Brothers of Phi Kappa Psi at UVA have filed suit against Rolling Stone

Home Top

The Wild West is back: Record drought unveils lost cowboy town that has been submerged under Nevada's Lake Mead since 1935
Father-of-two Law & Order director is charged with child sex abuse for sharing explicit video online of girls as young as SIX
REVEALED: Boy, 11, who strangled and killed toddler had a troubled history which included lighting his crib on fire at the age of three and digging up dead animals
Revealed: MORE young adults are living with their parents, with one in three failing to move out despite wage increases and strong job market
Has MH370 finally been found? Air safety investigators have 'high degree of confidence' that debris found in Indian Ocean 3,500 miles from doomed flight's last known location belongs to a Boeing 777
So what really happened to MH370? The SEVEN leading theories of what happened to the missing jet as investigators come tantalisingly close to answers
Swirling currents, cyclonic weather and an air-filled fuselage: How a piece of debris from flight MH370 could have turned up a year later and 6,000km away from where the plane was thought to have crashed
Agonizing last hours of an exhausted and horrifically maimed lion king and one man's deadly vanity that led to its trophy killing
'Are you trying to send a mob?' Mia Farrow accused of irresponsible behavior after posting address of dentist who killed Cecil the lion to Twitter
Dentist who killed Cecil the lion was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee at his practice and settled out of court for $127,500
Another lion killer was director of Bank of England: As world reviles US game hunter, picture that shames a Tory donor and ex-BBC governor
Is this what's in store for Cecil? Inside the Namibian taxidermy factory which stuffs more than 6,000 animals a year for trophy hunters
Ted Nugent hits out at 'stupid' Cecil the lion protesters, saying hunting of Africa's favorite big cat was 'legal & ESSENTIAL'
EXCLUSIVE: Three members of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at UVA who claim they were targeted in false Rolling Stone 'rape' article file defamation lawsuit
Fifth black woman in a month found dead in jail: New York mother accused of stealing crab legs died in cell while husband was waiting upstairs for her court appearance
Campus cop who shot unarmed black man dead is charged with murder - after chilling bodycam video exposed his lies about traffic stop
New York man, 44, arrested for allegedly trying to join ISIS
Wrongly arrested Ferguson prisoner wins appeal to sue cops who beat him and then charged him for BLEEDING on them
'Police officers DO care!': Grieving family praise cop who rushed to console woman and wipe her tears on Interstate 65 after she heard her sister had just died
No woman over 20 should wear a bikini! Obsessing about your beach body? Janet Street-Porter says it's time to face reality
'Rape doesn't make him a bad husband - it makes him a criminal': Woman who was told by judge to 'forgive' husband who drugged and raped her speaks out about her ordeal
Calls to send in the British army as hundreds of migrants storm fences around Calais Channel Tunnel entrance for THIRD night running
The Death Star weapon is here! Japan fires world's most powerful laser to produce energy equal to 1,000 times the planet's power consumption
$NEW YORK, 31/05/11\n************WORLD RIGHTS ONLY*******\nPICTURES BY: \nZZT-MISHA-TIM/EAGLEPRESS\nFEE MUST BE AGREED PRIOR PUBLICATION\nNO WEB USE WITHOUT PRIOR AGREEMENT\nPLEASE CREDIT ALL USES\n----------------------------------\nSARAH PALIN STOPPED BY DONALD TRUMP'S UPPER WEST SIDE CONDO BEFORE GOING OUT FOR DINNER WITH THE REALITY TV REAL ESTATE MAGNATE AND HIS FAMILY. PALIN'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER, PIPER, WAS THERE AS WELL. PALIN WAS JOINED BY HER PARENTS, AS WELL AS TRUMP'S WIFE MELANIA\n----------------------------------\nCONTACT: WWW.EAGLEPRESS.US\nKATE +1 917 7100219\nkate@eaglepress.us\nphotos@eaglepress.us\nINFO +1 917 7100494$ 'She's really a special person': Donald Trump says he would give Sarah Palin a cabinet job because she's 'tough and smart'

Fraternity brothers George Elias IV, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler have filed suit against Rolling Stone in Federal Court
They are also suing the writer of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely
The article describes 'a gruesome and barbarous gang rape of a UVA freshman' say the UVA graduates
The charges were false and defamatory, they say
It claims the magazine and Erdely created a 'simple and direct way to match the alleged attackers with the Plaintiffs'
The three students were interrogated, humiliated and scolded by family, friends and coworkers and will 'forever be associated with the alleged rape'
Rolling Stone retracted and apologized for the incendiary story in April

Published: 17:16 EST, 29 July 2015 | Updated: 19:11 EST, 29 July 2015

View
comments

Three fraternity brothers implicated in Rolling Stone’s UVA Rape story are suing the magazine for defamation, claiming that their links to the now discredited story of the supposedly sexually violent frat house initiation ritual has had ‘a devastating effect’ on their lives,’ Daily Mail Online can exclusively reveal.

