Rolling Stone has lost a $7.5 million lawsuit to a university dean of students, who accused it of defamation in a 2014 article on a gang rape. The jury found the magazine, its publisher and the author liable with malice.
The jury deliberated for about 19 hours before reaching the verdict in favor of Nicole Eramo, a former University of Virginia Associate Dean of Students.
Eramo filed her lawsuit in May 2015, accusing Rolling Stone's author of defaming her in a report titled
"A Rape on Campus," published online in November 2014 and in the December 2014 print issue.
The woman claimed that reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, unfairly portrayed her as a villain in the story of a gang rape. Erdely's 9,000-word article focused on an account of a woman named only as Jackie, who said that she was beaten and raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi house in September 2012. The reporter called Eramo "the chief villain of the story," because she allegedly was discouraging "Jackie" from reporting the rape to the police.
"Lots of people have discouraged her from sharing her story, Jackie tells me with a pained look, including the trusted UVA dean to whom Jackie reported her gang-rape allegations more than a year ago," Erdely wrote in the article.
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