Experts on PTSD say that rape victims frequently block out parts of the trauma and get details wrong, but the men's rights crowd are triumphantly waving the UVA story as proof that women hate men, the media hates men, and there's a vast conspiracy of campus feminists to manufacture stories to support that goal. Via TPM:
A University of Virginia student who lived with Jackie, the subject of a disputed Rolling Stone article about the school's response to sexual assault, published a defense of the alleged rape victim Sunday night in the campus newspaper.
Emily Clark, who was Jackie's suitemate when she was allegedly gang-raped at UVA's chapter of Phi Kappa Psi in 2012, wrote in the Cavalier Daily that she "wholeheartedly" believes Jackie experienced a traumatizing sexual assault.
"Sometime that year I remember her letting it slip to me that she had had a terrible experience at a party," Clark wrote. "I remember her telling me that multiple men had assaulted her at this party. She didn’t say anything more. It seemed that was all she’d allow herself to say."
[...] Clark couldn't offer such specific details about the alleged assault's immediate aftermath, but she described in detail Jackie's withdrawal into severe depression by December of 2012.
"While I cannot say what happened that night, and I cannot prove the validity of every tiny aspect of her story to you, I can tell you that this story is not a hoax, a lie or a scheme," Clark wrote. "Something terrible happened to Jackie at the hands of several men who have yet to receive any repercussions."
