U-Va. Phi Psi members speak about impact of
discredited gang rape allegations
CHARLOTTESVILLE — The Phi Kappa Psi
brothers sat together in a bedroom, turning the glossy magazine pages as they
absorbed the account of a gang rape that allegedly took place within the brick
walls around them.
The University of Virginia students
read the Rolling Stone article that November night in complete surprise. A
U-Va. junior said she attended a date party at the fraternity house in 2012 and
was lured to a bedroom, where a group of men raped her in what appeared to be a
gruesome initiation rite. The students were disgusted, emotional and confused.
“Some people actually had to leave
the room while they were reading it because they were so upset,” said Phi Psi
President Stephen Scipione, 21, a junior from Richmond.
But within 24 hours of the article’s
publication, the U-Va. students reviewed the fraternity’s records and confirmed
their initial suspicions: The magazine’s account was deeply flawed.
“We knew that the Rolling Stone
story was not true,” said David Fontenot, 22, a senior from McLean, Va. But
they also knew “that we would only make things more difficult by fighting it in
the media and that our best move was to stay quiet, let the police do their
jobs and ride it out until the time was appropriate.”
Phi Psi members, speaking publicly
for the first time since the allegations surfaced, told The Washington Post
that they went into hiding for weeks after their home was vandalized with
spray-painted messages calling them rapists and with bricks thrown through
windows. They booked hotel rooms to avoid the swarm of protesters on their
front lawn. They watched as their brotherhood was vilified, coming to symbolize
the worst episode of collegiate sexual violence against women since the 2006
Duke University lacrosse team scandal — which also turned out to be false.
“That leads back to the bigger
problem in that our society tends to rush to judge without the facts,” Scipione
said. “They just see the headline and get upset, and they want to blame it on
someone, and obviously we were the easiest targets for that.”
Scipione said members of Phi Psi
learned about the general allegations in mid-September, when an executive from
the fraternity’s national office called an emergency meeting. At the fraternity
house, a Phi Psi official outlined what a university official had relayed about
the alleged sexual assault.
“He basically asked if, one, we knew
about [the allegations] and, two, if we had committed it,” said Scipione. “The
look around the table was complete shock and awe.”
Before the story was published,
Scipione said he received an e-mail from Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling
Stone reporter, who asked three questions about the rape allegations but
offered no specific details, such as the date of the alleged attack. Scipione
said only a small part of his response was included in the article.
“More than anything, people wanted
to figure out what the truth was,” Fontenot said.
After reading the article, Phi Psi
leaders scanned archived e-mails and checked bank statements, determining that
the fraternity did not host a party on the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012, the time
of the alleged attack. They also determined that no Phi Psi members matched the
article’s description of the attackers, calling into question one of the main
elements of the account.
Most alarming to the members was the
idea that a gang rape could be part of a hazing ritual.
“We vehemently deny that it would be
plausible as a ritualistic tradition to join our fraternity,” Scipione said.
Fontenot added: “It’s animalistic and totally unrealistic.”
Scipione and Fontenot said that the
Phi Psi brothers experienced a difficult fall semester but said no one should
consider the fraternity members as “victims.”
“We don’t want to take away from the
real victims, which are the victims of sexual assault,” Fontenot said. “We
think it is incredibly unfair that the Rolling Stone article could in any way
take away their credibility and the support they need.”
Rolling Stone has asked the Columbia
Graduate School of Journalism to investigate the handling of the article and
has deferred comment until after that inquiry. A Rolling Stone spokesman did
not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Although the Rolling Stone article
was discredited and the student’s account challenged — the magazine apologized
for inaccuracies after The Post discovered significant discrepancies in the
article — it wasn’t until this week that Phi Psi was officially cleared.
On Monday, the first day of the
spring semester, Charlottesville police announced that an investigation found
no basis to believe that an attack occurred at the fraternity.
U-Va. also reinstated the fraternity
on campus that day, with university President Teresa A. Sullivan issuing a
statement: “We welcome Phi Kappa Psi, and we look forward to working with all
fraternities and sororities in enhancing and promoting a safe environment for
all.”
