Catfishing at center of Jackie's UVA gang rape story, former friend says

The University of Virginia gang rape Rolling Stone reported in a now-retracted 2014 story was rooted in a catfishing scheme, a former friend of Jackie, the purported rape victim, told The Washington Post on Friday.

Days after meeting Jackie in 2012, Ryan Duffin said he started receiving texts from a friend of Jackie's named Haven Monahan. Then, Jackie told Duffin, who she was reportedly romantically interested in, that on a date with Monahan, he forced her to perform oral sex to five upperclassmen, and he and two other friends met with her that night for support. Charlottesville police later said no one with Monahan's name had attended the university.

"It's weird to think that an entire portion of my life was consumed by these events that, looking back, looks so dumb," Duffin told the Post. "Given the way everything's turned out, I don't think that's the way I want to describe it, but I had a lot of naïveté three years ago. It's just weird all around."

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