:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bret-step...1417478164

Quote:

In March 2007 the New York Times Magazine ran a stunning 12,000-word cover story on the subject of “The Women’s War.” It told the story of several female veterans of the war in Iraq, of the sexual assault some had endured in the military, and of their subsequent struggles with alcoholism, depression, PTSD and other effects of combat.

Among the most compelling characters in the piece was a woman named Amorita Randall, who claimed she had barely survived an IED attack on her Humvee and that she had been raped twice in her six years of Navy service. She claimed to have reported the second incident to her commanders only to be told “not to make such a big deal about it.”

The details are gruesome: “I remember there were other guys in the room too,” Ms. Randall told the Times. “Somebody told me they took pictures and put them on the Internet.” Ms. Randall, added reporter Sara Corbett, “says she has blocked out most of the details of the second rape—something else experts say is a common self-protective measure taken by the brain in response to violent trauma—and that she left Iraq ‘in a daze.’ ”

Only one problem: “Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did,” as the Times later acknowledged in an Editors’ Note. Instead, her overseas service was spent in Guam, 6,200 miles away from the combat zone. The Navy, the Times added, “had no record of a sexual-assault report involving Ms. Randall.”

I was reminded of Ms. Corbett’s article while reading another blockbuster piece, this one in Rolling Stone by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Ms. Erdely tells the story of an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, identified only as “Jackie,” who claims to have been gang-raped by seven young men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity over the course of three hours. The account is graphic and stomach-turning. No less disturbing is the article’s description of UVA as a campus saturated with institutional misogyny and governed by a de facto law of omerta when it comes to sexual assault.

The article has stirred a national outcry. The university has shut down Greek life through January. Congressional Democrats are calling for hearings. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is using the UVA case as an opportunity to push a campus sex-crime bill.

All of this may do a great deal of good. With apologies to Bluto, there’s not a lot to be said in favor of Greek life, much less of the toxic blend of partying, drinking and hooking up. Nor is there much doubt that rape is a serious problem on college campuses, all the more so because an astonishing number of young men do not seem to understand that coerced sex is rape.

But using the Rolling Stone story as an opportunity to promote a worthy cause should not acquit the media from looking closely at the details of the story itself. And here there are some serious reasons to exercise caution.

The most intelligent dissection of the article comes from a Nov. 24 blog post from Richard Bradley, the editor in chief of Worth magazine. Mr. Bradley picks up on some of the journalistic malpractice in the story, including the failure to get any statement (or “no comment”) from the accused rapists. He also notes lurid details that are also simply improbable, such as the suggestion that the victim was raped over shards of glass. (Wouldn’t that have wounded the rapists also?)

Which isn’t to say that the rape did not happen, even if it may not have happened precisely in the way described in the piece. But it ought to raise a skeptical eyebrow. Mr. Bradley’s sharpest observation is that the journalistic fabrications that most often make it into print are those that “play into existing biases.” In the UVA case, he notes, those include biases against fraternities, men and the South—exactly the kinds of biases that led to the fabricated rape charges against the Duke lacrosse players in 2006. . . .


***

It isn’t surprising that a generation of journalists schooled in the idea that “narrative” contains truth independent of fact are so easily taken in by stories that ultimately prove less than accurate, if not utterly untrue. Nor is it surprising that American distrust in the news media is near an all-time high. Bad journalism is bad for journalism, and good journalists have a responsibility and an interest in calling out sensationalist stories whose details ring false even as they play to what we’re inclined to believe is true.

The UVA story cries out for a much closer look.

"All of this may do a great deal of good. With apologies to Bluto, there’s not a lot to be said in favor of Greek life, much less of the toxic blend of partying, drinking and hooking up. Nor is there much doubt that rape is a serious problem on college campuses, all the more so because an astonishing number of young men do not seem to understand that coerced sex is rape."

Sad to see this writer fell into the feminist's trap with this article. I can't speak on sororities. But Greek life for men is also about making connections that will serve them personally and professionally throughout their lives.

