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Steve Helber/Associated Press
Rolling Stone and a writer have agreed to settle a libel suit brought by a University of Virginia administrator over a debunked article that described a gang rape at the university, the magazine announced on Tuesday.
The administrator, Nicole P. Eramo, asserted that the discredited November 2014 article defamed her and portrayed her as the “chief villain,” indifferent to sexual assault on campus. Last November, a federal jury awarded her $3 million in damages, which the magazine and the article’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, appealed.
But lawyers for Ms. Eramo filed a notice in Federal District Court in Virginia on Tuesday that she was dropping the suit. “We are delighted that this dispute is now behind us, as it allows Nicole to move on and focus on doing what she does best, which is supporting victims of sexual assault,” Libby Locke, one of her lawyers, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Wenner Media, the parent company of Rolling Stone, said: “Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Nicole Eramo have come to an amicable resolution. The terms are confidential.”
The article by Ms. Erdely, “A Rape on Campus,” amplified a national conversation about college rape when it was published, telling the story of a woman, identified only as Jackie, who said she was a victim of a gang rape at a fraternity party.
But the article was almost immediately called into question for relying on a single source, Jackie. A report by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism criticized Rolling Stone for not taking basic steps to verify Jackie’s account. An investigation by the Charlottesville, Va., police found no evidence of the rape. Rolling Stone retracted the article in 2015.
A jury in November found that Ms. Eramo was libeled by the Rolling Stone article and in comments made after publication by Ms. Erdely and the magazine.
