A University of Virginia associate dean of students sues Rolling Stone for $7.5 million.

From the complaint:



Read Nicole Eramo's complaint here. And here's the WaPo article "U-Va. dean sues Rolling Stone for �false� portrayal in retracted rape story."

Click on the photo to enlarge and see how different they made her. It's not just the color and the background and the way the pen-holding hand looks more like a thumbs up and the outstretched hand is gone. It's those eyes.

Now, I can't imagine that manipulating a photo into an illustration is a tort... or I missed a big payday when I didn't sue Isthmus for this...



... but the complaint only says that the photo manipulation "demonstrates the lengths [Sabrina Rubin] Erdely and Rolling Stone were willing to go to portray Dean Eramo as a villain." The lawsuit is based on defamation, and you can got to paragraph 210 in the complaint for the full text of the quotes alleged to be false and defamatory. Eramo was said to have done "nothing" in response" to rape allegations and to have "brushed off" the complainant and tried to "suppress" the story to protect UVa's reputation.

Paragraph 203 of the complaint collects the worst of the email Eramo received, e.g., "You are a rape apologist & a FATASS. Enormous Eramo the wretched rape apologist. resign you vile worthless creature."

ADDED: Long but very concise: Eugene Volokh applies defamation doctrine to the specific allegations. Because of free-speech rights, the burdens are Eramo are heavy, and if you look at the particular statements one by one, you'll understand Volokh's bottom line: "Eramo could have a case, but it won�t be an easy one."

The court... will probably throw out the claims based on some of the statements, on the grounds that those statements don�t make factual claims about Eramo... And for the remaining statements, Eramo will have to show that they are false, and show by clear and convincing evidence that the defendants knew the statements were likely false.

I think that Eramo�s strongest claim is about the �Because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school,� because the allegation is clearly a factual claim about her. But even there, she would have to show she didn�t say it, and show by clear and convincing evidence that Erdely and the Rolling Stone editors knew that she likely didn�t say it, and that Jackie was lying (or misremembering).

Questioning Jon Krakauer's rape-on-campus book.

Last week, we were talking about Krakauer's book "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town," which comes out on April 21st. My post was: "In the wake of Rolling Stone's 'Rape on Campus' debacle, we're about to get a rape-on-campus book by the best-selling author Jon Krakauer." I said:

... I don't know whether Krakauer and his editors got the chance to do anything to acknowledge Rolling Stone controversy or to prepare for the different kind of scrutiny this book will get, now that skepticism and fact-checking zeal is cranked up far beyond what Krakauer could have envisioned when he was doing his research and writing. He must have been expecting a reception similar to the initial reaction to the Rolling Stone article � high praise for shining a light on the terrible sexual brutality of college men and the inadequate response by college administrators who must start believing women and punishing men.

A reader sent me a link an article in the Montana Kaimin � the University of Montana student newspaper � titled "Krakauer sources a mystery":
Click for more �

In the wake of Rolling Stone's "Rape on Campus" debacle, we're about to get a rape-on-campus book by the best-selling author Jon Krakauer.

Looking up the Amazon page for "Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids" � discussed in the previous post � and seeing that it ranked #4 on the "Gender Studies" list, I clicked through to see what was #1. It's "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town," by Jon Krakauer (the very popular author (I've read "Into the Wild," "Into Thin Air," and "Under the Banner of Heaven")). The book comes out on April 21st, so it's too early to check it out, and I don't know whether Krakauer and his editors got the chance to do anything to acknowledge Rolling Stone controversy or to prepare for the different kind of scrutiny this book will get, now that skepticism and fact-checking zeal is cranked up far beyond what Krakauer could have envisioned when he was doing his research and writing. He must have been expecting a reception similar to the initial reaction to the Rolling Stone article � high praise for shining a light on the terrible sexual brutality of college men and the inadequate response by college administrators who must start believing women and punishing men.

