Posted on 12/03/2014 3:10:06 AM PST by servo1969
Rolling Stone has published an incredible story about a rape at the University of Virginia, sending shock waves around the country.
But when I say the story is incredible, I mean that in the literal, largely abandoned sense of the word. It is not credible -- I don't believe it.
I'm not saying that the author of the story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, deliberately fabricated facts. Nor do I believe that all of her reporting was flawed. There may be an outrageously callous attitude toward sexual assaults at UVA. Rape, particularly date rape, may be a major problem there. I've talked to enough people with connections to the campus to think that part is credible enough.
But the central story isn't about a spontaneous alcohol-fueled case of some creep refusing to take no for an answer (an inexcusable offense in my opinion). It's an account of a well-planned gang rape by seven fraternity pledges at the direction of two members. If true, lots of people need to go to jail for decades -- if.
The basic story is this: Jackie is asked out on a date her freshman year by a junior named "Drew" (not his real name). After dinner, they go to a party at Phi Kappa Psi. Quickly, Drew asks Jackie, "Want to go upstairs, where it's quieter?"
Jackie is led to a "pitch-black" bedroom. She's knocked to the floor. A heavy person jumps on top of her. A hand covers her mouth. When she bites it, she's punched in the face. And for the next three hours she's brutally raped, with Drew and another upperclassman shouting out instructions to the pledges, referring to Jackie as "it."
Many alleged details (though Erdely never uses the word "alleged") aren't suitable for a family paper. Others are simply hard to believe. The pitch-black darkness doesn't prevent Jackie from recognizing an attacker or seeing them drink beer. The assault takes place amidst the wreckage of a broken glass table, but the rapists are undeterred by shards of glass.
The most unbelievable dialogue comes later. Sometime after 3 a.m., Jackie leaves the still-raging party, "her face beaten, dress spattered with blood," without anyone seeing her. Distraught, she calls three friends, Andy, Randall and Cindy (not their real names) for help. They arrive in "minutes." One of the male friends says they have to take her to the hospital. Cindy replies, "Is that such a good idea?" adding, "Her reputation will be shot for the next four years."
Erdely expounds: "Andy seconded the opinion, adding that since he and Randall both planned to rush fraternities, they ought to think this through. The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie's rape ..."
Really? Neither boy put Jackie's medical needs above their pledge prospects? What a convenient conversation for an exposé of rape culture -- it reads like a script written for a feminist avant-garde theater troupe. Similarly, when Jackie reports what happened to school authorities -- again, a brutal, premeditated gang rape by nearly half the pledge class of a prominent fraternity -- the dean is described as responding with all of the emotion you'd expect if Jackie requested to change majors. Meanwhile, it was all kept hush-hush until Erdely reported it.
Erdely admits she set out to find a sexual assault story at an elite school like UVA. She looked at lots of other colleges first, but "none of those schools felt quite right" in the words of a Washington Post profile of Erdely. But UVA, which Erdely describes in Rolling Stone as a school without a thriving "radical feminist culture seeking to upend the patriarchy," was just right. As Worth magazine editor Richard Bradley noted last week, the whole thing seems like an adventure in confirmation bias. Initially, Erdely wouldn't say whether she even knew the names of the alleged rapists. Late Monday, according to the Washington Post, Erdely's editor said Rolling Stone "verified their existence" by talking to Jackie's friends, but the magazine couldn't reach them. Uh huh.
Erdely's story was reported uncritically for days as a powerful example of the "rape epidemic" that is somehow taking place amidst a 20-year decline in reported rapes. News outlets repeated the claim that 1 in 5 college women are sexually assaulted. This bogus statistic comes from "The Campus Sexual Assault Study," a shoddy online survey of just two universities that counted attempted (forced) kissing and the like as "sexual assault" -- and never even asked female respondents about rape.
Erdely's story may be proven true after a needed investigation, but I suspect it will turn out to have been one of those stories too useful to verify.
In this wicked age, rapes ARE an increasing problem. But the proper way to draw the focus the problem deserves is not to make up or embellish stories. The girl who cried wolf is no better than the boy who did. When the wolf came, nobody paid attention.
The problem is that these women refuse to go to the ER and have a rape kit done.
Flipping a member would be very easy at this point because he could claim that he didn’t participate.
People crash through glass windows, doors, or coffee tables all the time in the movies, it is a very dramatic effect. It rarely happens in real life, you need a great deal of force to break a plane of tempered glass, it often results in death. But, even so, wouldn’t the metal frame of the table still be there? How do you rape someone who is inside a metal frame? She would have her back on the floor, with her legs and arms and probably head, outside of the frame. Since a woman’s center of gravity is her hips, they would be on the floor and the coffee table metal frame would get in the way.
yes lets get going on attacking the victims....that’s the way.......