One of the ways the family courts wreck men is by cutting them off from their kids. Banning Greek life -- in my opinion -- is a deliberate attempt by feminists to make sure men have no support system at all. In good or bad times, frat brothers are there for you (and I'm saying this as someone who was not in a frat).

I see an insidious agenda here:

It's about taking away "male spaces."
It's about cutting men off from networking opportunities.
It's about damaging male friendships.
It's about women controlling what men say and do.
It's about harming men's economic prospects.
It's about criminalizing male sexuality.
It's about ruining men's future economic prospects.
It's about displacing men even more on college campuses.
It's about making sure the low number of men in college goes even lower.
It's about painting men as guilty till proven innocent.
It's about feminist control of "the conversation."

You know those American wives who "don't allow" their husbands to have friends or outside interests? Removing frats from campus is them bringing that controlling mindset to the younger generation.

The author of this article was Bret Stephens. As I have said before, when we post articles we should also post bylines. Because it's good to keep track of reporters who might be agenda-driven. Now when people Google Bret's name, they can see this.

[placer]

Here's a comment from Richard Bradley's blog entry taking a Jezebel "journalist" to task for doubting the Rolling Stone article showing that the details of the original Rolling Stone article are not consistent with reality:

Quote:

1. No Phi Psi brother worked at the Aquatic Fitness Center pool as a lifeguard during the entire year of 2012. No brother even worked at the Aquatic Fitness Center at all. They can prove this.

2. Phi Psi did not have a date function the weekend of September 28th. They did not even have a party. UVA Greek life is required to document any and all social events with the IFC in the week leading up to them. Phi Psi has this schedule available and the IFC can also show that there were no events at the house that weekend.

3. The article claims that this was some sort of pledging initiation for new brothers. While this is unbelievable from the start, it is also factually inaccurate. Phi Psi (like almost every other IFC fraternity) does not, and has not ever, taken pledges in the fall. UVA greek life rushes in the spring exclusively. Phi Psi is required to provide their national organization with proof of a formal initiation of every new brother when it happens. The entire pledge class was formally initiated in the Spring of 2012. The entire narrative of this being some savage rite of passage was the first red flag of this story, and it absolutely should have been.

4. There are a few more tidbits I would rather not leave here.

Doing a little digging, UVA actually has two pools -- the Aquatic Fitness Center one as well as the North Grounds Recreation Center one (both have lifeguards on duty) -- and the above statement only denies there being someone working at one of those pools who was a Phi Psi brother. Also, the original Rollins Stone article was vague whether the party where Jackie was supposedly raped was on the weekend of September 21 or September 28, using the ambiguous "four weeks into UVA's 2012 school year".

[LouieG]

Rolling Stone never spoke to the accused [WaPo]

Quote:

“I reached out to [the accused] in multiple ways,” Erdely said in the Slate interview. “They were kind of hard to get in touch with because [the fraternity’s] contact page was pretty outdated...

...

Sean Woods, who edited the Rolling Stone story, said in an interview that Erdely did not talk to the alleged assailants. “We did not talk to them. We could not reach them,” he said in an interview.

However, he said, “we verified their existence,” in part by talking to Jackie’s friends. “I’m satisfied that these guys exist and are real. We knew who they were.”

Fucking lol. This is pathetically half-assed. A reporter with the level of detail Erdely had—Drew was a third-year, a member of Phi Psi, and worked at the Aquatics Center two years ago—should have been able to track down his identity and current whereabouts within a couple hours of stepping on campus. (It will be much harder now that UVa's media department has doubtless run all around the school telling people to shut up.)

I spent all of six months as a completely overwhelmed cub reporter before getting out of journalism for good, and in my experience at a publication many rungs below RS, attempting to reach a source via their website's contact form wouldn't have flown for a story about the local Easter Egg hunt, nevermind a story with real news value.

