• by Sara Guaglione , November 8, 2016

Rolling Stone, its parent company Wenner Media and writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely were ordered by a federal jury Monday to pay $3 million in damages to a former University of Virginia dean, Nicole Eramo, over a retracted story about an alleged rape at a fraternity.

On Friday, after a two-week trial, the jury decided the three were liable for defamation in the case. Erdely, the author of the story, is liable for $2 million and Rolling Stone and Wenner Media for $1 million.

Eramo originally sued the magazine and Erdely for $7.5 million, claiming the article titled "A Rape on Campus" portrayed her as a “villain” trying to discourage the woman identified as Jackie from reporting her alleged assault to police.

The story, which was published in November 2014, was retracted in April 2015 after investigations by The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review and the Charlottesville police contradicted the magazine’s account.

Before printing the story, Rolling Stone did not seek out Jackie's alleged attackers to corroborate her story.

Eramo, deemed a public figure by the judge, had to prove to the jury that Rolling Stone’s article had been published with "actual malice.” In other words, the jury decided Monday that Rolling Stone and Erdely knew they were writing false accounts about Eramo, or at least doubted they were true.

Jurors found it telling that the magazine republished the article on December 5 with an editor's note noting the "discrepancies" in Jackie's story. However, they did not retract the story for another four months.

Rolling Stone also faces a $25 million lawsuit from Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity where Jackie claimed her assault took place. Phi Kappa Psi argues the story made the fraternity and its members "the object of an avalanche of condemnation worldwide.”