Rolling Stone clarifies apology for UVA gang rape story

Rolling Stone magazine has clarified its apology for the shocking University of Virginia gang rape story it published last month. At first, the magazine appeared to put the blame on Jackie, the woman who told her story to the magazine, but now the editors shifted the blame onto themselves.

Back on Friday, Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana admitted that they should not have accepted Jackie’s request to not contact the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity or the men she claimed raped her.

Initially, Dana wrote, “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced.” However, the magazine later deleted that sentence.

The apology now reads, “These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie. We apologize to anyone who was affected by the story and we will continue to investigate the events of that evening.”

The update came after the Washington Post published its own story on Jackie’s case, examining the holes in Rolling Stone’s initial story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. For example, the fraternity said that they did not have a social function on the weekend Jackie claimed to have been raped. The Post also discovered that the “Drew” Jackie claimed lured her into the room where the attack happened was a member of a different fraternity.

While some of Jackie’s friends now question her story, Jackie told the Post that she is standing by it.

“I never asked for this,” Jackie told the Post. “What bothers me is that so many people act like it didn’t happen. It’s my life. I have had to live with the fact that it happened — every day for the last two years.”

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