The Slatest

UVA Frat in Discredited Rolling Stone Rape Story Files $25 Million Defamation Suit

The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on the University of Virginia campus on December 6, 2014 in Charlottesville, Virginia.  

Photo by Jay Paul/Getty Images

The inevitable legal fallout from Rolling Stone’s discredited story recounting a horrific gang rape at a fraternity house at the University of Virginia continued on Monday as the Virginia chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi filed a defamation suit against the magazine, its publisher, and the author of the Nov. 2014 story “A Rape on Campus,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The complaint seeks more than $25 million in damages.

“The fraternity chapter and its student and alumni members suffered extreme damage to their reputations in the aftermath of the article’s publication and continue to suffer despite the ultimate unraveling of the story,” the Phi Kappa Psi chapter said in a statement Monday. “The article also subjected the student members and their families to danger and immense stress while jeopardizing the future existence of the chapter.”

Three members of the fraternity, who graduated in 2015, filed a federal defamation suit against Rolling Stone earlier this year. A UVA associate dean of students, Nicole Eramo, has also taken legal action filing a $7.8 million defamation suit, alleging the story portrayed Eramo as a mastermind of the university’s efforts to bury sexual assault claims made by students.