It’s easy to forget the impact that the false UVA gang rape story had on academic culture but people will be writing about it for years.

Cathy Young writes at Real Clear Politics.

The UVA Case and Rape-Hoax Denial

Four months after Rolling Stone magazine published a shocking—and soon discredited—account of a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia, the Charlottesville police department has released the results of its investigation into the alleged assault. It comes as no surprise that “no substantive basis” was found for the claim by a student known as “Jackie” that she was raped by seven men at a fraternity party as a UVA freshman in September 2012. What’s striking is to what lengths both the police and many in the news media have gone to tiptoe around the obvious fact that the tale was a hoax by a serial liar. This dance of denial suggests that in the current ideological climate, it is nearly impossible to declare any allegation of rape to be definitely false.

At the press conference, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo stressed that the department’s conclusion “doesn’t mean something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie” and that the investigation is not closed but only suspended until new evidence emerges.

It is, of course, nearly impossible to prove a negative. Short of a surveillance tape documenting Jackie’s every movement, one cannot know for certain that she was never sexually assaulted at UVA. But the evidence against her is damning. It’s not simply that there was no party at Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity named by Jackie, anywhere near the time when she said she was attacked. It’s not simply that her account changed from forced oral sex to vaginal rape and from five assailants to seven, or that her friends saw no sign of her injuries after the alleged assault. What clinches the case is the overwhelming proof that “Drew,” Jackie’s date who supposedly orchestrated her rape, was Jackie’s own invention.