Former UVA Dean Speaks Out on False Rolling Stone Gang Rape Story

Former UVA Dean Speaks Out on False Rolling Stone Gang Rape Story

Former University of Virginia Dean Nicole Eramo was falsely implicated in Rolling Stone’s now famous hoax story and now she’s speaking out.

ABC News reports:

Ex-UVA Dean Nicole Eramo Breaks Silence on Retracted Rolling Stone ‘Rape on Campus’ Article

Former University of Virginia Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo said she was made out to be public enemy No. 1 after Rolling Stone magazine published the now infamous and retracted article “A Rape on Campus.”

Speaking publicly for the first time since the article was published almost two years ago, Eramo told ABC News “20/20” in an exclusive interview that her life has never been the same.

“I’m never going to be where I was on Nov. 18 of 2014,” she said. “But I can hopefully recognize that person again.”

The article, which Rolling Stone retracted after a Columbia Journalism School review ruled it a “failure that was avoidable,” centered on one young woman identified as “Jackie,” who was allegedly brutally gang-raped at a UVA fraternity house weeks into her first year at school. Many thought the article portrayed the university and Eramo, then the associate dean of students who handled Jackie’s case, as examples of the school-reputation-first response some sexual assault survivors say they receive from administrators on college campuses.

Eramo said that Jackie first told her in May 2013 that she had been sexually assaulted at a UVA fraternity but that reading Jackie’s account in the Rolling Stone article was still a shock.

“My heart sunk,” she said. “It was very different from what I knew of the story. So I was very confused at first, like, ‘Why wouldn’t she tell me?’ you know? ‘Why would she provide all this information and not provide it to me and let me help her?’ So that was kind of my first reaction.”

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