I see that Krakauer has written an op-ed in advance of the book's release: "The bungled Rolling Stone rape article doesn�t change the fact that sexual assault is the most under-reported crime in the US/When someone is raped in this country, the rapist gets away with it more than 97 percent of the time." 

Make no mistake... Women sometimes lie about being raped. According to the most reliable peer-reviewed research, between two percent and 10 percent of rape reports are bogus. As one ponders this discomfiting information, though, it�s important to keep in mind what the flip side of these numbers reveal: Between 90 percent and 98 percent of rape allegations are true. Rape, moreover, is this country�s most underreported serious crime by a wide margin. Rigorous studies consistently indicate that at least 80 percent of rapes are never disclosed to law enforcement agencies or other authorities....

And it's important to keep in mind that statistics sometimes lie. Krakauer says those numbers come from studies that are "most reliable" and "rigorous," but I don't think that will satisfy people whose skepticism has been so recently roused by the Rolling Stone mess. At the Amazon page, Krakauer's book is described as a "dispassionate, carefully documented account" of "the searing experiences of several women in Missoula � the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them." Searing... but dispassionate? Is that even possible?

Just published: "Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report."

"An anatomy of a journalistic failure," by Sheila Coronel, Steve Coll, Derek Kravitz.

[The Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin] Erdely believed firmly that Jackie's account was reliable. So did her editors and the story's fact-checker, who spent more than four hours on the telephone with Jackie, reviewing every detail of her experience. "She wasn't just answering, 'Yes, yes, yes,' she was correcting me," the checker said. "She was describing the scene for me in a very vivid way. � I did not have doubt." (Rolling Stone requested that the checker not be named because she did not have decision-making authority.)...

The problem of confirmation bias � the tendency of people to be trapped by pre-existing assumptions and to select facts that support their own views while overlooking contradictory ones � is a well-established finding of social science. It seems to have been a factor here. Erdely believed the university was obstructing justice. She felt she had been blocked. Like many other universities, UVA had a flawed record of managing sexual assault cases. Jackie's experience seemed to confirm this larger pattern. Her story seemed well established on campus, repeated and accepted.

"Jackie lied, Erdely lied, Rolling Stone lied, Teresa Sullivan � at best � went along with a lie. All should face more consequences than they have so far experienced."

Writes Instapundit in what might be the longest ever Instapundit post � with excerpts from Ashe Schow ("Why the Rolling Stone gang-rape story will never be labeled a hoax") and Cathy Young ("The UVA Case and Rape-Hoax Denial").

My question is: Why "more consequences" and not the usual and classic free-speech-loving remedy more speech? It seems as though more speech is working out well enough, or is the complaint that anti-rape activists are still going to use Rolling Stone story to maintain the feeling that something terrible is happening out there? That complaint is a concession of the weakness of your side of the debate. Improve your debate. Your more speech needs to be better. The grim call for consequences is chilling.

ALSO: This post was down for a short time, not because I intentionally took it down, but because I mishandled an open window.

AND: Instapundit responded to this, saying:

Yes, �more speech� is a remedy for opinions one doesn�t like. When speech falls into the category of actions � which false accusations certainly do � it calls for more than simple talk as a response. (But note that Jackie was smart enough not to file a police report, though that should have been a tip-off). And I should note that the fraternity in question was the victim of violent mob action that was ginned up in part by the University of Virginia itself. Is the only remedy for officially-inspired thuggery �more speech?� No. That�s one remedy, but it�s not the only remedy, nor should it be.

I strongly disagree with the proposition that if free-speech law permits negative consequences to be imposed that we ought to want these consequences. I am promoting the more speech approach where the First Amendment would permit negative consequences.

Instapundit quotes a commenter of mine who says "The proper remedy for slander is not 'more speech.' The proper remedy... are [sic]  'consequences.'"

Proper remedy? I'm not purporting to be the arbiter of propriety here. I'm saying what I think is the better policy and the better approach to this political discourse. I called for more and better speech and rejected the "grim call for consequences" as "chilling."