'Rolling Stone' libel case heads to jury

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating Wednesday in a defamation trial against Rolling Stone magazine for its tale of a gruesome gang rape at the University of Virginia.

Former university administrator Nicole Eramo sued the magazine for $7.5 million, claiming a 2014 story entitled "A Rape on Campus" — that was eventually debunked — painted her as insensitive to the needs of sexual assault victims and more concerned with protecting the school's reputation.

On Tuesday, lawyers for both sides made their closing arguments in the case. Eramo's attorney Tom Clare said the story's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, ignored facts and neglected to check sources that would have gutted her story line.

Clare argued that Erdely set out to tell a story of “institutional indifference” and stuck with a preconceived narrative. “Once they decided what the article was going to be about, it didn’t matter what the facts were,” Clare said.

Rolling Stone publisher disagreed with rape story retraction

 Rolling Stone attorney Scott Sexton said there was no evidence the magazine knew the story was false before it was published.

Sexton urged jurors to consider Jackie's compelling story and questioned why it would be unreasonable for Erdely to believe her when the university itself had taken the rape claim seriously.

“Everyone who encountered this young woman believed her,” Sexton said. “Yet we are the ones, in a sense, being tried for having believed her.”

Eramo was the associate dean of students at the Charlottesville, Va., school who counseled a woman identified as "Jackie" who claimed she was brutally assaulted at a fraternity house party in 2012. Jackie described being lured upstairs and raped and beaten by a group of men over several hours.

Erdely has denied she set out to write an attack piece. She admits she did not interview Jackie's alleged attackers or her friends to back-up details. She testified that Jackie changed parts of her story during the interview process. But Erdely said she dismissed it as confusion stemming from trauma.

Erdely's powerful prose and the story's ghastly details left campuses nationwide reeling and propelled the issue of college sex assaults into the headlines. In Charlottesville, student protests erupted and the fraternity in question was attacked. Eramo was bombarded with angry emails and letters.

But the fraternity soon challenged the article's claims and skepticism mounted. Charlottesville police investigated and found no evidence of rape. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, commissioned by the magazine to study the way the article was handled, found a systematic failure on all levels, particularly on reliance on a single source.

Author of discredited 'Rolling Stone' rape story defends reporting

The magazine issued an apology in December 2014 for its failures in reporting and editing. Four months later, the story was fully retracted.

The judge has dismissed Eramo’s claim that the story, when taken as a whole, implied Eramo was a “false friend” to Jackie — a claim that Rolling Stone called a “critical element” of her case. Eramo must prove that the magazine's statements about her made her appear “odious, infamous or ridiculous” and that the magazine acted with “actual malice.”

Contributing: John Bacon in McLean, Va.; USA TODAY; Associated Press 

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