It’s time to forcibly re-shape America to fight the campus rape epidemic! Even if it’s fake.

Summary: Let’s look at the U Virginia rape culture. In other words, it’s time for another wave of hysteria followed by social engineering, this time about the epidemic of rape on campuses.

We should mark our seasons by the prevailing hysteria rather than seasons. Much as calendars reflected the reigning monarch, we’d say this was the rape hysteria. Or Ebola, North Korea, melting Antarctica, Alar, overfilled garbage dumps, Saddam, Bin Laden, AIDS, bomber gap, missile gap, Yemen threat, Libyan hit squads, etc.  When we grow up we’ll no longer fall for these info ops, and perhaps then we can retake the reins of America. Perhaps until then we’re not fit to run a nation (good thing we have the 1% to do it for us).

This is the second of 2 posts today. Post your thoughts in the comments.

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Contents

1. The horrific story of gang rape at a prestigious university
2. Reminders of past false stories
3. Obvious actions
4. About the epidemic of rape at colleges
5. For More Information

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(1)  The horrific story of gang rape at a major university

“A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA“, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone, 19 November 2014 — Jackie was just starting her freshman year at the University of Virginia when she was brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party. When she tried to hold them accountable, a whole new kind of abuse began.”

This describes an old-fashioned gang rape. No alcohol, no fancy date-rape drugs; no he-said-she-said. Lure the girl upstairs, then seven men brutally rape her for three hours. Bleeding she stumbles away. Three friends advise her not to go to the hospital, not to call the police. It would be a DA’s dream case, as so much physical evidence gives an easy convictions (blood and glass on the carpet, her wounds, DNA, etc).

The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape, while Jackie stood beside them, mute in her bloody dress, wishing only to go back to her dorm room and fall into a deep, forgetful sleep. Detached, Jackie listened as Cindy prevailed over the group: “She’s gonna be the girl who cried ‘rape,’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again.”

It’s a horrific story. This girl stumbles into a fraternity of psychopaths (why didn’t they expect jail time?), then finds her three best friends are sociopaths. Although the vast majority of the media coverage has expressed uncritical outrage (always believe the victim), there have been some dissenting voices. First, questions about the reporting by Rolling Stone. Such as in “The Missing Men“, Allison Benedikt and Hanna Rosin, Slate, 2 December 2014 — “Why didn’t a Rolling Stone writer talk to the alleged perpetrators of a gang rape at the University of Virginia?”

Last week, we invited Erdely on the DoubleX Gabfest to talk about the story. I asked her in several different ways if she knew anything about the seven men whom Jackie accused of committing this crime, or if she had talked to them. In the story, Jackie’s roommate at the time, Rachel Soltis, tells Erdely, “Me and several other people know exactly who did this to her.” Jackie says she still sees “Drew,” the guy she alleges orchestrated the gang rape, walking around campus sometimes. (Jackie is the alleged victim’s real first name. Drew is Erdely’s pseudonym for the alleged perpetrator.)

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Drew was on Jackie’s lifeguard shift at the university pool. He’s a junior and a member of the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. An open campus is relatively friendly terrain for a reporter, and students’ email addresses aren’t difficult to track down. He couldn’t be that hard to find. And yet, based on Erdely’s answers, we couldn’t tell how hard she’d tried.

The Washington Post adds an even odder note to the story, as Rolling Stone validated the story not by talking to the accused, but to the friends of the alleged victim.

Sean Woods, who edited the Rolling Stone story, said in an interview that Erdely did not talk to the alleged assailants. “We did not talk to them. We could not reach them,” he said in an interview. However, he said, “we verified their existence,” in part by talking to Jackie’s friends. “I’m satisfied that these guys exist and are real. We knew who they were.”

News organizations typically seek comment from those accused of criminal acts or from their attorneys as a matter of fairness and balance, as well as to confirm that the individuals exist.

…The nine men who Jackie said participated in the gang rape were not identified by name in the Rolling Stone story. But the article contained clues to their identities, including their affiliation with the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at U-Va. and their attendance at a party at the frat in September 2012. “Drew,” the frat brother who allegedly lured Jackie to the darkened room at the fraternity in which the assault took place, was described in the most detail in the article. Erdely said that he was an attractive U-Va. junior and a lifeguard at a university pool.

