Rolling Stone to pay Virginia fraternity
$1.65 million in defamation suit
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[June 14, 2017]
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) - Rolling Stone magazine has
agreed to pay $1.65 million to a University of Virginia fraternity to
settle a defamation lawsuit over the publication's debunked article
about an alleged gang rape on campus, the fraternity said on Tuesday.
The Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, which was
implicated in the 2014 story, which was retracted, said it would donate
a significant portion of the settlement proceeds to groups providing
services to combat sexual assault on college campuses.
No other terms of the agreement were provided in the fraternity's online
announcement of the deal but a spokesman for Phi Kappa Psi, Brian Ellis,
confirmed the sum to be paid in return for dismissal of the suit was
$1.65 million.
The original lawsuit sought $25 million in damages.
Rolling Stone representatives declined comment except to say the
settlement had just been reached and has not yet been entered in court.
The fraternity's defamation claims against the magazine and the
article's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, had been due to go to trial in
October.
The settlement brings to an end the last of several lawsuits sparked by
the "A Rape on Campus" article, which described the alleged sexual
assault on a freshman woman during a fraternity party at the University
of Virginia's Charlottesville campus in 2012.
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The article stoked a national debate about sexual assault on U.S.
college campuses, where by some estimates one in five female students
will become a victim before graduating, and fueled perceptions of
fraternity culture as dangerously permissive and predatory.
But the published story, based on the account of a female student
identified only as "Jackie," was ultimately discredited as the magazine
admitted it never sought comment from the seven men accused of the
alleged rape.
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The story was officially retracted in April 2015, and an outside review
concluded that Rolling Stone failed to follow basic journalistic
safeguards in its reporting.
A separate defamation case brought against the magazine by university
administrator Nicole Eramo was settled two months ago after a federal
court jury awarded her $3 million in damages. Another lawsuit by three
former fraternity members was dismissed by a federal judge in June 2016.
(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Trott)
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