ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge in Alexandria says he’s not the proper person to decide whether the woman at the center of the discredited Rolling Stone expose about a culture of rape at the University of Virginia should be forced to turn over her correspondence with a reporter.
In a hearing in the defamation lawsuit filed by University of Virginia dean Nicole Eramo, Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis said the judge hearing the preponderance of the arguments in Eramo’s suit is better suited to rule whether “Jackie” should be required to provide her emails and notes to Eramo’s lawyers and other lawyers in the various suits related to the magazine’s story.
“I have absolutely no clue about what this case is about, besides being a defamation case, outside what I read in the newspaper,” Davis said.
Eramo’s suit was initially filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court and then was transferred to the Western District of Virginia federal court, also in Charlottesville.
“Why would the judge in Charlottesville not be the best judge,” said Davis. “He has underlying knowledge of the facts in the case.”
Eramo says her reputation was severely injured by allegations in the Rolling Stone article that she ignored and tried to cover up Jackie’s report that she’d been brutally raped by members of a campus fraternity.
Currently, two other lawsuits have been filed against the magazine and the reporter, Sabrina Erdely.
Lawyers for “Jackie,” the name the magazine used for the victim in its story, have argued against turning over the documents because she is not being sued.
In court filings, Eramo’s attorney Thomas Clare has argued “Jackie” should not be shielded by laws protecting sexual assault victims because Charlottesville police have said there is no evidence supporting the attack described in the Rolling Stone article.
In a recent filing, Clare describes “Jackie” as “a serial fabulist who Rolling Stone knew or should have known was not a reliable source on which to base its defamatory statements.”
As a result of Davis’s ruling to transfer the matter to a federal judge in Charlottesville, he did not hear arguments on the merits of whether “Jackie” should be required to provide the correspondence.
