“The Rolling Stone Fiasco Is Terrible News for Rape Survivors”

Just in case you have not already heard about this, and are not already completely depressed about the state of world, here’s this account from The Atlantic of Rolling Stone’s retraction of its earlier story detailing the sexual assault of a young woman using the pseudonym “Jackie.”

Maybe there will be a rebuttal of this–quite defensibly, out of respect for the importance and sensitivity of the subject matter–rather tentative and qualified retraction. Still, it just does not read to me, in view of subsequent investigations, as if the story could possibly be even only “98 percent right.” It sounds as though Jackie pretty much just made the whole thing up. And, although the graph The Atlantic presents was lazily copied off of Twitter with no supporting documentation, on the basis of other studies I’ve read or heard reported, I’m inclined to believe it is basically accurate. This is to say that rape is a huge social problem, massively underreported, that is now going to receive even less attention than it does today. So here’s to hoping for that unlikely rebuttal!

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I think that there are some larger complexities at play here. There’s a lot of good research, you know, citing Dr. David Lisak and Dr. Rebecca Campbell that suggest that traumatic memories are stored differently in the brain. And so as a result, they’re brought out by the brain different as well. So through none of this process have I ever disbelieved Jackie. Have I believed that details may change shape over time because of the nature of trauma? Absolutely.

So we may indeed be much too quick to disregard Jackie’s story. Who, after all, would make up such a thing? I would especially welcome comments from anyone familiar with the psychological effects of traumatic experience who could speak to the plausibility of Renda’s explanation and perhaps expand a bit for other readers.

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