ASHE SCHOW: The Year Of Campus Sexual Assault That Wasn’t:

The story did not turn out to be as advertised. Jackie, who told Rolling Stone she had a date the night she was allegedly gang raped, made up the story about the man who supposedly took her to the frat party — even creating fake cellphone numbers and sending her friends pictures of an old high school classmate, according to three friends who said they rushed to her aid the night of the alleged attack. That night, her friends recalled, Jackie said she had been forced to perform oral sex on a group of five men. By the time the story made it into Rolling Stone, she claimed she had been gang-raped by seven men.

Activists quickly tried to shift the narrative, claiming that the accuracy of Jackie’s story didn’t matter and that sexual assault really was as big a problem as they insisted. Anyone who disagreed was called a “rape apologist.”

Then came another blow: The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report showing that one in 41 women were raped or sexually assaulted while attending college, not one in five. Everyone agrees that one is too many, but some also believe that one false accusation is too many as well. Others do not, claiming that false accusations are rare (based on decades old studies or anecdotes that don’t take into account what is now being considered sexual assault). The implication being that the falsely accused don’t matter.

So, what does this mean for 2015? Next year the focus probably will continue to be on due process rights for the accused, especially given the growing number of lawsuits against universities by accused students that could move forward or be settled. And with more people realizing just how damaging the responses have been to the mythical statistic that 20 percent of women will be raped during their college years, policies may change.

Money for lawyers. Yay!