A Rolling Stone gathers no facts.
Lawyers for a University of Virginia dean who has filed a defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone say the magazine’s shocking story of a campus rape is based on a series of lies by its main subject, according to new court filings.
In documents filed this week, lawyers for U.Va. Associate Dean Nicole Eramo say “Jackie,” the female student whose account of a 2012 gang rape at a fraternity house served as the main narrative of the Rolling Stone article, should not be protected from having to reveal her text messages in the case because there’s no evidence a sexual assault ever took place.
“What Jackie is refusing to produce is not evidence of a sexual assault, but evidence that she lied,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in a filing submitted Wednesday in federal court.
The new filings underscore the potential for the events that led up to the article to be aired in court in ugly fashion as details of Jackie’s conduct become fodder for legal arguments. The article, later retracted by Rolling Stone, has spawned three defamation lawsuits, none of which names Jackie as a defendant.
The documents have prompted a leading feminist group to pen an open letter to U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan crying foul about the court proceedings and asking the university to intervene.