Article here. Excerpt:

'The University of Virginia community, already tested a number of times this fall semester, endured another seismic shock on Friday when Rolling Stone partially retracted a damning feature about on-campus rape. The initial publication of the article and subsequent fallout has sparked discussion on not just sexual assault, but also on journalism ethics. But as national news outlets swarm the Charlottesville, Virginia, campus for the second time this semester, many UVA students are staying focused on the main issue at hand: combating sexual violence and improving sexual assault advocacy at the storied university.

Sarah Surface, a junior who’s a member of the school’s Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition, added to the student newspaper that finger-combing through every detail in Jackie’s story should not take away from the reality rape victims must live through:

Link here. Excerpt:

'After duping Irish and Canadian authorities with horrific tales of being a child sexual abuse victim, serial troublemaker Samantha Azzopardi is returning home to Australia this week.
...
When Azzopardi was found wandering the streets of Dublin, Ireland, last year she led authorities to believe she was a teenage sex-trafficking victim from eastern Europe.

Azzopardi drew pictures apparently showing herself being raped, forcing Irish police to release the photo of her in a bid to find her identity.

Irish authorities spent $375,000 on the investigation before discovering she was an Australian con artist and not a child.
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On September 16 this year Azzopardi, using the alias Aurora Hepburn, walked into a Calgary clinic claiming she was 14 and had been a victim of an abduction, sexual assault and torture.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rolling Stone magazine has quietly changed its botched and much-criticized apology over a damning article documenting an alleged brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia.

In the story by writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a junior identified only as 'Jackie' says she was repeatedly assaulted by a group of seven Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members.

But on Friday, Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana apologized in a letter to readers, admitting there were discrepancies in Jackie's account about the incident and saying that the magazine has now 'come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced.'

The magazine came under heavy fire for an apology that was seen as blaming the victim and throwing Jackie under the bus.

Rolling Stone has since quietly changed the three-paragraph note, adding a section saying: 'These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'This is amazing. Even as Rolling Stone’s alleged gang-rape story falls apart, and The Washington Post published several articles on Saturday putting the facts out that collapse the allegations, the Post website still contains an article titled “No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims. Incredulity hurts victims more than it hurts wrongly-accused perps.”

Feminist and MSNBC analyst Zerlina Maxwell doesn’t care about the facts, only about the quote-unquote larger picture of a rape culture. This is the triumph of ideology over evidence, emotion over science. All these people who lectured about McCarthyism and Arthur Miller’s play on the Salem witch trials are chanting that the evidence is less important than the allegation.'

Story here. Excrrpt:

'A media investigation into the allegations of rape featured in Lena Dunham's recently-released memoir has refuted the claims of sexual assault made by the Girls creator.
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An investigation by John Nolte from Breitbart News undertaken at the Oberlin campus, which was published Thursday, concluded that the 'Barry' Dunham describes is a 'ghost', and that no such person appeared to exist at the college during the years she studied there.

'In fact, we could not find anyone who remembered any Oberlin Republican who matched Dunham's colorful description,' Nolte wrote.

'Under scrutiny, Dunham's rape story didn’t just fall apart, it evaporated into pixie dust and blew away.''

Link here. Excerpt:

'Personal stories also remind us that we are not alone. With World AIDS Day on December 1, I'm thinking of those affected by the stigma that HIV/AIDS carries. This stigma can leave those touched by it feeling fearful and alienated. You can help change that.

If your life has been impacted by HIV/AIDS, I'm calling on you to speak up. How? Tell us about your personal experiences with HIV/AIDS and your views on care and treatment. The HHS Office on Women's Health wants to feature your story during the 10th observance of National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on March 10, 2015. If you or someone you love is living with HIV/AIDS, or you work with women and girls living with the disease, we want to hear from you.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Today hasn’t been such a great day for feminism. Now that Rolling Stone’s heavily touted article purportedly exposing a gang rape at UVA has been shot full of holes, Our Ladies of the Perpetually Outraged are beside themselves looking for ways to keep the dubious rape narrative alive.

One of these angry gals is the charming Melissa McEwan, who, according to her Twitter bio, is “proprietor of Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog and a community of teaspoon-wielding badasses who expect more.” Apparently one of the things she doesn’t expect is for rape accusers to be completely honest:

Article here. Excerpt:

'I don’t know Jackie. I don’t even know her real name. I don’t know what happened to her in a UVA fraternity house. But here’s what I do know: Rolling Stone just threw her under the bus for its own mistakes. And we shouldn’t be surprised.
...
Rather than apologizing for its own journalistic and editorial mistakes, Rolling Stone blamed Jackie for its errors. The problem, according to the magazine’s note, is not that it failed to check certain details, but that its “trust in [Jackie] was misplaced.” One need not read between the lines to get the ugly message: It was her fault, not ours!'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rolling Stone magazine apologized to readers Friday for discrepancies in an article about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house, with the publication's editors saying their trust in the woman who gave the account "was misplaced."

Rolling Stone editors made the choice not to contact the man who allegedly "orchestrated the attack on "Jackie" (the woman who was the subject of the article) nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her," a decision the magazine says it now regrets.

"In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced," Rolling Stone said.
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According to the magazine, Jackie, who at the time had just started her freshman year at the Charlottesville school, claimed she was raped by seven men at Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, while two more gave encouragement, during a party.

