CHARLOTTESVILLE, va. — A University of Virginia student’s harrowing description of a gang rape at a fraternity, detailed in a recent Rolling Stone article, unraveled Friday as interviews revealed doubts about significant details of the purported attack.
The fraternity issued a statement refuting the story, and the magazine apologized for a lapse in judgment and backed away from the account.
Jackie, a University of Virginia junior, said that she was ambushed and raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi house during a party in 2012. The allegations tore through this campus and pushed the elite public school into the epicenter of the national discussion about how universities handle sex assault.
Shocking for its details, the account described Jackie enduring three hours of successive rapes, a torturous ordeal that left her blood-spattered, scarred and emotionally devastated.
The University of Virginia fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, where the attack was alleged to have occurred has said it has been working with police and has concluded that the allegations are untrue. Among other things, the fraternity said there was no event at the house the night of the alleged attack.
A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sexual assault awareness advocates at University of Virginia, said they think something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account.
They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days.
An alleged attacker that Jackie identified to them for the first time this week, for example — a junior in 2012 who worked with her as a university lifeguard — was the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.
Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he worked at the Aquatic and Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie’s name. He said, however, that he had never met Jackie and had never taken her on a date. He also said he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.
Jackie, who spoke to The Washington Post several times during the past week, stood by her account.
“I never asked for this” attention, she said in an interview. “What bothers me is that so many people act like it didn’t happen. It’s my life. I have had to live with the fact that it happened every day for the last two years.”
A lawyer who is representing Jackie said Friday that she and her client are declining to comment beyond her interviews. The Post generally does not identify victims of sexual assault, and The Post is identifying Jackie by her nickname at her request.
The prominent fraternity, which was vilified, said in its statement Friday that its “initial doubts as to the accuracy of the article have only been strengthened as alumni and undergraduate members have delved deeper.”
Phi Kappa Psi said it did not host “a date function or social event” during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012, the night that Jackie alleges she was invited to a party, lured into an upstairs room and was ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.
Rolling Stone’s editors apologized for discrepancies in the story. In a statement, Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, said there is fresh doubt about the article.
“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,” he said.
Dana tweeted that the reporters and editors at Rolling Stone made a judgment to come to an agreement with Jackie not to contact her alleged attackers, a judgment he wrote ended up being wrong. “That failure is on us — not on her,” he wrote.
The article published in the Dec. 4 issue of the magazine drew headlines around the world. The article spawned protests and vandalism, and the university suspended all Greek system activities until the beginning of next semester and put out a call for zero tolerance of sex assault.
University president Teresa Sullivan said Friday that the developments will not alter the university’s focus on “one of the most difficult and critical issues facing higher education today: sexual violence on college campuses.”
