
In recent court filings, lawyers for University of Virginia associate dean of students Nicole Eramo are asking a judge to force “Jackie” — the subject of a debunked
Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape on campus — to reveal text messages and other communications, saying it would expose the woman as a "serial liar."
In the new court documents, lawyers harshly discredited Jackie, claiming her story told to Rolling Stone is based on a series of lies.
Jackie's lawyers fired back at
Eramo’s recent filings in court documents.
“The story was a lie when she first told it in 2012, and it was no more true when Rolling Stone recklessly published
the tale in 2014,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in the documents.
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Eramo’s lawyers argue that there is “no factual basis whatsoever” of any sexual assault in
the case “to conclude that Jackie is even an 'alleged' victim of sexual assault, let alone an actual victim.”
Eramo’s lawyers claim that Jackie is “a serial
liar who invented” her account told by the Rolling Stone and written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, including making up people, events and text messages.
In the documents,
lawyers put Rolling Stone on the spotlight, questioning: “Did Rolling Stone simply invent the claims that Dean Eramo abused Jackie, discouraged her from reporting her supposed
sexual assault, called UVA “the rape school,” and sought to suppress Jackie’s sexual assault to protect the university’s reputation — or did Jackie actually tell
Rolling Stone those things?
"Did Rolling Stone ignore blatant red flags and gaping holes in Jackie’s story indicating that she was not telling the truth? And did
Rolling Stone purposefully avoid uncovering discrepancies in Jackie’s account about her supposed gang rape and her subsequent interactions with Dean Eramo?”
Last
year, in response to Eramo’s lawsuit against Rolling Stone, the publication made public a confidential letter that the magazine sent to Eramo's lawyers in February.
“In no small measure, Rolling Stone believed in the credibility of Jackie's story because it came with the imprimatur of UVA, and of Dean Eramo specifically," the letter
states.
In the new court documents, Eramo's attorneys said they want Jackie to hand over her communications with the associate dean, other university officials and Erdely, among
other things.
Jackie's lawyers challenged Eramo’s filings in court, saying Jackie shouldn't have to disclose private information because she's not a party to the Rolling
Stone lawsuit and should be protected as a victim of an alleged sexual assault.
"What is tragic about this case is that Dean Eramo apparently believes she can rehabilitate her
reputation by attacking a student she herself counseled and whom she referred to support groups and additional counseling following her report of sexual assault," the woman's attorneys wrote.
Jackie’s lawyers wrote that asking her to provide the information “constitutes exactly the abusive re-victimization that these protections were designed to prevent.”
University officials declined to comment, and Rolling Stone has not commented on the case.
Rolling Stone was slammed with three lawsuits last year,
including Eramo’s $7.5 million defamation lawsuit. The UVA dean claims she was portrayed as the “chief villain” in the article.
The article, titled “A Rape on
Campus,” was published Nov. 2014 and raked in more than 2.7 million views before it was retracted.