Third suit filed against the magazine.
By Raif Karerat
The University of Virginia fraternity whose members were the subject of a later discredited rape exposé published in Rolling Stone magazine filed a lawsuit against the publication on Monday for $25 million in damages.
The Phi Kappa Psi chapter filed the defamation lawsuit in Charlottesville, Virginia, Circuit Court against Rolling Stone and writer Sabrina Erdely, the fraternity said in a statement.
The lawsuit alleges that Rolling Stone and Erdely wanted to advance a narrative of college campus sexual violence by depicting a rape, whether it was true or not, the statement said.
It is the third filed in response to the November 2014 article entitled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.”
Three individual fraternity members and recent graduates are suing for at least $225,000 each, and a university associate dean who claims she was portrayed as the “chief villain” is suing the magazine for more than $7.5 million.
After the story as published, details emerges that did not hold up under the scrutiny of other media outlets.
Eventually, Rolling Stone commissioned an examination by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which revealed in a damning report that Rolling Stone failed at virtually every step of the journalistic process, from the reporting by Erdely, to the vetting of sources, to an editing process that included high-ranking staffers.
Earlier this year, former editor Will Dana quit the same day the three UVA fraternity brothers sued the magazine. He had previously been at the helm of the magazine for 19 years, but was unable to escape the blistering fallout from Erdely’s article.