After the Rolling Stone managing editor on Friday said that the magazine had “misplaced” trust with alleged gang rape victim Jackie, one of her friends quoted in the article disputed some of the details about the alleged assault at a University of Virginia fraternity.
In an interview with the Washington Post on Friday night, Jackie’s friend “Andy” said that Jackie told him she was assaulted the night of the alleged incident.
He said that he and two of her friends did meet Jackie near the the fraternity houses. But he said that her dress was not covered in blood and that they never discussed “the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape.”
“Andy” said that Jackie told them that she was forced to perform oral sex on multiple men. Her friends offered to help Jackie but she wanted to return to her room, he said.
“The perception that I’m gravitating toward is that something happened that night and it’s gotten lost in different iterations of the stories that have been told,” he told the Post. “Is there a possibility nothing happened? Sure. I think the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.”
Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana on Friday said that there were “discrepancies in Jackie’s account” of the rape at a University of Virginia fraternity.
UVA’s chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity at which Jackie says she was raped, rebutted details in Jackie’s story in a Friday statement. Dana said he couldn’t explain the “discrepancies” between the account reported in Rolling Stone and Phi Kappa Psi’s statement.
So how did RS get that wrong?
It’s time to specifically criticize the work of the Rolling Stone reporter for this fiasco.
The “reporter” obviously had an agenda and ran with it. Why should these discrepancies only come to light when other news organizations are doing follow-up interviews?
Sadly, it may be time to look to Buzzfeed for the best reporting.
It’s time for Jackie to identify herself, speak publicly, and answer questions.