Fraternity files $25M lawsuit over Rolling Stone rape story
The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia filed a $25 million lawsuit Monday against Rolling Stone magazine, which published an article in 2014 that alleged a freshman was gang raped at the house during a party.The lawsuit focuses on a Rolling Stone article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which detailed a harrowing attack on a freshman named Jackie at the Phi Psi house on Sept. 28, 2012. The article described how Jackie was raped by seven men while two others watched in a second-floor bedroom while a fraternity party raged downstairs. The article alleged that the attack was part of a hazing ritual at the longtime Virginia fraternity.
The Washington Post found significant discrepancies in the Rolling Stone account, including that the fraternity did not host a party that night in 2012 and that a student identified by Jackie as her main attacker was never a member of the fraternity and did not attend the university.
Two investigations — by the Columbia University journalism school and the Charlottesville Police Department — later concluded that there was no gang rape at the fraternity.
“The fraternity chapter and its student and alumni members suffered extreme damage to their reputations in the aftermath of the article’s publication and continue to suffer despite the ultimate unraveling of the story,” the Phi Psi chapter said in a statement Monday. “The article also subjected the student members and their families to danger and immense stress while jeopardizing the future existence of the chapter.”
Rolling Stone retracted the story in April, and the magazine’s editor, Will Dana, later resigned.
In July, three Virginia alumni members of the Phi Psi fraternity filed a federal lawsuit in New York against Rolling Stone.
The magazine also faces a $7.5 million federal lawsuit filed by Nicole Eramo, an associate dean who assists sexual assault survivors on campus and who alleges that she was vilified in the Rolling Stone account.
In the wake of the Rolling Stone article’s publication, the Phi Psi house was vandalized, windows were broken and anonymous activists scrawled “UVA Center for Rape Studies,” on the building.