The dubious qualifications of T. Rees Shapiro for reporting about rape at elite, Virginia universities or anywhere else

June 17, 2017

His father, Leonard Shapiro, was a sportswriter at The Washington Post.

He graduated from an elite, all-boys, private high school in Virginia.

He attended Virginia Tech.

Unlike Sabrina Erdely, the reporter whose career he and his misogynist, male colleagues at the Washington Post and everyone else who has regurgitated what they have said have sought to ruin, he has no credible experience investigating crime.  

That's a picture of part of a Washington Post article from June 13, 2017, called "Fraternity chapter at U-Va. to settle suit against Rolling Stone for $1.65 million."

This is another picture of part of the Washington Post article:

Mr. Shapiro conflated text messages between Jackie and "Randall" from the night that she was raped. He misreported the times at which several of the text messages were sent and neither he nor the Post ever took responsibility for it.  During the trial for Ms. Eramo's lawsuit, he misleadingly reported about Jackie's testimony to falsely convey the idea that Jackie had fabricated two other female victims of rape by Phi Kappa Psi members.  

The law firm of Clare Locke, which represented Ms. Eramo for her lawsuit, demanded all traceable Internet records of the email account for the ill-conceived, fictitious persona of Haven Monahan that Jackie had used to woo her then-friend "Randall" in the fall of 2012.  Although "Randall" has avowed to as many media sources as will listen to him that the wooing didn't work, it probably did because he lied about how many dates he'd had with Jackie and he also agreed to be taken on an expensive date by her for his birthday to see his favorite band; a date which he only broke after she was delivered to Phi Kappa Psi by the all-too-real "Drew" and gang-raped.

If traceable records of texts or emails from the other two alleged victims had proven that they were fabrications, the news of it would have been everywhere.  There is NO WAY that Phi Kappa Psi would have settled its lawsuit for $1.65 million in June 2017 when it had initially asked for $25 million and the court date was set for October 2017.  

The Charlottesville Police Department's March 23, 2015 statement about its investigation of Jackie's allegations is a verification of everything that anyone could say about how police discredit and threaten victims of sexual violence while coddling and lying for the perpetrators, especially when the victims are not privileged and the perpetrators are.  

The Columbia Journalism Review's report, undertaken at the request of Rolling Stone in response to the Washington Post's attacks on the Rolling Stone article, had a lot of mistakes and the CJR knows it.  

The "time stamped" picture that Phi Kappa Psi gave to the Charlottesville Police Department during the department's investigation was timed perfectly to have been taken soon after Jackie left the party that Phi Kappa Psi has falsely said never happened on September 28, 2012.  Read the text messages between Jackie and "Randall" from that night, and you'll realize that the only thing the picture proves is that she wasn't lying.  Perhaps she misread a digital clock in the room where she was raped as saying 12:52 when it was 8:52, and perhaps this is what led to Ms. Erdely reporting that Jackie regained consciousness "after 3 a.m."

If Jackie had dinner with "Drew," which the Charlottesville Police Department's statement confirms while trying to deny that she did, and if she then texted "Randall" from the party shortly before she was raped, and if she texted "Randall" again after she was raped, the texts between her and Randall support her story that she was raped for almost 3 hours.  

The picture that was given to the police department by Phi Kappa Psi was documented by the police department's March 23, 2015 statement months before the texts between Jackie and "Randall" were published for anyone to read.  Maybe Jackie and her former "friends" and Ms. Erdely didn't know exactly when Jackie was raped, but her rapists did.

According to Phi Kappa Psi, there was no party on the night of September 28, 2012.

That's another picture of the police statement as reported by the Washington Post.  

The Columbia Journalism Review excoriated Ms. Erdely for not researching social media for evidence that would prove that there was no party on the night of September 28, 2012.  

No party, say the alleged perpetrators and all of their friends.  Nothing happened on the night of September 28, 2012, except that someone at Phi Kappa Psi took a picture of someone else at Phi Kappa Psi to prove that there wasn't a party and whoever was living at the fraternity house years later happened to have the picture to give to the police right away in 2014 or 2015?  

The first thing that Ms. Eramo did when Jackie told her she was raped was to investigate whether or not Phi Kappa Psi had a party on September 28, 2012.  That was what Jackie innocently told Ms. Erdely while she was being interviewed for the Rolling Stone article.  Jackie didn't know then what Ms. Eramo certainly knew, which is that fraternities routinely deny having had parties at all when they are parties at which hazing or rape occurred.  Jackie told Ms. Erdely that Ms. Eramo had confirmed that there was a party that night, because there was.  

Rolling Stone didn't have to publish Ms. Eramo's name or picture; if she had told the truth, she would have been fired by the University of Virginia and/or sued by Phi Kappa Psi.

Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, June 17, 2017 @ 3:04 p.m.