It’s one thing for an alleged victim of sexual assault to provide divergent accounts after a traumatic event, given the toll it takes on a person’s psyche. But Jackie, who was profiled in Rolling Stone as suffering through a horrific gang rape at University of Virginia fraternity, may have contradicted herself before the reported attack would have occurred.
Last week, the Washington Post discovered that Jackie had been telling different accounts of her being sexually assaulted and giving different descriptions of her attacker.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that she gave a different description of her attacker to her friends before she went on a date with him.
Here’s a recap of how the attacker was described in the Rolling Stone article and two subsequent Washington Post articles.
Original Rolling Stone article: A Phi Kappa Psi fraternity member who worked with Jackie at the campus pool.
Washington Post, Dec. 5: Jackie said she didn’t know if her attacker was a member of Phi Psi, and the name she gave to her campus advocacy group friends didn’t match her original description. The man worked at the pool, but wasn’t a member of Phi Psi and had never met Jackie or taken her on a date.
Washington Post, Dec. 10: Jackie told friends before she went out that her date was a man from her chemistry class, but the name she gave (which was different from the name given to her advocate friends) did not match any student at U.Va. Further, photos texted to her friends of her supposed date were actually of one of Jackie’s high school classmates who said he barely knew her and hadn’t been to Charlottesville, Va., in six years – and he was in another state at an athletic event at the time the rape would have occurred, according to Jackie’s account. Also, he is a student at a different university.
Why would Jackie give contradictory information before the traumatic event? At this point, nothing makes sense.
