> There is not much upside for a woman to be featured in a national "rape on campus" story. You risk becoming the subject of internet hate and death threats in

> There is not much upside for a woman to be featured in a national "rape on campus" story. You risk becoming the subject of internet hate and death threats in exchange for basically no personal gain. I disagree that there's not much potential upside: one gets fame & attention, which I think would be pretty appealing to a fabulist. > However, just because she lied about the details of the rape does not mean she was not raped, or sexually assaulted, or that something terrible did not happen to her. That's quite true. But, at a certain point one has to quit paying attention to a boy crying 'wolf!'; if someone has established himself as a poor witness and — worse — an outright liar, eventually one just dismisses his statements. > It's possible she lied about the location, the fraternity, etc., and I can see motivations for that: avoiding retaliation or attempting to remain anonymous. If you believe that she was raped or assaulted, squirrely behavior like that seems more reasonable. Squirrely behaviour also makes sense in the context of someone who's untrustworthy. I think you're affirming the consequent here: that her behaviour makes sense if she was raped is not logical evidence that she was actually raped, since there are other explanations for her behaviour. > Thus, it's very likely that Jackie lied about the specifics of the situation, but that something terrible (rape or assault) did happen to her. That's a non-sequitur. I don't think that there's any compelling evidence that anything terrible happened to her in college (what problems in her upbringing or character led her to spin tales are another story). > This interpretation is more in line with a rational persons motivations than inventing a rape story for unclear motives. Why do you assume that her behaviour was rational? Clearly it wasn't: lying to friends, inventing people, asking folks to text the invented people.