UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA - Rolling Stone Story Provokes Investigation

"Article on brutal sexual assault provokes investigation at the University of Virginia" PBS NewsHour 11/21/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A chilling account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia has reignited attention over the problem of sexual assault on campus.

In this case, it is provoking new investigations and questions about the university’s response to assault cases and whether it has covered them up.  The story appears in “Rolling Stone” magazine.  It’s an account of what happens to an unidentified freshman who is called Jackie and is attacked at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in 2012.

Seven men took turns raping the 18-year-old over three hours.  Two others watched, according to the piece.  The story also finds that faculty and friends didn’t encourage her to report the attack and that the fraternity wasn’t investigated until this year.

The University of Virginia declined our invitation to appear.  It has asked the Charlottesville police to investigate.  More on its statements in just a moment.

But, first, let’s turn to the reporter who wrote the story for “Rolling Stone.”  She is Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Sabrina, thank you for talking with us.

First of all, why did you want to do this story?  What caught your attention?  Why UVA?  And what is it about this story that you think was worthy of this kind of attention?

SABRINA RUBIN ERDELY, Rolling Stone:  Well, we were looking to address the problem of rape on college campuses.

This is an issue that’s being discussed everywhere and we were looking to really investigate, what does it really look like on the ground level when there’s a rape at college against the greater context of college?

So I looked around at a lot of different campuses and I interviewed a lot of different students.  I was looking to set this story at a university that had a good reputation, but also felt very representative of what was going on at American colleges across the country with regard to sexual assault.

I was also hoping that it would be a college that was under Title IX investigation, and on top of that, a place where people were willing to talk to me about their sexual assault experiences.  And I found all that at University of Virginia.