ASHE SCHOW: U.Va. dean vilified in fake Rolling Stone article speaks out.
ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday played a clip from an upcoming feature about the fake gang rape story published in Rolling Stone magazine in 2014.
The clip features snippets of two interviews, one from GMA host Amy Robach speaking with University of Virginia dean Nicole Eramo, who was portrayed as dismissive toward sexual assault accusers at the school, and part of Rolling Stone author Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s deposition.
Eramo is seen reading some “mild” hate mail she received in the wake of the article, which claimed she did nothing to help a woman who said she was gang-raped at a fraternity at U.Va. when she was a freshman.
“Dean of rape … God will have his day with you and hold you accountable,” and “you’re a despicable human being,” Eramo read, timidly.
“I thought I – I was sure I was going to be fired. I was sure that – and I just didn’t know if I could do it, honestly,” she said, fighting back tears. “I mean, I went to work every day and I tried to do it but I wasn’t sure if I could do it.”
Eramo is now suing Rolling Stone and Erdely for the way she was portrayed in the article.
Next we see Erdely giving testimony in response to Eramo’s lawsuit. She claimed “Jackie,” the woman who gave her the fake account of a gang rape, “proved to be credible in so many different ways.” Erdely also said Jackie gave her “pieces of evidence to back up what she was saying.” We do not see whether Erdely explained what those pieces were.
Jackie could have given Erdely text messages between herself and “Drew,” the man she claimed took her to a fraternity party after a date and orchestrated the gang rape as part of an initiation. She could have shown Erdely a photo of the man she claimed was Drew. But those text messages and the photo were fake. Jackie used an online service to send the texts to her friends, and the photo she showed them of Drew was actually of an old high school classmate who was not a student at U.Va. and had nothing to do with any of this.
Remember, Obama, and even many Congressional Republicans, were ready to make national policy based on this hoax.