Is it a gigantic hoax?
There seems to be some legitimate reason for skepticism. To me, it has the ring of a lot of the “satanic cult” stories, that the FBI never managed to actually confirm.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Jonah Goldberg is skeptical. And Megan McArdle says that if the story is true, the police should be involved.
Yes.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
Tom Maguire has more thoughts (and skepticism).
It MUST be true, because the Duke Lacrosse narrative fell apart, and narrative abhors a vacuum.
As others have noted in the linked articles, I have a problem with the whole “lying on my back for 3 hours in broken glass” thing. Not to mention that (apparently) no one else got cut; you’d think a would-be rapist in a pitch-black room would have bumped into some glass.
Forget questions as to why she didn’t call the police, or (apparently) not go to an emergency room. I want to know why she didn’t bleed out after three hours of lying in broken glass. Given that she was being gang-raped, the weight of two bodies must have driven at least some fragments pretty deep.
I work in restaurants, and I know even a small cut can bleed pretty badly.
Crime(s) were committed. False allegations are a crime. Rape is a crime. An institution that fails to take action is often a crime.
Because the institution may be criminally liable the police must be involved. The institution has a severe conflict of interests. Whatever the truth is, punishment should follow.
At least in the Ferguson case, people are arguing over the evidence. Here they just read a magazine article and now they seem to know everything they need to know about the case.
I just saw a comment from someone who was “furious at the alleged rapists”, which summed it up pretty well for me.