In the wake of Rolling Stone’s refusal to fire the author behind its now-retracted and now infamous University of Virginia gang-rape story, one has to wonder if this is a rare mistake or a pattern of behavior.
There are some big hints that it is the latter.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author in question, actually has a history of writing articles based solely on one person’s account, with no indication that she even tried to corroborate the story or hear any other potential side.
Over at RedState, author Leon H. Wolf points to another of Erdely’s stories that purports to show a victim of a sexual assault who was met with indifference by a long-standing patriarchal oppressor. That story was called “The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer.”
As Wolf notes, Erdely apparently made no attempt to contact members of the military involved in investigating the case, instead relying on victim’s advocates with no direct knowledge to bolster the accuser’s case. Wolf says he spoke to members of Naval command who were involved with the case, who told him a different story than what Erdely reported.
Erdely wrote that Petty Officer Rebecca Blumer had come to the conclusion that she was “roofied and raped” after a night of heavy drinking that landed her in jail with a DUI. But Navy personnel told Wolf that the possibility of a sexual assault had first been raised by another member of Naval command during her interrogation for the DUI arrest. Wolf’s Navy source also said Blumer never mentioned sexual assault in the police report from the night she was arrested, nor was any physical evidence of a sexual assault discovered at any point. (The arresting officer in the case could not be reached as he is currently working the Masters golf tournament.)
Erdely also glosses over key details to make the night of Blumer’s arrest seem more seedy than it may have been. For instance, Erdely mentions that skin cells were found on Blumer’s underwear, “proof that something had happened, although no one knew what.” But as Wolf notes, the DNA recovered was “contact” DNA from the “upper rear portion of Ms. Blumer’s underwear,” which could have come from a police officer trying to subdue her as she fought during her arrest. Or it could have come from someone having their hand on her back or picking up her clothes after taking them off in jail. The bottom line, there’s a whole host of reasons other than rape for how skin cells could be found on the back of her underwear.
But Wolf isn’t the only one to call Erdely’s past articles about sexual assault into question. For two years Ralph Cipriano, a former L.A. Times and Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, has been chronicling the miscarriage of justice in another story that Erdely wrote.
That story, called “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files,” fits Erdely’s continued attempts to confirm every bias about a historically prominent group. In this case, a young drug addict named Billy Doe claimed he was raped as an altar boy by priests and a school teacher. His story kept changing, but a grand jury bought the version he told them and put four men in jail.
Cipriano believes they were wrongly convicted and railroaded by a Philadelphia district attorney. Cipriano notes factual errors in the grand jury report that Erdely relied on for her story. Like Erdely’s other stories, she gives no indication that she reached out to anyone who could corroborate the story, instead relying on outside opinions.
Mollie Hemmingway at the Federalist also notes that Erdely’s past stories all sound too good to be true and include many unverifiable facts. In one story alone, Erdely’s source claimed to be a prostitute mother with a business degree whose father was killed by the mob and is also a devout Catholic. Also, her marriage to a wealthy man sounds suspiciously like an alternate script for “Pretty Woman.” There’s no indication in the story that Erdely tried to corroborate any of the information her source gave.
Every story Erdely writes begins the same way — with a story about her main source’s experience written as if Erdely witnessed it herself. From there the article only seeks to bolster the source’s account — all with a credulity that lends itself more to fiction writing than journalism.
The question is whether Rolling Stone will do what the New Republic did in the wake of the Stephen Glass controversy — that is, to review Erdely’s past work and decide whether she should continue to be trusted as an author.