Say what you want about RS's standards, I am very surprised that they went to press without doing more to triangulate the accused's identity. They're rightly uncomfortable about it, which is why Erdely is now asking everyone to look the other way:

Quote:

“I could address many of [the questions] individually . . . but by dwelling on this, you’re getting sidetracked,” [Erdely] wrote in an e-mail response to The Post’s inquiry.

“. . .the overarching point of the article [is] the culture that greeted her and so many other UVA women I interviewed, who came forward with allegations, only to be met with indifference.”

Focus on what's important, bigot!

Could they be anymore transparent about this?

Edit:

Placer, later in the article Jackie provides the exact date:

Quote:

When did it happen to you?" Emily Renda asked Jackie as they sat for coffee at the outdoor Downtown Mall in the fall of 2013.

"September 28th," Jackie whispered.

That's a good catch on the pools, but I doubt whomever denied a Phi Psi brother worked as a lifeguard was actually making a fine distinction between one pool or the other.

Either way, I would expect the same person or people manage both pools, and could have confirmed whether "Drew" worked at either.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

(12-02-2014 08:43 AM)LouieG Wrote:  

Rolling Stone never spoke to the accused [WaPo]

Quote:

“I reached out to [the accused] in multiple ways,” Erdely said in the Slate interview. “They were kind of hard to get in touch with because [the fraternity’s] contact page was pretty outdated...

...

Sean Woods, who edited the Rolling Stone story, said in an interview that Erdely did not talk to the alleged assailants. “We did not talk to them. We could not reach them,” he said in an interview.

However, he said, “we verified their existence,” in part by talking to Jackie’s friends. “I’m satisfied that these guys exist and are real. We knew who they were.”

Fucking lol. This is pathetically half-assed. A reporter with the level of detail Erdely had—Drew was a third-year, a member of Phi Psi, and worked at the Aquatics Center two years ago—should have been able to track down his identity and current whereabouts within a couple hours of stepping on campus. (It will be much harder now that UVa's media department has doubtless run all around the school telling people to shut up.)

I spent all of six months as a completely overwhelmed cub reporter before getting out of journalism for good, and in my experience at a publication many rungs below RS, attempting to reach a source via their website's contact form wouldn't have flown for a story about the local Easter Egg hunt, nevermind a story with real news value.

Say what you want about RS's standards, I am very surprised that they went to press without doing more to triangulate the accused's identity. They're rightly uncomfortable about it, which is why Erdely is now trying to get everyone to look the other way:

Quote:

“I could address many of [the questions] individually . . . but by dwelling on this, you’re getting sidetracked,” [Erdely] wrote in an e-mail response to The Post’s inquiry.

“. . .the overarching point of the article [is] the culture that greeted her and so many other UVA women I interviewed, who came forward with allegations, only to be met with indifference.”

Focus on what's important, bigot!

Could they be anymore transparent about this?

"Sean Woods, who edited the Rolling Stone story, said in an interview that Erdely did not talk to the alleged assailants. “We did not talk to them. We could not reach them,” he said in an interview."

As a fellow former reporter, let me add to your observations. I'm calling bullshit on her above comment.

I have had stories to do where I had to reach high-level sources in a matter of days. I was able to get the CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to talk to me, among many, many other busy professionals. It's about persistence. It's also about an editor saying "If you can't get the source, we can't go with the story."

I remember once an editor got on my ass about something. So I ended up getting the screenwriter of a popular movie to do an interview within two hours -- by messaging him on Facebook. This is not the Watergate era when you had to look through outdated phone directories for phone number that might or might not be in service.

How the HELL could she not be able to get a few 22- or 23-year-olds college grads on the phone or on Facebook?! Almost everyone is reachable these days. You can even get a celebrity's attention with a Tweet.

The more I examine bits and pieces of her reporting, the worse her story looks. It now seems like she avoided talking to the suspects because she was afraid her story would come crashing down if they gave her contrary info or called in lawyers.

[R Smoov]

That was some good ho-fiction I read.

