Suitemate Backs UVA Victim’s Claims, School President Announces Elements of Action Plan

Alessandro Drago/iStock/Thinkstock(CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.) — A former suitemate of the student at the center of a now questioned Rolling Stone magazine story about sexual assaults at the University of Virginia said her friend’s personality noticeably darkened after the alleged attack.

The self-described suitemate, who ABC News has chosen not to identify, said in a letter to a student newspaper that the woman called Jackie in the Rolling Stone article began the fall 2012 semester, “bright, happy and bubbly.” Eventually, she wrote, Jackie would stay curled up in bed as her alarm rang rather than going to class. She added that Jackie spent her days watching increasingly bleak TV programming before abruptly departing for her family home late in 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,” the former suitemate wrote. “Something terrible happened to Jackie at the hands of several men who have yet to receive any repercussions.”

Rolling Stone on Sunday clarified its earlier statement that said it regretted agreeing not to contact Jackie’s alleged assailants, removing a line that said it had come, “to the conclusion that our trust in her [Jackie] was misplaced.”

The revised statement from managing editor Will Dana instead said, “These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.”

Jackie has hired an attorney after details of her story about being gang raped by seven men at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party in September 2012 were questioned, Washington Post reporter T. Rees Shapiro told ABC News.

ABC News has reached out to the attorney she reportedly hired but has not received a reply.

“If Jackie allegedly lied and that perpetrator suffered injury as a result, she could be sued for damages,” said Mark Eiglarsh, a criminal defense attorney in Miami, Florida.

Alternatively, said Eiglarsh, “If what Rolling Stone wrote about her was deemed false and could be proven to be false, and she suffered damages as a result, she could potentially sue Rolling Stone.”

Psi Kappa Phi — the fraternity where Jackie said the rape took place — said in a statement that no member of the fraternity worked as a lifeguard in the fall semester of 2012, as Jackie had claimed in the Rolling Stone story. It added that it did not have a date function or social event on the last weekend in September, though the article never specified the exact weekend when the alleged attack occurred.

The fraternity also contested the article’s assertion that the alleged gang rape was part of a pledging task for prospective members. Psi Kappa Phi said that its pledging activities do not occur in the fall semester.

“Moreover, no ritualized sexual assault is part of our pledging or initiation process,” according to the statement. “This notion is vile, and we vehemently refute this claim.”

Shapiro told ABC News that Jackie’s statements to him contradicted Rolling Stone‘s reporting.

“She said that maybe the party wasn’t at Phi [Kappa] Psi and then she told me that maybe the person that attacked her wasn’t a member of the fraternity at all,” he said.

All campus fraternities were suspended after the story was released.

“The university remains first and foremost concerned with the care and support of our students and, especially, any survivor of sexual assault,” UVA President Theresa Sullivan said in a statement Friday after Rolling Stone‘s original apology.

In a statement Monday, the school said it will reinstate Greek activities on Jan. 9, under an agreement that aims to enhance the safety of members and guests.

Also on Monday, school President Teresa Sullivan announced the key elements of an action plan for safety.

 “The Rolling Stone article, in my opinion, unfairly maligned a number of dedicated professionals who work for the University,” she wrote in what is the most detailed account given by Sullivan so far. “I have noted in particular that our students immediately reached out to our Student Affairs staff with expressions of support. I can vouch for the fact that this staff has worked tirelessly to provide for the welfare of all of our students.”

At the same time, Sullivan said, “Even though the facts in the Rolling Stone story are in dispute, sexual misconduct does occur and it has no place at our University. We will continue our efforts to improve our policies and practices, to support survivors with counseling and in other ways, and to rigorously examine our culture and climate. Survivors will continue to have support through our student life and counseling professionals. I have named an Ad Hoc Group on Campus Climate and Culture; this group consists of two Board of Visitors members, one dean, four students, two faculty members, two alumni, and two parents. We will be working with our Board to examine what changes might be beneficial.”

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