I should have said the cops “would have had” no difficulty flipping participants.
That window of opportunity has of course closed by now.
Assuming your question isn’t rhetorical, you’ve answered it yourself.
My wife and I both saw plenty of stuff (not anywhere near the level of gang rape) in college to know that calling the campus cops for any sort of serious crime is a mistake. We plan to instruct our kids, in the event of suffering a serious crime, to call 911 first, and let the real police then interface with campus security.
That having been said, we’ve also both seen the internal campus “judicial” process abused at out schools. Guy is a dbag to a girl (ungentlemanly, but most of the time not a crime) and she seeks revenge via conduct board by leveling the charge of a serious crime, but declines to press official charges with police. So the guy gets railroaded out of school and is permanently stigmatized, while the girl doesn’t have to meet real evidentary standards AND doesn’t have the guilt of possibly sending him to jail on her conscience.
The truth is that serious crime, like rape/sexual assault, should ALWAYS result in the real police being called in to investigate. It both reduces the possibility of exaggerated revenge-motivated charges and in the case of an actual rape helps insure that a rapist isn’t just slapped on the wrist (ie kicked out of school) and allowed to go on his merry way to his next victim.
I think this is close to the truth. Guy dates a young girl. The young girl is in LOVE. The guy is so nice. This is the one the girl thinks. They have sex. The guy says maybe in not so many words "thanks and have a good life." Girl is devastated. She's given away herself to him and he's used her like dirty Kleenex. It's all consensual, but I bet the woman feels raped. And that's how she justifies it.
If the girl said ‘no’ at any point, it is rape, period...even if you think it is jest.
Or if she is underage, or qualifies for the difference in age that makes it statutory rape, as she does not have legal right to say yes....it is rape.
You may be misunderstanding my scenario. It's a starry eyed young lady who willingly gives herself to what she pictures to be her husband someday. But the guy is just thinking "I want some sex". Woman invest much more into sex then men do and I'll bet most of these "He raped me" stories play out much like this.
Agree completely. Which is why it’s so important that the real cops get called in, immediately.
I know what you meant, however at some point ...in the beginning of making out that starry eyed girl plays hard to get and says ‘no’, then it proceeds and she says ‘yes’ in a provocative way without saying a real ‘yes’....at that point the guy had better run the other way.
The questions will be...’At any time did you say ‘NO”.” Answer: ‘yes’
2nd question. “Did you say YES to sex”...she thinks and says ‘not really’.
3rd question. “Did he force himself on you”.
She thinks and says ‘Yes, he kept trying after I said NO.”
Cops get the warrant for RAPE. Get the consent before the making out begins, or you could have trouble. Not saying one would be accused of Rape, but this scenario plays out a lot in younger women.
NEVER ASSUME HER ‘NO’ IS GOING TO BE ‘YES’ LATER, because if it is...she has and different impression of where this is going than the guy. This is an epidemic of not knowing the intent and making assumptions, especially if she gets pregnant and she has to explain it to Dad.
‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
But, but, . . . the nice FemiNazi Persons tell us women never lie about rape.
Go back to DU.
Girls pulling the train at fraternity parties? Not common, but not rare.
Why did they (why do they) do it? I have no idea. I found it disgusting when I was 18, and as the father of daughters I still do.
But, since nothing ever truly changes, I find it believable that "Jackie" had intercourse with multiple fraternity brothers on the same date, sometime, somehow.
Most of the story, however, is literally incredible, as in, I don't believe it.
Trains were known, you say.
Were preplanned gang rapes a common form of initiation? That’s what the article implies.
As of yesterday, no complaint has been filed with the police. Why?
http://time.com/3616263/uva-rape-investigation/
No Formal Police Investigation Yet in UVA Rape Case
Or, more properly asked, why not?
Not really. Rate of forcible rape peaked in early 90s at 42 per 100k. They have since dropped back to about 25.
There were, btw, at their low point in 1963, at 9.4. However, I suspect part of that low number was due to non-reporting. For all the talk about stigma of rape, you'd think there has been no change in this regard. Certainly rape in the early 60s was much more stigmatic than today.
Never heard of it, can't imagine it.
Afraid this one is beyond my comprehension.
Why? Were they proud of it?
Morality aside, is such behavior somehow an exhibition of manliness in their minds?
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