UVA Dean Wants $7.5M for Defamation

Nicole Eramo, an associate dean of students at the University of Virginia, has filed a lawsuit seeking more than $7.5 million from Rolling Stone and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely for defamation. Eramo was cast as a villain in the since-debunked story about a gang rape on the university’s campus. “Rolling Stone and Erdely’s highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake,” reads the lawsuit. “They were the result of a wanton journalist who was more concerned with writing an article that fulfilled her preconceived narrative about the victimization of women on American college campuses, and a malicious publisher who was more concerned about selling magazines to boost the economic bottom line for its faltering magazine, than they were about discovering the truth or actual facts.”