However, the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi chapter did not have a party the night of September 28, 2012, the date when the alleged attack occurred, or at all that weekend, the chapter said in a statement Friday. The chapter's lawyer, Ben Warthen, told CNN email and fraternity records are proof.
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Warthen said there were other discrepancies in the accuser's account. For example, the accused orchestrator of the alleged rape did not belong to the fraternity, the fraternity house has no side staircase, and there were no pledges at that time of year.

Jackie told the magazine she hurried out a side staircase after the incident and said her attackers egged each other on, asking, "Don't you want to be a brother?"
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'The UK is aggressively prosecuting women who make false rape allegations, but victim advocates argue it's unjust

Between headlines about the UVA frats, the Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi and Bill Cosby, it seems like sexual assault allegations dominate the news. But in Britain there has been a recent spate of headline-grabbing cases where the people ultimately charged aren’t the alleged rapists, but the women who filed the claims in the first place.
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But de Freitas is not alone. Over the past five years, the CPS has prosecuted 109 women for making false rape allegations to authorities, according to the group Women Against Rape (WAR). The majority of those who were prosecuted — a full 98 — were charged with perverting the course of justice like de Freitas. But WAR, a London non-profit, held a public meeting at the House of Commons on Tuesday night, protesting what they believe is the unfair and aggressive prosecution of women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'"My generation of boys is f**ked," says Rupert, a young German video game enthusiast I've been getting to know over the past few months. "Marriage is dead. Divorce means you're screwed for life. Women have given up on monogamy, which makes them uninteresting to us for any serious relationship or raising a family. That's just the way it is. Even if we take the risk, chances are the kids won't be ours. In France, we even have to pay for the kids a wife has through adulterous affairs. 

"In school, boys are screwed over time and again. Schools are engineered for women. In the US, they force-feed boys Ritalin like Skittles to shut them up. And while girls are favoured to fulfil quotas, men are slipping into distant second place.

"Nobody in my generation believes they're going to get a meaningful retirement. We have a third or a quarter of the wealth previous generations had, and everyone's fleeing to higher education to stave off unemployment and poverty because there are no jobs. 

Story here. This is a case where we see two females assaulting a youth. The media assumes it a sexual harassment case and the two females will be rewarded for fighting back. The guys lose their jobs and then this revelation that it was all over a different issue. There is a rush to be on the "correct" side of the story. Never do people want to be on the *right* side of the story. Guess we will never know what the truth is. Excerpt:

'Haryana Police, probing the November 28 incident of misbehaviour with the girls and a pregnant woman on a State transport bus, said they had a watertight case against the three accused.
...
While some village elders of Asan village — to which the three accused belong — claimed that a Haryana police constable was also travelling by the same bus and his statement would be highly credible in establishing the sequence of events, the police said they were not aware of any such person.

Article here. Excerpt:

'It was just three days before she was due to on trial for making a false allegation of rape, and the fear of giving evidence had, he said, left her a nervous wreck. Nothing, however, has been heard from the wealthy young man who she sensationally claimed had drugged and assaulted her in his Chelsea flat – until now.

And when you read what he has to say, you may well take a very different view about his role in this strange and disturbing tragedy.

What emerges is not just the terrible detail of a nightmare that so many men fear – of being falsely accused of rape, ostracised and fearful of jail. It also becomes clear in his compelling account of what truly happened between them that Eleanor, who had mental health issues, led a secret double life – one she would without doubt have feared being opened up to the scrutiny of the courtroom.

Article here. Excerpt:

'By now, many have heard of the powerful Rolling Stone article published in late November that told the tale of a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed University of Virginia freshman who was allegedly gang raped at a frat party in 2012 in such a brutal and disgusting fashion that administrators have, in the wake of the article’s publication, suspended all fraternity functions, pledged a zero-tolerance on sexual assault, profusely apologized, and promised a more thorough police investigation. Meanwhile, the school’s reputation may have been irreparably harmed.
...
Do I believe something horrible happened to Jackie that fateful night? Yes. I have experienced the frat culture and I know it can be a gritty place where alcohol and drug-induced peer pressure and feelings of entitlement sometimes trump compassion and reason, where a pack mentality can take over and prompt young men to disavow their morality.

But it’s the finer details of Jackie’s claim that bother me – most notably that she could be gang raped over shards of broken glass for three consecutive hours and not bleed to the point of needing hospitalization. That just seems medically implausible from a subjective standpoint.

Also, when Jackie awoke at 3 a.m. after the assault and stumbled unnoticed out of the frat house as the party raged on even though she was horribly disheveled and bleeding, then called her friends to come get her and explained what happened – only to be told by them just go home and sleep it off so she wouldn’t ruin their school’s reputation or their chances at getting into more frat parties: Seriously?

I remember thinking – how is that even possible for “friends” to say such a thing if she was bleeding after getting gang raped by seven guys? You almost have to suspend reality to buy that.
...

Story here. Excerpt:

'The writer of a blockbuster Rolling Stone magazine story about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity has said that she was unable to contact or interview the men who supposedly perpetrated the crime.

In interviews with The Washington Post and Slate.com last week, writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely declined to answer repeated questions about the men’s response to an allegation by a female student named Jackie that they had sexually assaulted her at a U-Va. fraternity party in 2012.

However, in a podcast interview with Slate, Erdely indicated that she was unable to locate the fraternity brothers in the course of her reporting to get their side of the story.

“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. But I wound up speaking . . . I wound up getting in touch with their local president, who sent me an e-mail, and then I talked with their sort of, their national guy, who’s kind of their national crisis manager. They were both helpful in their own way, I guess.”
...
There have been no arrests in the case, and no alleged assailants have been publicly identified.