CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. ― Jurors awarded a University of Virginia administrator $3 million Monday for her portrayal in a now-discredited Rolling Stone magazine article about the school’s handling of a gang rape a fraternity house.
The 10-member jury’s decision came after they concluded Friday that the magazine, its publisher and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely were responsible for defamation, with actual malice, of former associate dean of students Nicole Eramo in the 2014 story “A Rape on Campus.”
Eramo sued the magazine for $7.5 million, claiming it cast her as a villain who sought to discourage the woman identified only as Jackie from reporting her alleged assault to police. A police investigation found no evidence to back up Jackie’s rape claims.
Jurors heard testimony Monday about the extent to which the story has damaged Eramo’s life and reputation before they began deliberating to decide how much to award her in damages.
Eramo told jurors that after the story’s publication, she had trouble sleeping, feared for her safety and struggled with how to explain what was happening to her then-7-year-old son. One day, she crawled under her desk and contemplated suicide as she felt her world come crashing down around her, she said. Her husband testified that she told him: “I don’t know that I can live anymore.”
“I just wanted to disappear,” said Eramo, who cried throughout much of her testimony. “I didn’t know how it was going to be OK.”
She claims the article prompted the university to move her out of her job as an associate dean into a different administrative role that she doesn’t like as much because she rarely works with students. When the article was published, she was also preparing to undergo a double mastectomy for breast cancer. Eramo and her attorneys suggested that the stress she was under could have contributed to a post-surgery infection that led to a hospital stay.