[placer]

(11-20-2014 09:15 PM)Jura Wrote:  

(11-20-2014 01:25 PM)placer Wrote:  

If Return of Kings authors wrote articles with the same level of fact checking that Sabrina Rubin Erdely (the author of this Rolling Stone piece) does, they would read like this:

---

Little Dark found himself in a dangerous situation.[..] It was only through Mr. Dark's physical prowess as a fighter that he was able to take on all these people at once [...]

Make sure to remind our readers that the fight itself isn't really the focus here.

The scary thing is that, now that the mainstream press is holding Erdely responsible for her lack of fact checking, her response is pretty much the same as Little Dark's:

"the UVA administration, which chose not to act on her allegations in any way — i.e., the overarching point of the article. THAT is the story: the culture"

In other words, the rape itself isn't the focus here.

Yeah, we have heard that one before Erdely. Around here, we ban on sight someone trying to use that line to justify their bullshit.

(A shout out to LouieG for getting the exact date of the supposed rape; I have verified that it's the same management that hires lifeguards at both pools. As an aside, Erdely uses wording like "the UVA pool" which means that, according to Erdely, UVA has only one pool; a quick Google search verified they have two)

[LouieG]

Emily Renda mentioned the alleged assault on Jackie while testifying before the Senate in June:

Quote:

One of the student survivors I worked with, Jenna*, was gang-raped by five fraternity men early in her freshman year. Despite the severity of the assault and injuries she sustained, Jenna still experienced a feeling of personal responsibility. Looking for affirmation, she sought out peers and told her story. Sadly, each and every one of the friends she reached out to responded with varying denials of her experience; these responses worsened her feelings of self-blame – that she must be confused because that fraternity “is full of great guys”; that she must have made them think she was “down for that”; questioning how no one else at the party could have heard what was going on if she was telling the truth; or discouraging her from seeking help because “you don’t want to be one of those girls who has a reputation” for reporting “that kind of thing.” These statements haunted Jenna. She told me that they made her feel crazy, and made her question whether her own understanding of the rape was legitimate.

What jumps out at me is the 5 assailants VS. 7 assailants discrepancy. I don't think that's as much of an issue as some might imagine—maybe there were five PIV assaults, plus one digital and one with a foreign object, and Renda only mentioned the first five. Or maybe Renda just got her numbers wrong.

However, this is a public record document that directly contradicts a somewhat minor (but still central) fact in the RS narrative. If I reported this story, I sure hope I would've found this testimony and then determined the source of the discrepancy. And if 7 assailants were the correct number, I would've mentioned in the article why that number was misreported in prior, sworn testimony before the Senate.

This difference doesn't discredit the entire account—not by a long shot—but it does call into question the accuracy of specific details. For instance, if they can't get the number of assailants straight, I have no faith that quotes like "grab it's motherfucking leg" are accurately reported. Details about the duration of the assault, the way the men / room smelled, and the way they laughed when someone punched Jackie in the face seem similarly uncertain.

What is certain at this point is that Erdely sensationalized a potential rape, and in doing so, needlessly cast doubt on the credibility of the accuser.

Aside from making the story more salacious, there's no good reason for all of the unverifiable detail (broken glass, laughter after the punch to the face), nor for Erdely's tin-eared re-creations of dialogue. Dramatizing the rape like that adds some serious juice to the story, but the story stands without it, and would've set off a lot fewer bullshit detectors without it.

[runsonmagic]

(12-02-2014 08:43 AM)LouieG Wrote:  

Rolling Stone never spoke to the accused [WaPo]

Quote:

“I reached out to [the accused] in multiple ways,” Erdely said in the Slate interview. “They were kind of hard to get in touch with because [the fraternity’s] contact page was pretty outdated...

I'm gonna call BS on this two. The entire UVA email directory is online. If she knew the names of the accused, she knew their email address.

She also knew where their frat house was, and was on their road for her story. She couldn't knock on the door and say "hi, I'm doing a story on fraternities, but I'm only in town for a day. Can you have [name] contact me immediately?"

