In 2007, a student at Princeton University named Francisco Nava reported a stunning assault. Nava claimed that he had been attacked by two men wearing black clothes and ski caps who had slammed his head into a wall and beat him with a bottle of Orangina. He vividly described the attack: “Their breath was so distinctive; if I could only smell everybody’s breath, I would be able to pick them out.”
The alleged attack was preceded by a series of threats to Nava and to other members of a group called the Anscombe Society, in which he had taken on an increasingly prominent role. The society, named for the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, promotes the idea that sex’s appropriate context is marriage between a man and woman. This was and is a controversial view, and Nava claimed that he had been attacked for holding it.
News of the attack spread immediately among my fellow members of the Anscombe Society. One of the officers who had received threats, a close friend, had me accompany him everywhere he went that evening. National news outlets began to notice the story, as did right-leaning sites that saw in it a vivid dramatization of liberal intolerance. As my classmate Sherif Girgis observed: “We saw conservative bloggers start to capitalize on this, saying, ‘Look at the politically motivated indifference.’”
For members of the society, the temptation was to jump on the story as a way to advance a cause they knew to be good. And if it turned out to be partial or false? Well, in that case they had to worry about their reputations, the organization they had worked very hard to build, and the cause they sought to advance.
They didn’t take the bait. Leaders of the society, guided by faculty advisor Robert P. George, declined to hold a proposed candlelight vigil or issue a statement capitalizing on the story. They waited to verify the story. It was, of course, a hoax. Nava had been his own attacker and the origin of threats to other students. He left the school and, last I heard, had changed his name.
We do not yet have grounds to conclude that Jackie, the woman at the center of the UVA rape controversy, made up her story out of whole cloth. But as it frays, it’s worth asking what went wrong. The blame, as I see it, lies squarely with reporter Sabrina Erdley and Rolling Stone. They failed properly to report or fact-check a story in which personal and institutional reputations were at stake—not least those of sexual-assault support groups like UVA’s Take Back the Night and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition. By running with an unsubstantiated story, Rolling Stone put urgent work at risk.
The lesson UVA teaches is the same one I learned at Princeton. The media’s interest is not ultimately in advancing your issue and safeguarding your reputation but in milking your story for outrage and clicks. Student activists need to be wary, not so much of hoaxers in their midst as of hucksters in the media.
From what I can tell, sexual assault advocates at UVA—people like Emily Renda—have been notably cautious about this story. For this they deserve great credit and the amplification of their voices. Efforts for reform at UVA should continue in the humble hope that something good can be brought out of evil—be it assault, slander, or both.
Matthew Schmitz is deputy editor of First Things.
