CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Oct. 25 (UPI) -- A college student whose rape allegations against University of Virginia fraternity members were at the heart of a since-debunked Rolling Stone article said she has memory loss and no longer recalls details of the incident.
A deposition by the University of Virginia student, identified only as "Jackie," was shown to a 10-person jury in Charlottesville, Va., federal court Wednesday. The video, recorded in April, referred to her now-discredited allegations of an on-campus fraternity gang rape in 2014, used in a Rolling Stone article published in 2014.
At issue in the $7.85 million defamation suit is whether the magazine and writer Sabrina Erdely intentionally defamed and slandered Nicole Eramo, an associate dean of the college chief of the school's sexual assault prevention program at the time. Eramo is the plaintiff in the suit. She says the article portrayed her as indifferent in dealing with sexual assault complaints and that the material Erdely gathered was to fit into a predetermined formula for a story on how colleges mishandle sexual assault incidents.
In the deposition, Jackie said the account she gave Rolling Stone in 2014 was correct, but she also testified she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, has memory loss and no longer remembers details. She added she felt pressured to work with Erdely, who wrote the article "A Rape on Campus" for the magazine, and said she wanted to end her involvement after she learned the alleged sexual assault would be the central issue in the story. She also contradicted herself in the videotaped deposition, saying the portrayal of the alleged rape in the story was both correct and inaccurate.
"I feel like my interpretation was different than what was written," Jackie said, adding she recalled reading the magazine story after it was published and "thinking I probably would not have written it that way."
She later said, "I stand by the account I gave Rolling Stone and I believed it to be true at the time. I believed it was true but some details of my assault -- I have PTSD and it's foggy."
She also did not deny allegations that she deliberately added imagined embellishments to her narrative, such as fabricating text messages from women who she said were also on-campus sexual assault victims, saying in the deposition, "I just don't remember any of this. It's all very foggy, I don't know."
In the deposition Jackie also mentioned she told Erdely she cared about Eramo and worried Eramo's "job security" would be at risk after publication of the article.
The Rolling Stone article was retracted after Charlottesville police and a probe by the Columbia Journalism School found inconsistencies in Jackie's story. Police determined the alleged sexual assault never occurred.
