Vergewaltigung: Falschbeschuldigung des Rolling Stone führt zu hitziger Debatte

Jetzt drehen sie durch schreibt Hadmut Danisch über einen Artikel in der Washington Post, dessen Autorin Zerlina Maxwell auch nach der dieser Tage aufgeflogenen Falschbeschuldigung des Magazins "Rolling Stone" darauf besteht, Frauen, die behaupten vergewaltigt worden zu sein, grundsätzlich zu glauben.

Der Verfasser des männerpolitischen Blogs Toy Soldiers widerspricht und fügt, nachdem er Maxwells Argumentation zerpflückt hat, hinzu:

What is shocking is that this comes not only from a lawyer, but a black social commentator who has been a good deal of time talking about the injustice young black men face in our legal system. Would you like to know one the worst injustices black men have faced in this country throughout its history?

False accusations of rape.

Auf Twitter empören sich die Radikalfeministinnen Jessica Valenti und Amanda Marcotte angesichts der aktuellen Entwicklungen. Ähnlich wie ihre Unterstützerin Melissa McEwan erhalten sie aber auch starken Gegenwind.

Das libertäre Blog PJ Media berichtet:

Just days after a new California law redefining rape came into effect, several shocking but unsubstantiated rape allegations have been leveled against fraternities on the UC Berkeley campus.

One stunning university police report cites accusations of a mass rape at the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, where not just one but five victims were supposedly drugged and raped on the same night at the frat house near campus.

In another allegation, a specific perpetrator was named, arrested, and shamed publicly — only to be later declared "factually innocent" as the rape charge was quietly dropped, after his reputation was ruined.

Suspiciously, in most of the cases the charges were not made by victims or witnesses, but rather by third parties long after the fact. These third-party accusations were made either anonymously or by "Campus Security Authorities," which includes campus political activist groups. In many of the cases, the actual "victims" themselves have not come forward and may not even consider themselves to have been raped.

And even more suspiciously, almost none of the supposed crimes were reported directly to Berkeley’s municipal police force, whose jurisdiction covers campus as well, but instead only to the university police, who are required by recent regulations to log and publicize each accusation.

In not a single case have any of the charges been substantiated, nor have any suspects been indentified or arrested (aside from the one case noted above where the charge was subsequently dropped).

(...) Cut considering all the evidence before us at this moment, we suspect that this unprecedented flurry of outrageous rape claims at Berkeley is either an attempt to target and discredit the entire fraternity system (which seems to have been the case at the University of Virginia as well), or merely a ploy to generate publicity and inflated statistics for the claim that there is a "rape culture" at universities across the country.

Die These von der Rape Culture verteidigt unter anderem Julia Horowitz, leitende Redakteurin der Studentenzeitung an der University of Virginia, auch nach dem Rolling-Stone-Debakel:

I am drained. I am confused. But I keep returning to one question. If everyone here believed Jackie’s story until yesterday — a story in which she is violently raped by seven men at a fraternity house as part of a planned initiation ritual — should we not still be concerned?

There was something in that story which stuck. And that means something.

(...) What does it say that we read an article in which an 18-year-old girl was pinned down, graphically violated by multiple people in a house we pass almost every day — and we thought, "That just may be right?"

(...) For 17 days, we by and large believed Jackie’s story, maintaining only a few fragments of doubt. We were frustrated by the repeated use of the "Rugby Road" song, which appeared to make fun of the rape culture on campus but which most students, in fact, had never heard. We were angered by the portrayal of administrators we had worked with and personally trusted. We were slightly apprehensive at the article’s claim the rape had taken place as part of pledging, noting that pledging takes place in the spring and not the fall. But on the whole, we did not question Jackie herself. And that’s because, when we sorted through Erdely’s snide tone and some small missteps, we found something in that article that struck a chord with us.

This is not to say that it does not matter whether or not Jackie’s story is accurate. There is now a police investigation into the incident. Brothers of Phi Kappa Psi were moved out of their house after students threw bricks through the windows. Dean Nicole Eramo has received death threats. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the story that blew the lid off campus sexual assault has some major, major holes.

Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake. "These events undoubtedly do occur here," first-year Maddie Rita told me. "And while this report has clearly had factual flaws as well as rhetorical missteps, there are plenty of other fully corroborated accounts not only at this university, but at every university around the country."

Ich wiederhole den entscheidenden Satz noch mal: "To let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake."