Friends: We Wanted UVa Jackie to Call Cops

They come forward to dispute 'Rolling Stone' story
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 15, 2014 3:37 AM CST
Updated Dec 15, 2014 7:32 AM CST
Friends: We Wanted UVa Jackie to Call Cops
University of Virginia student Ryan Duffin talks during an interview with the AP in Charlottesville, Va.   (AP Photo)

Three University of Virginia students have come forward using their real names to dispute their depiction in the Rolling Stone's much-contested article on campus rape. Ryan Duffin, Kathryn Hendley, and Alex Stock—referred to as Randall, Cindy, and Andy in the article—tell the AP that after their friend Jackie told them she had been gang-raped at a frat house, they encouraged her to report the attack instead of launching into "a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie's rape," as the article claims. All three say reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely didn't contact them before the article was published, but she has now reached out to them. Hendley, who supposedly persuaded the group not to report the rape, says she wasn't even part of the conversation and that Erdely has now apologized.

Duffin says when he met Jackie after a late-night phone call, "Her lip was quivering, her eyes were darting around. And right then, I put two and two together. I knew she had been on this date and people don't usually look like that after a date." He says he was "really forceful" about wanting to call police, but Jackie told him she didn't want to speak to authorities. The 20-year-old says he wants to set the record straight, but "the takeaway from all this is that I still don't really care if what's presented in this article is true or not because I think it's far more important that people focus on the issue of sexual assault as a whole." The three have also said that they weren't sure that Jackie's date that night even existed, Gawker notes, though, like Jackie's roommate, they say she seemed genuinely traumatized. (More University of Virginia stories.)

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