Suitemate: UVA Victim's Story 'Not a Hoax, a Lie or a Scheme'
Says in letter to student newspaper that alleged victim changed after incident.
— -- A former suitemate of the student at the center of a 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.
Here is the suitemate's letter to The Cavalier Daily student newspaper, reprinted without her name but with her permission:
I was Jackie’s suitemate first year. I am writing to you in regards to Rolling Stone's recent statement of "misplaced trust" in Jackie. I feel this statement is backwards, as it seems it was Jackie who misplaced her trust in Rolling Stone.
I fully support Jackie, and I believe wholeheartedly that she went through a traumatizing sexual assault. I remember my first semester here, and I remember Jackie's. Jackie came to UVA bright, happy and bubbly. She was kind, funny, outgoing, friendly, and a pleasant person to be around. That all notably changed by December 2012, and I wasn't the only one who noticed. Our suite bonded that first semester and talked many times about the new troubles we were facing in college. Jackie never mentioned anything about her assault to us until much later. But I, as well as others, noticed Jackie becoming more and more withdrawn and depressed.
"I remember her alarm going off every morning. I always assumed she had gone to class and forgot to turn off her later alarms. Being the lazy freshman I was, I tended to roll over in bed and pay no mind to it, hoping somebody else would turn it off, and remind Jackie about it once she got back from class. If I had known Jackie wasn't going to class, that she was curled up in bed without the will to turn off the alarm, things would have been much different. I remember second semester, she shared a Netflix account with me and I noticed how much TV she was watching -- hours and hours of shows that seemed to get darker and darker as time went on. I wondered how she had time, with homework and school, and I wondered if she was okay. I didn't ask. I wish I had.
"In December 2012, Jackie broke down. All of a sudden she was going home and none of us knew why. It was right before finals, and I couldn't believe she was leaving. She was distraught, and only said she needed to go home. Her teachers had given her allowance to take her finals over break. At that point, we knew something big had happened. I didn't know until this year with the publication of Rolling Stone’s article how bad that time was for her.
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