No one has been arrested for the alleged crime. The university has turned the matter over to the Charlottesville police, who have launched an investigation.

… Woods said that the men were not named in the story because “we were telling Jackie’s story. It’s her story.”

Other concerns have arisen, best expressed by highly experienced journalist and editor Richard Bradley (bio here) in “Is the Rolling Stone Story True?” at his website. He has personal experience with journalist failures, having worked with Stephen Glass at George magazine — learning too late of his fabrications. His summary:

I don’t doubt that it’s possible that this happened. People can do terrible things, things that one doesn’t want to believe happen. And I certainly don’t want to think that this could have happened. But more than that: I don’t believe that it happened — certainly not in the way that it is recounted.

… Nothing in this story is impossible; it’s important to note that. It could have happened. But to believe it beyond a doubt, without a question mark—as virtually all the people who’ve read the article seem to—requires a lot of leaps of faith. It requires you to indulge your pre-existing biases. Or perhaps I should say your pre-existing fantasies—your nightmares about the worst possible thing that could happen to you, or your friend or your daughter or sister; your deepest fears about what men are capable of; your horror at the horror of rape; your outrage about the lack of outrage.

Bradley ends on a dark note.

If it didn’t happen, this story will be impossible to disprove — some people seem to want to believe it — and U.Va’s reputation will likely not recover for decades. Rolling Stone—which published several articles by Stephen Glass, by the way, and always insisted that it was the one publication in which Glass did not tell lies—will stand by its story. And we will never know the truth.

I disagree. Rolling Stone provides too many details about the time, place, and the assailants. The police should easily identify them — or refute the story.

Comments to Bradley’s story raise interesting points. She didn’t get medical treatment for the wounds on her back, from “crashing through a low glass table”? The bleeding seems severe, as she awoke the next morning “wrapped in a bloody sheet”. Does she have scars? Also odd: two weeks later the leader of the rapists says to her “I wanted to thank you for the other night. I had a great time.”

Often these stories are true (the 13 October 2013 rape of an unconscious Vanderbilt U coed by 4 former football players).  On the other hand, history has countless stories of abused women and children deployed for political effect, such as Iman al-Obeidi of Libya and Neda Soltani of Iran. Their stories are commonplace around the world, but became famous because useful to western governments. More generally, this is also so for the lurid but often false stories about the evil rulers of North Korea. The stories of white women abused by lustful black savages (both here and in Africa) were a staple of racist literature, often leading to the lynching of innocent Black men.

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(2)  Reminders of past false stories

Here are a few of the well-known fake rape stories of our generation:

1. Not rape, but amazing: Janet Cooke won a Pulitizer for her 28 September 1980 Washington Post story “Jimmy’s World“, about an 8-year old heroin addict.
2. The 1987 rape of Tawana Brawley by 3 men (including a police officer), uncritically accepted by journalists (ironically, Bill Cosby was an early supporter) — but fake.
3. The false rape accusation in 2002 that put football star Brian Banks in prison (the verdict was overturned in 2012).
4. Journalists went into hysterics from Crystal Mangum’s accusations of rape by the Duke Lacrosse team in March 2006.  District Attorney Mike Nifong sought re-election through their prosecution. It all collapsed, eventually.
5. The 2009 rape of a Hofstra coed by five students; she recanted in a few days when questioned by the police.
6. Buzzfeed and others hyped the 13 October 2013 story of a sexual assault on a Ohio U coed. A Grand Jury found it quite false.
7. An op-ed at the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens raised concerns based on past journalistic failures; “UVA, Ferguson and Media Failure: Narratives and allegations are not facts, despite what the media would have us believe.” He pointed to “A Woman’s War” in the 18 March 2007 New York Times Magazine, about Amorita Randall — raped twice while serving in the Navy, told by her commander “not to make such a big deal about it.” The key supporting details proved false; the NYT had not allowed the Navy time to verify the facts before publication.
8. Update: “Here Are 8 Campus Rape Hoaxes Eerily Like The UVA Rape Story“, Daily Caller, 14 December 2014 — Some of these involve innocent men deliberately accused for political gain.
9. On a larger scale, for over ten years (mid-1980s – mid-1990s) newspapers filled the space between advertisements with credulous reports of children abused by satanic cults. In the hysteria many people went to jail on absurdly false charges.

