If you've been following the news, by now you've heard about the Rolling Stone article A Rape on Campus by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. A freshman woman allegedly at UVa attends a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party on an October, 2012 weekend as the guest of a brother she met at the aquatic center. After being encouraged to drink, she's brought upstairs and locked in a room where allegedly 7 fraternity pledges rape her on broken glass. When Erdely's narrative was released this year - two years after the alleged incident - the University community is in an uproar. Students vandalize the PKP house. There are protests in the streets. The UVa president - already fired and re-hired by the Board of Visitors - bans *all* fraternity activity until the end of this year.
But wait... there's more!
It seems that neither Erdely nor the editorial staff at Rolling Stone thought it was important to interview the other side before publishing an article which resulted in property damage and a damaged national reputation to Mr. Jefferson's University. The PSP national fraternity conducts an internal review, and releases the following facts: 1) there was no PSP member who was an employee of the aquatic center in 2012 (Oops!), 2) there was no social function at the PSP house on the night that the alleged incident occurred (Oops!), and 3) PSP does not conduct initiation in the fall (Oops!). Minutes before these facts are released to the public, Rolling Stone magazine issues a public apology. Erdely says nothing of substance. Apparently she got what she wanted. Her goal was to expose one of the colleges on an Obama administration hit list (including Ivy League institutions like her own) via a narrative about a gruesome rape. This would create the public outcry that would pave the way for government intervention in University affairs. This feminist, U Penn graduate chose as her subject a genteel, "Southern" university with a long male tradition. So apparently the end justified the means.
Here are my own comments.
- In the 14 years that I was either student or faculty at UVa, I was never part of the all-white Greek life that Erdely describes.
..... - The subject in question apparently never went to the UVa ER after her "bloody" assault. Why? Under one of my own mentors, UVa pioneered a rape intervention center in the UVA ER (in 1982, or 30 years before the alleged incident). My wife was one of the first 24/7 on-call nurses. If you don't first go to a medical center after a sexual assault, nothing you do afterwards will go well. If you have no need to go to an ER after being raped by 7 on broken glass, well... what's up with that?
..... - The Charlottesville police chief wasn't aware of the rape. This apparently was all being handled by the University after "the story" came out when the Dean was talking to mom and student about her grades. Then according to Title IX, a process had to start. This process went on without any medical or legal guidance.
..... - According to the story, the alleged victim knew her date and recognized one of the attackers. And yet nobody to date has been charged. At a UVa BOV meeting, the Charlottesville Chief of Police was asking for witnesses to the alleged crime. ANY witnesses. SOMEBODY had to know something...
First... I've had victims of sexual assault as martial arts students. I have in fact intervened in crisis situations with several of these students. Real sexual assault *is* a big deal with lifelong consequences.
Second... Whatever happened to this alleged victim, she needs help. She doesn't need to be someone's political football. That just turned bad to much, much worse. Can anyone be happy about the outcome?
Third... I highly recommend people read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. It has nothing to do with rape or assault. But as a sci-fi novel, it investigates what it might be like to live your life in a non-serial fashion. The very ordinary Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time" and lives pieces of his life (future, past, future, past) in random segments. The reader must create the real Billy Pilgrim from all these snippets. This is what it's like to be a victim of a deadly encounter. The brain doesn't work quite right afterwards. It's a reason to seek medical attention and then get legal counsel before long interviews with the police. Trust me... you don't want to be a victim of a process where you get tortured on a witness stand because your "story" is scrambled. Police in fact advise their own not to talk to anyone in the first 24 hours after a shooting. But they won't give you this privilege.
That's not exactly the subject of this Rolling Stone hack-job, but a real victim of sexual assault may appear very "screwed up" if (s)he doesn't get immediate and consistent medical attention. PTSD is the operative diagnosis here.
And finally... Don't let the world around you elicit the emotional hijack in you. If there's one thing I'm proud of in this incident, it's that I calmly got online in various news organizations and began to highlight inconsistencies in "the story." My goal was not to counterattack, but rather to smoke out "The Truth" - whatever that was. As it turns out, it was even more fantastically messed-up than my gut suspected. But I calmly trusted my gut, kept a steady mind while pushing for facts, and could look in the mirror at the end of the day.
Don't let the femiNazis screw this up. Victims of sexual assault need help. They don't need misandry.
- Bill