UVA dean sues Rolling Stone for $7.85M over rape story

A dean at the University of Virginia is suing Rolling Stone over its discredited story of an alleged gang rape on campus, claiming it was defamatory.

In order “to personify the University’s alleged institutional indifference to rape,” Rolling Stone and the story’s author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, cast Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo as the story’s “chief villain,” according to a complaint filed Tuesday in Charlottesville.

The complaint says Eramo was wrongly depicted as indifferent to the rape allegations from a student, who was identified in the story only as “Jackie.”

{mosads}The lawsuit requests $7.5 million in compensatory damages for Eramo as well as another $350,000 in punitive damages. Rolling Stone, Erdely and publisher Wenner Media are listed as defendants. 

“I am filing this defamation lawsuit to set the record straight — and to hold the magazine and the author of the article accountable for their actions in a way they have refused to do themselves,” Eramo said in a statement, according to multiple reports. 

In December, Rolling Stone began to walk back the story of a brutal sexual assault allegedly involving members of a school fraternity, after questions were raised about the accuracy of the reporting. 

That fraternity has also said it will sue the magazine over the story, which Rolling Stone has since retracted.