I could get a hold of these guys in a day, if they weren't cowering under their lawyers right now.

[bojangles]

Great work Louie, this is excellent, if only you could write a medium article about it

[Dusty]

How long before Erdely turns herself into a victim?

We're going to soon hear about "right wing" attacks on her and "death threats" ( you'll have to take her word on it).

[iamdegaussed]

I found another story by Sabrina Rubin Erdley, this one from 2008. I don't think anyone else has posted it yet. It's about a guy who allegedly date-raped 10 or more women, luring them out under the pretense that he was a doctor or astronaut. The story is pretty shocking and all evidence points to the rapes being real. Or so I thought. Mid-way through the article as Erdley's complaining about how the jury could've possibly let this serial rapist off.

Quote:

Incredibly, that analysis holds true even in a situation as extreme as that of Marsalis. What's especially troubling is that the very things that some of his accusers speculate made the juries so skeptical are typical elements of nonstranger assaults. It doesn't fit with most people's misguided concept of rape, for example, that Marsalis's accusers went out with him willingly—thinking him a worldly doctor, the embodiment of Mr. Right—and were initially enjoying their evening with him. As the defense hammered home, none of the women stormed to the nearest police station or went to a hospital for a rape exam and toxicology test. In fact, the opposite happened: In a near-masochistic twist, most of Marsalis's dates had contact with him again—behavior that seems too bizarre to be believed, but that psychologists say is actually not uncommon among women raped by someone they know.

These rapes probably happened, but because these women went out with the guy again it discredited their entire story. It's pretty easy to see how a jury would find that odd in my opinion. And instead of telling girls that people should listen and believe them, we should be telling them 'get to the police'. Not their friends, not some school board. The longer you wait after being raped the more likely you are to end up whiffing when a jury doesn't believe your story.

Anyway, the story goes on to say that he got charged with sexual assault and the judge locked him up for 10-21 years and in that time, another woman came forward who had actually called the police and gotten a rape kit. Guess what? Probably going to be guilty.

So basically what Erdley is saying in this article is that this rapist "wasn't guilty enough" in spite of the evidence the jurors used to acquit him of most of the charges and the newer one coming to light. She spent a dozen paragraphs complaining about the fact that women should alert the authorities and get a rape kit done after they feel they've been assaulted, and then pointed out that when a women did just that it became totally likely the man would be guilty.

TL;DR, rapes gotta be reported to the police. I suspect the reason most aren't is because a lot of them are fuzzy alcohol related encounters that fall under the scope of regret. See: that broad with the mattress and that crazy bitch at USC who harassed her ex-boyfriend for a year after convincing herself she was raped.

And Erdley has a history of railing against this.

Also, if we can do this much to the UVA story here, imagine what an expensive attorney will do.

[Shortest Straw]

Link to story:

http://www.sabrinaerdely.com/docs/TheCri...tWomen.pdf

[iamdegaussed]

Shit, I thought I posted it.

http://www.self.com/life/health/2008/11/serial-rapist/

Here it is.

[Engineer]

(12-02-2014 07:34 AM)placer Wrote:  

Here's a comment from Richard Bradley's blog entry taking a Jezebel "journalist" to task for doubting the Rolling Stone article showing that the details of the original Rolling Stone article are not consistent with reality

Richard Bradley posted a link to the LinkedIn page of the Jezebel "journalist" who attacked him, Anna Merlan. She's WNB, and her #1 skill other people endorse her for is "Storytelling". Journalism is a distant 4th, after Blogging and Magazines.

[spokepoker]

Days of Broken Arrows should really make a whole RoK article about this, he has the most consistent information about how a story goes to print, and the hurdles of achieving that in actual journalism that is supposed to hold up to scrutiny.
Everything he has posted in this whole thread is pure truth, that if Rolling Stone had any actual journalistic integrity, this story never would have been printed.

