The Charlottesville Police Department said on Monday that it was suspending its investigation into the rape allegations depicted in the November Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” until the emergence of any new evidence.
“Having exhausted all investigative leads, our investigation concludes that there is no substantive basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article,” the police department said in a report of its findings. “Therefore, our investigation will remain suspended until such time as ‘Jackie’ wishes to cooperate with investigators or other evidence comes to our attention to warrant further investigation.”
“Jackie,” the pseudonym of a student at the University of Virginia, alleges in the Rolling Stone story that she was gang-raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on Sep. 28, 2012, after she was invited to a party there by a man identified as “Drew” in the story.
Jackie’s friends told investigators that Jackie had told them that her date on Sep. 28 was a student called Haven Monahan, whom investigators have have failed to locate. Jackie has refused to be interviewed by the investigators, and federal privacy laws have impeded their efforts to access records that may be relevant to the investigation.
“I can’t prove that something didn’t happen and there may come a point in time in which this survivor, or this complaining party, or someone else may come forward with some information that might help us move this investigation further,” Charlottesville police chief Timothy Longo said on Monday.
