U-Va. dean sues Rolling Stone for ‘false’ portrayal in retracted rape story
U-Va. dean sues Rolling Stone for ‘false’ portrayal in retracted rape story
This image is included in a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone. U-Va. associate dean Nicole Eramo argues that an image from the Cavalier Daily student newspaper (left) was turned into an illustration in Rolling Stone (right) that portrayed her as villainous. The original image was of her speaking to U-Va. students in a classroom; the illustration shows her appearing to give a thumbs-up sign as a distraught student seeks her counsel. (Eramo v. Rolling Stone)
By T. Rees Shapiro May 12 at 12:10 PM
A University of Virginia associate dean of students filed a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine Tuesday, alleging that it portrayed her as callous and indifferent to allegations of sexual assault on campus and made her the university’s “chief villain” in a now-debunked article about a fraternity gang rape.
Nicole Eramo is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages from Rolling Stone; its parent company, Wenner Media; and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville. The magazine retracted the article after news organizations and the Columbia University journalism school found serious flaws in it.
[Read the complaint: Rolling Stone portrayal “categorically false”]
Eramo, who is the university’s chief administrator dealing with sexual assaults, argues in the lawsuit that the article destroyed her credibility, permanently damaged her reputation and caused her emotional distress. She assailed the account as containing numerous falsehoods that the magazine could have avoided if it had worked to verify the story of its main subject, a student named Jackie who alleged she was gang-raped in 2012 and that the university mishandled her case.
“Rolling Stone and Erdely’s highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court. “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.”