[placer]

The Washington Post has posted another piece about Erdely's poor reporting when making this story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik...eged-rape/

To save people a click, I think this sentence summarizes WP's criticism of Erdely's reporting:

Quote:

The charge in this piece, however, is gang rape, and so requires every possible step to reach out and interview them, including e-mails, phone calls, certified letters, FedEx letters, UPS letters and, if all of that fails, a knock on the door. No effort short of all that qualifies as journalism.

[Dusty]

Yeah, Ederly will no longer discuss the story. All questions about the article to her are being handled by the Rolling Stone PR department now.

[Duke Castile]

One thing I speculated about when I first read about the "rape" was that the "friends" that were so callous and self serving in real life just didn't believe her. It also explains the deans "ho hum" attitude toward her. Im betting the only person to find her credible is Erdly and her group of friends that love telling each other how traumatized they are.

It makes a lot more sense than they saw a bloodied and beaten rape victim.

I also read somewhere that the whole scene was fabricated by erdly.

Also, if the story was on note as having 5 attackers earlier and now its 7, this suggests to me that her story has been getting more and more unsavory as time goes by.

Why? Because she gets more and more attention with each new juicy detail. She's told it so many times she doesn't remember the first version of it when it was just some guy from class that pinched her ass.

[samsamsam]

(12-02-2014 07:28 PM)Fisto Wrote:  

One thing I speculated about when I first read about the "rape" was that the "friends" that were so callous and self serving in real life just didn't believe her. It also explains the deans "ho hum" attitude toward her. Im betting the only person to find her credible is Erdly and her group of friends that love telling each other how traumatized they are.

It makes a lot more sense than they saw a bloodied and beaten rape victim.

I also read somewhere that the whole scene was fabricated by erdly.

Also, if the story was on note as having 5 attackers earlier and now its 7, this suggests to me that her story has been getting more and more unsavory as time goes by.

Why? Because she gets more and more attention with each new juicy detail. She's told it so many times she doesn't remember the first version of it when it was just some guy from class that pinched her ass.

Just seems like one crazy chick found an eager buyer of her bullshit. A buyer with an agenda, it sounded like she "interviewed" (I use that term loosely) a bunch of women until she found someone to champion her cause.

I know women are ruthless to one another, but if they were friends they would actually try to help her make the right decisions in regards to a very fucking serious matter of rape.

[The Lizard of Oz]

There is now a Slate piece co-authored by Hanna Rosin questioning why Erdely apparently never attempted to reach the alleged rapists for comment. It is remarkable that even Slate feels obliged to publish such a piece.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/d...leged.html

The piece is worth reading in full. While Rosin and co. are obviously attempting to maintain focus on the nobility of their cause, they are beginning the process of distancing themselves from Erdely and from Jackie's story. Among other interesting tidbits, they quote some female named Caitlin Flanagan who had apparently done a hit piece on frats for the Atlantic, and even she now finds the story essentially unbelievable:

Quote:

Caitlin Flanagan, who did an investigation into bad behavior at fraternities for the Atlantic, emailed us:

In all my time studying fraternity rapes for my own essay, I didn’t come across a single report of anything like this. I did find reports of women who were raped by multiple men on one night—but those always involved incapacitation, either by alcohol or a drugged drink. And I did also find accounts of violent, push-down rape of the kind in the essay—but those were always by one member, not a bunch of members. (In fact, many of that kind—now that I think about it—were committed by non-members, or by visiting former members). But a planned gang rape, without alcohol or drugs, and keyed to initiation—I have never seen a case like that. Nor have I seen penetration with a foreign object—I’ve seen plenty of that committed by brothers to pledges as hazing, but I haven’t seen it in sexual assault cases. I’m sure it’s happened, but again—as part of a ritualized gang rape ... Never anything like it.

Again, there are many interesting passages in the piece relating to Jackie and to Erdely's and Rolling Stone absolute refusal to say whether they did anything at all to reach the supposed rapists. Well worth reading.