George Elias IV, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler were not named in the article but in their lawsuit, filed Wednesday, each states that the ‘vivid details’ published in the article which has since been retracted, made them clearly identifiable, leading to ‘emotional turmoil’ and leaving them ‘unable to focus at work and in school.’

The article ‘A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA,’ written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, garnered worldwide attention when it was published on November 19 2014, with the online story alone attracting 2.7million views.

George Elias (left) and Stephen Hadford were not named in the article but in their lawsuit, filed Wednesday, each states that the ‘vivid details’ published in the article which has since been retracted, made them clearly identifiable, leading to ‘emotional turmoil’ and leaving them ‘unable to focus at work and in school’

Elias is one of the three students were interrogated, humiliated and scolded by family, friends and coworkers

The Rolling Stone article described the ‘gruesome and barbarous,’ gang rape of a UVA freshman ‘Jackie’ when she allegedly attended a party at wealthy frat house, Phi Kappa Psi (above)

It described the ‘gruesome and barbarous,’ gang rape of a UVA freshman ‘Jackie’ when she allegedly attended a party at wealthy frat house, Phi Kappa Psi.

Erdely reported Jackie’s testimony that she was invited to a party by a brother known as ‘Drew.’ She related Jackie’s story of being ‘led upstairs to a pitch-black room, where she bumped into someone and screamed.’ A man then told Jackie to shut-up and threw her through a glass table.

The violent scenes that followed culminated in a brutal, multiple sexual assault that lasted three hours and was, Erdely reported, ‘one of Phi Kappa Psi’s initiation rituals.’

The details have since been discredited and wild discrepancies in Jackie’s account highlighted.

Phi Kappa Psi did not even host a party on the night of Jackie’s alleged attack.

But, according to the three fraternity brothers now suing Rolling Stone, Sabrina Erdely and Wenner Media LLC for a sum in excess of $75,000 the damage had already been done.

The lawsuit seen by Daily Mail Online states, ‘George Elias IV lived in the fraternity house in the first room at the top of the first flight of stairs at the time the alleged crime took place.’

It continues, ‘Based on the vivid details described in the Rolling Stone article, this room location was the most likely scene of the alleged crime.’

Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone magazine and head of Wenner Media and writer Sabrina Erdely have been named in the lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages

On the article’s publication, the suit states, ‘family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers and reporters easily matched Plaintiff as one of the alleged attackers and, among other things, interrogated him, humiliated him and scolded him.’

Both Hadford and Fowler, it states, suffered ‘similar attacks.

The suit presents all three as upstanding students, and claims that the fraternity of which they were once proud members has since been ‘vilified, vandalized and ultimately suspended on campus since Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone article went online.’

It insists that Phi Kappa Psi ‘does not participate in rush and does not have pledges in the fall semester.’

Moreover, ‘no ritualized sexual assault is part of [its] pledging or initiating process.’

In the weeks that followed publication as the veracity of the article and ‘Jackie’s’ crumbled under intense scrutiny forcing managing editor, Will Dana to issue a public apology on Rolling Stone’s website stating that, ‘in the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced.’

On April 5 2015 the magazine officially retracted ‘A Rape on Campus’ and Dana issued an apology ,’to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students'

The Charlottesville Police Department conducted a formal investigation of the allegations in the article and published its findings on March 23, 2015. It noted, ‘Having exhausted all investigative leads, our investigation concludes that there is no substantive basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article.’

Prior to the retraction Dana had tweeted, ‘I can’t explain the discrepancies between Jackie’s account and the counter statements by Phi Psi,’ and that ‘the fact that there is a story that appears in Rolling Stone in which I don’t have complete confidence is deeply unsettling to me.’

With this suit only the latest in a string of suits brought against the magazine and author Sabrina Rubin Erdely it may prove to be as costly to Dana as it is disturbing

Columbia faults methodology of Rolling Stone's rape story