The jury in the Rolling Stone defamation trial determined both the magazine and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, writer of “A Rape on Campus,” are liable for the defamation of former University of Virginia associate dean Nicole Eramo. They agreed that the 2014 article, which initially seemed to be an exposé about a gang rape at UVA, portrayed Eramo as a “villain” for not taking sufficient action after the rape was reported. Just when it seemed the veil of shame and secrecy was being removed from the epidemic of campus sexual assault, this immensely high-profile case of collegiate rape was revealed to have been a hoax.
When the story was discredited, victims (and victims’ advocates) were immediately thrust back into fighting an uphill battle to try to shine a light on a collegiate culture that breeds sexual assault. George Will even asserted that year that being a rape victim is a “coveted status” on college campuses (to which I had a very strong retort). In 2014, the public narrative was clearly, “Women lie about rape.”
“Our trust was misplaced...” (the retraction from Rolling Stone) will forever haunt everyone involved in the A Rape on Campus story. But the American public has a short attention span, and there were other stories deserving of our attention. More and more rape cases began to plaster the headlines, changing the narrative to, “There is an epidemic of rape in our culture.”
Among the avalanche of sexual assaults reported following the Rolling Stone debacle were the case of Vanderbilt football player Brandon Vandenburg and three of his teammates, and the St. Paul’s School trial of Owen Labrie. Then, scores of women began recounting stories of having been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby, and it was revealed that he admitted to drugging women he wanted to have sex with without their permission.
And then there was 20-year-old Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who was given an ultra-light sentence, serving only 3 months in jail for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Here, we have a clear-cut rape case. What happened cannot be denied. Not only were the charges against Brock Turner fully corroborated by physical evidence and witnesses, but the victim was unconscious and no one could assert that she was making false accusations. In fact, she heard about the details of her assault the same way we all did: on the news.
The actions and testimony of two good Samaritans who rescued the victim and detained the perpetrator until police arrived are what propelled this criminal case. They made the difference between a rape conviction and Turner walking away scot-free.
Even more important than avoiding liability by mishandling individual rape cases after the fact, it is imperative that we collectively do what we can to prevent rape from happening in the first place. Most of us, however indirectly, will at some point be in a position to stop a sexual assault from occurring. We need to take that responsibility very seriously. Perhaps our new narrative should be, “Teach your kids about consent. Teach yourselves about consent. Teach your peers about consent. And practice it.”
Need help? Visit RAINN's National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center's website.