After announcing on Monday that there was no evidence a gang rape described in Rolling Stone magazine had actually occurred at a University of Virginia fraternity, a local police chief urged colleges to involve the police as quickly as possible when someone complains of a sexual assault.
While the case involving a student the magazine identified as "Jackie" has been suspended for lack of evidence, "that doesn’t mean that something terrible did not happen" to her that night in September 2012, Timothy J. Longo, chief of police in Charlottesville, Va., said during a news conference.
"We are just not able to gather sufficient facts to conclude what that something may have been."
The accuser in the case declined to cooperate with the police, even after the magazine article, in November, described a brutal assault by seven men in an upstairs room at Phi Kappa Psi, Chief Longo said.
The article has since been widely discredited, and the magazineapologized after it said it had found "discrepancies" in the student’s account.
Chief Longo said that the accuser has the right to decline to answer questions in an investigation, but he said that makes it difficult to track down what, if anything, actually happened that night.
"Having police involvement early in these investigations is extremely important," he said.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Police-Find-No-Evidence-to/228717