Accused as rapists, UVA grads file lawsuit against Rolling Stone

Three UVA frat boys demand restitution due to the harassment following their depiction in Rolling Stone’s gang rape article. The article never specified the exact names of the boys who allegedly raped a fellow UVA student, “Jackie,” at a fraternity house.

Yet, the detailed story, which has now been retracted, revealed enough information for students to identify the alleged perpetrators. Word spread of their names online.

On Wednesday, three UVA graduates filed a complaint in court. The lawsuit claims that the men suffered from “vicious and hurtful attacks.” The men are suing Rolling Stone, author Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and Wenner Media, the publisher, for more than $75,000 dollars, reported NBC News.

As previously reported, the fraternity gang rape story was considered a “journalistic failure.”The article, published in November 2014, gave a detailed account of a freshman girl’s alleged rape at a fraternity house in 2012.

A Columbia Journalism Review report on the Rolling Stone article found that the author Erdely and her editors failed to corroborate Jackie’s account with anyone else’s, like the alleged rapists’.

“The magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations,” concluded a team from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Only 2 to 8 percent of all rape reports are false accusations, according to social scientists.

The report included a statement from the campus chapter president of Phi Kappa Psi, Stephen Scipione.

“It’s completely destroyed a semester of our lives, specifically mine,” stated Scipione. “It’s put us in the worst position possible in our community here, in front of our peers and in the classroom.”