The Greek system that Phi Psi
rejoins is one that has spent the past two months focusing on the issue of
sexual assault as a result of the campus turmoil the article created. The
university administration suspended all fraternity functions through the first
full week of January, affecting about one-third of the school’s
15,000 undergraduates.
Sullivan said last week that she
would immediately lift the ban if fraternities signed a new contract with the
school that is designed to discourage binge drinking and enhance safety
measures at large parties.
Two fraternities — Alpha Tau Omega
and Kappa Alpha — said Wednesday they would not sign the contract, arguing that
their policies are more stringent than what the university outlined and
assailing the decision to suspend the houses.
“At the end of the day, every
fraternity and sorority student at U-Va. was punished with a suspension for
doing nothing wrong,” said Kevin O’Neill, an attorney for the two fraternities.
“The discussion over the need to sign a new [contract] is a process created to
distract from the university’s bad decision in suspending our organizations
last fall.”
Anthony P. de Bruyn, a spokesman for
the university, said in an e-mailed response that “the Greek organizations have
until January 16 to sign the new agreements, developed by the student groups
themselves, and we will have no further comment or action until that date has
passed. We remain hopeful that all groups will commit to these reasonable
protocols designed to improve student safety.”
University officials said that Phi
Psi was the first fraternity to sign the updated agreements, and Phi Psi
leaders said the fraternity has instituted a sexual-assault education and
awareness program that is mandatory for new members. Spring rush, an annual
recruitment period, is scheduled to begin here Thursday night.
George Elias, a 2013 graduate, said
he took pride in the bonds he forged with the 16 other members of his Phi Psi
pledge class. He arrived in Charlottesville in 2009, coming from the Philadelphia
suburbs as the only senior in his 1,000-student graduating class to enroll at
U-Va., and he joined Phi Psi after he was impressed by the brothers.
“I didn’t know anyone in the frat,”
said Elias, 24. “They were very accepting of all kinds of people, and they
didn’t judge you from your background.”
Elias treasures his years at Phi
Psi, but when the Rolling Stone article was published, he found himself
doubting the people he knew best. As the fraternity was vilified, Elias said,
he hesitated to admit to co-workers that he was a member.
“The day it came out was the most
emotionally grueling of my life,” said Elias, who works for a Washington-area
construction firm.
He said that members of the
fraternity began analyzing the article and quickly challenged troublesome
assertions, including that the alleged gang rape was part of a hazing ritual at
Phi Psi.
“That ritual part hit hard for
everyone,” said Elias, who lived in the Phi Psi house his junior and senior
years, including in fall 2012, when the attack was alleged to have occurred.
“It assumes that everyone that is part of the frat had to do that, and that
hurt a lot of us.”
Scipione and Fontenot said that the
ordeal, while a challenge, brought members of the house closer together. They
said that despite the inconsistencies in the Rolling Stone story, the
fraternity members hope that sexual assault remains an important topic of
discussion at colleges across the country.
“Sexual assault on college campuses
is a real problem, and it needs to be addressed. And just because one story
from Rolling Stone dropped the ball doesn’t mean we can dismiss it,” Fontenot
said.
“My worst nightmare from this is
someone at this school or anywhere else tells their friends that they’ve been
sexually assaulted and their friend on the other line says, ‘Are you pulling a
Rolling Stone on me?’ ”
Susan Svrluga in Washington contributed to this report.
Poster’s comments:
1) Things
seem worse now in reliability of media reporting than a half century ago.
2) Even then
media reporting by many was prejudiced. Some might even call it propaganda.
Even much earlier the idea of the “yellow press” was bandied about.
3) Why do you
think so many adverse reports of our government’s performance come out late on
Fridays?
4) Why do you
think these reports have to come out?
5) The old
rule still applies in most cases. I personally don’t believe 90% of what I
read, and discount 50% of what I see. Can you say “Photoshop”? Even I can
“photoshop” on my home computer these days.
6) Don’t
throw out the baby with the dirty bath water. Said another way, some reporters
do a pretty good job and I thank them.
7) Why the
media's professionalism seems to have
declined, I can’t say. My observation is that it has declined over the last
half century.
8) Two old
expressions come to mind. One is “where there is smoke, there is fire”. The
other is the smell test, like if something smells bad there is probably a
reason for it.
9) The power
and influence of fads is another subject.
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