Update – If verified, this might go on the list: “Lena Dunham ‘Raped by a Republican’ Story in Bestseller Collapses Under Scrutiny“, Breitbart, 4 December 2014 — She accuses her fellow Oberlin alum “Barry” (people know who he is) of rape. Sophie Hess, general manager of the campus radio station WOBC, explains rape accusations in a Leftist New America:

“Asking whether or not a victim is telling the truth is irrelevant,” Ms. Hess proclaimed. “It’s just not important if they are telling the truth. If this person had wanted criminal justice they would have pursued it.”

For more about this false reports of rape:

1. “False Reports: Moving Beyond the Issue to Successfully Investigate and Prosecute Non-Stranger Sexual Assault“, Dr. Kimberly A. Lonsway et al, American Prosecutors Research Institute, 2009
2. “How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape?“, Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore, Slate, 1 October 2009 — “The question the Hofstra disaster left dangling”
3. “Crying Rape“, Cathy Young, Slate, 18 September 2014 — “False rape accusations exist, and they are a serious problem”

(3)  Obvious actions

The victim went to Dean Nicole Eramo, head of UVA’s Sexual Misconduct Board, roughly 8 months after the 28 September 2012 rape. The result is quite mad:

… Jackie left her first meeting with Eramo feeling better for having unburdened herself, and with the dean’s assurance that nothing would be done without her say-so. Eramo e-mailed a follow-up note thanking Jackie for sharing, saying, “I could tell that was very difficult for you,” and restating that while she respected Jackie’s wish not to file a report, she’d be happy to assist “if you decide that you would like to hold these men accountable.” In the meantime, having presumably judged there to be no threat to public safety, the UVA administration took no action to warn the campus that an allegation of gang rape had been made against an active fraternity.

The result of this irresponsible behavior by a senior university official:

… {~May 2014} She e-mailed Eramo so they could discuss the attack – and discuss another matter, too, which was troubling Jackie a great deal. Through her ever expanding network, Jackie had come across something deeply disturbing: two other young women who, she says, confided that they, too, had recently been Phi Kappa Psi gang-rape victims.

Police should handle the investigation of felonies, not schools. Colleges run their own police so children of our elites can do drugs and vandalism without suffering the same penalties as the proles. It’s part of our system of High, Middle, and Low justice. It should be abolished. See this Slate article for more (scroll though the hysteria at the start).

(4)  About the epidemic of rape at colleges

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It takes so little to whip up hysteria in America. Feminists have flogged this story since the early 1980s; now it’s caught fire — a tool to help the Left re-shape America. Despite the stunning lack of evidence that the rate of rape has increased (see recent numbers for colleges). The long-term data suggests it’s decreased, probably a lot.

1. Wikipedia has a balanced article about the history and numbers
2. About those rape rates: “One-in-One-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-Seventy-Seven“, Chad Hermann, Community Voices, 28 February 2011 — The numbers don’t add up.
3. “The Campus Rape Myth“, Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, Heather Mac Donald, Winter 2008 — “The reality: bogus statistics, feminist victimology, and university-approved sex toys”
4. “One in five women in college sexually assaulted: the source of this statistic“, the Fact Checker column at the Washington Post, 1 May 2014
5. “Using White House claim of under-reporting, only 1 in 39 women at Univ. of Texas are sexually assaulted, not 1 in 5“, Mark Perry (Prof Economics, U MI-Flint), American Enterprise Institute, 9 May 2014 — Also see the links provided.

(5)  For More Information

(a)  See all posts about women and gender issues

(b)  Post about the U-Va rape story:

1. It’s time to forcibly re-shape America to fight the campus rape epidemic! Even if it’s fake., 3 December 2014
2. The University of Virginia “rape culture” story crashes and burns. Will this become a story of failed agitprop? Or a win for the Left?, 5 December 2014
3. The University of Virginia shows how change comes to America: through agitprop and hysteria, 7 December 2014

(c)  Other posts about rape in America:

1. Being a third world nation is a state of mind, as we will learn (about prison rape), 19 March 2011
2. The shame of Alaska: vast wealth, but little spent to protect its people, 15 September 2014 — Especially rape of its indigenous people

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