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Police: "No Evidence" to Support Claims in Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story

Police: "No Evidence" to Support Claims in Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story
At a press conference this afternoon, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo announced that his department has suspended—but not closed—an investigation into an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, infamously detailed in a Rolling Stone article published last year. Longo said that the investigation uncovered "no evidence" to support claims made by a UVA student identified as "Jackie" in the article.
Longo was careful to emphasize that, while he found no evidence supporting Jackie's claims, he could not prove definitively that she wasn't sexually assaulted that night. He did, however, provide a long list of inconsistencies in Jackie's story, as told to the magazine: the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house where the alleged assault took place didn't have a party the night Jackie claimed, police could find no record of the man she claimed led the assault, and the layout of the frat varied from the one she provided to Rolling Stone.
Jackie also repeatedly refused to cooperate with the police investigation and did not provide a statement. Longo said that Jackie "absolutely" will not face charges for her involvement in the case.
Two weeks after it was published, Rolling Stone apologized for writer Sabrina Rubin Erderly's investigation and acknowledged "discrepancies in Jackie's account." UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan quickly suspended the Phi Kappa Psi frat following the article's publication but reinstated the chapter in January after failing to find any "substantive" evidence to support Jackie's claims.
A complete review of the Rolling Stone article is expected from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism next month.
[Image via AP]
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Could we say instead "No *Additional* Evidence" supports the allegations? Because "Jackie's" statements are "evidence," even if they are uncorroborated.
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Would probably be better to say "no admissible evidence" because all those prior statements are hearsay because the person who said them would be available to testify.
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Technically speaking, "evidence" is any witness testimony, including the testimony of the purported victim, even if that testimony is uncorroborated. And I think that is what the Chief was saying; basically, that the only evidence of an attack is "Jackie's" statement, parts of which were contradicted by other evidence, and which otherwise has not been corroborated. None of which necessarily disproves that the central narrative— the attack— took place.
My only point here is that a person saying, "I have been attacked," is "evidence" that an attack took place. That doesn't mean that you have to believe this person or that you shouldn't consider other evidence (or lack of same) in drawing any conclusions about what may or may not have happened.
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I formally declare that PointOfInformation assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, thereby starting the First World War. I also declare the moon is made of cheese, and that climate change isn't real!
So, now that I've made these allegations, I guess there's evidence to support the stated propositions, huh?
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