[The Lizard of Oz]

Here is a truly remarkable passage from the Slate piece. Essentially the stories of ostensible "survivors" are treated like gospel truth. Not only can they not be challenged -- even questions about details are not permitted since they might upset the survivor -- or so says one Brian Head who presides over the UVa "sexual assault peer education group One in Four". It seems that even Rosin and co are beginning to admit that such complete lack of questioning might lead to some problems.

Quote:

We found Jackie and she agreed to talk to us. Then, at the last minute she backed out. She had already been interviewed by the Washington Post for a story that has not yet run, and she had picked up that the media had some doubts—something that she is understandably sensitive to. What became clear from talking to Jackie’s supporters at UVA is that the community of victim advocates operates by a very specific code. “The first thing as a friend we must say is, ‘I believe you and I am here to listen,’ ” says Brian Head, president of UVA’s all-male sexual assault peer education group One in Four. Head and others believe that questioning a victim is a form of betrayal, because it will make her feel judged and all the more reluctant to ever speak about what happened. None of the people we spoke to had asked Jackie who the men were, and in fact none of them had any idea. They did not press her on any details about the incident.

[Shortest Straw]

(12-02-2014 10:42 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

Among other interesting tidbits, they quote some female named Caitlin Flanagan who had apparently done a hit piece on frats for the Atlantic, and even she now finds the story essentially unbelievable:

Quote:

Caitlin Flanagan, who did an investigation into bad behavior at fraternities for the Atlantic, emailed us:

In all my time studying fraternity rapes for my own essay, I didn’t come across a single report of anything like this. I did find reports of women who were raped by multiple men on one night—but those always involved incapacitation, either by alcohol or a drugged drink. And I did also find accounts of violent, push-down rape of the kind in the essay—but those were always by one member, not a bunch of members. (In fact, many of that kind—now that I think about it—were committed by non-members, or by visiting former members). But a planned gang rape, without alcohol or drugs, and keyed to initiation—I have never seen a case like that. Nor have I seen penetration with a foreign object—I’ve seen plenty of that committed by brothers to pledges as hazing, but I haven’t seen it in sexual assault cases. I’m sure it’s happened, but again—as part of a ritualized gang rape ... Never anything like it.

Caitlin Flanagan's piece on fraternities is surprisingly objective.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arch...es/357580/

[Dusty]

(12-02-2014 10:55 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

Here is a truly remarkable passage from the Slate piece. Essentially the stories of ostensible "survivors" are treated like gospel truth. Not only can they not be challenged -- even questions about details are not permitted since they might upset the survivor -- or so says one Brian Head who presides over the UVa "sexual assault peer education group One in Four". It seems that even Rosin and co are beginning to admit that such complete lack of questioning might lead to some problems.

Quote:

We found Jackie and she agreed to talk to us. Then, at the last minute she backed out. She had already been interviewed by the Washington Post for a story that has not yet run, and she had picked up that the media had some doubts—something that she is understandably sensitive to. What became clear from talking to Jackie’s supporters at UVA is that the community of victim advocates operates by a very specific code. “The first thing as a friend we must say is, ‘I believe you and I am here to listen,’ ” says Brian Head, president of UVA’s all-male sexual assault peer education group One in Four. Head and others believe that questioning a victim is a form of betrayal, because it will make her feel judged and all the more reluctant to ever speak about what happened. None of the people we spoke to had asked Jackie who the men were, and in fact none of them had any idea. They did not press her on any details about the incident.

I'm beginning to see the campus rape hysteria apparatus as a sort of cult. A "safe place" where people can tell tall tales and everyone believes them and they reward each other with sympathy and attention.

They managed to get their tentacles into the school administration, media, and even the legislature and executive. The cult uses the government to come up with fake 1 in 5 stats to support the cults teachings. Heretics that voice any skepticism are ruined by the powers that be.

The rape hoaxers are like a Manson or Jim Jones or Heavens Gate cult where fantastical tales are told, and no one can question them no matter how outlandish.

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I'm hoping they overreached so badly in this case that the veil will come off and the cult is exposed.

[Shortest Straw]

[duplicate]