U.Va. Graduates Sue Rolling Stone Over Retracted Rape Story

The article was explosive.

The article prompted university President Teresa Sullivan to temporarily suspend Greek social events.

For instance, Elias’ room at the fraternity house was “the mostly likely scene of the alleged crime” based on the details in the Rolling Stone article.

Elias, Hadford and Fowler, and their families and friends were repeatedly harassed on social media, through texts and at their jobs about their alleged involvement in the incidents, the lawsuit said.

The three men are requesting a trial by jury and seek monetary damages for “mental anguish and severe emotional distress” caused by the article and its aftermath.

Dana said in a statement on Wednesday that after 19 years at the magazine, “I have decided that it is time to move on”. Hadford and Fowler “suffered similar attacks”. He will leave Rolling Stone months after the magazine withdrew an erroneous story about a reputed gang rape at the University of Virginia. UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo sued the magazine and the author of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, back in May for the way she was portrayed in the story.

At that time, a crowdfunding campaign was launched to help Eramo finance her lawsuits. The article only cited one source, a student with one name: “Jackie”.

A Wenner Media spokeswoman did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment. Therefore, Erdely was never able to directly confront anyone about the attack.

The opening of the article described the purported assault as a Phi Kappa Psi initiation rite. Erdely portrayed their response as the type of denial guilty men would provide. Steve Helber/AP Police said there was no evidence of the gang rape, or even the party where it was said to have happened, at UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi frat house.

A postmortem conducted by the Columbia Journalism School found numerous flaws in the magazine’s reporting and editing that allowed the bogus story to get into print. This would have been clear to Rolling Stone if either Erdely or her editors had fact-checked the article in accordance with the magazine’s internal policies.

Now it appears Wenner may have rethought that stance; on Wednesday night, Rolling Stone revealed that Dana, who has served as managing editor since 2005, will depart on August 7.