Questions Raised About UVA Rape Exposé

All eyes are on the University of Virginia as officials investigate the alleged gang rape of one of its female students by a group of Phi Kappa Psi members. The shocking allegation was first reported in Rolling Stone last month, and led to all fraternities on campus being suspended. But now the Washington Post is raising serious questions about the story. “For the sake of Rolling Stone’s reputation,” the Post's Erik Wemple opens, “Sabrina Rubin Erdely had better be the country’s greatest judge of character.” Wemple then breaks down the various points in which Erdely failed to fully report on—questionable attempts to speak with the alleged perpetrators, and witness accounts left from the final story. Above all, the opening anecdote had not been officially documented by authorities, but Erdely had been offered other cases by a campus activist which had. “What should be held against it [the article] is its own flimsiness and the half-hearted attempts of Rolling Stone to report it,” Wemple writes.