The editor who oversaw Rolling Stone magazine’s erroneous story about a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia will leave the magazine, more than eight months after the story was published.

Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, will step down next month after nearly two decades at the magazine. His departure comes amid a series of defamation lawsuits against the magazine as a result of its publication in November of “A Rape on Campus,” which described an alleged gang rape that authorities determined never occurred.

The U-Va. story at first received great praise for its searing revelations, but as it quickly unraveled, it garnered widespread condemnation.

Dana had only limited involvement in the development and editing of reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s nearly 10,000-word story. But he apologized for it on Rolling Stone’s Web site after major elements of it could not be corroborated.

“A Rape on Campus” attracted worldwide attention with its shocking description of the repeated sexual assault of a U-Va. undergraduate identified in the story only as Jackie. The story said she was invited to a party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on campus in 2012 and then lured to an upstairs room, where seven fraternity brothers took turns raping her. It said school officials and Jackie’s friends were indifferent to Jackie’s plight when she reported the crime to them, using her narrative to enforce the theme that U-Va. fosters a culture of rape.

Follow-up reporting by The Washington Post and other news outlets subsequently found that virtually every major detail in the story was inaccurate. A subsequent investigation by officials at Columbia University’s journalism school found numerous flaws in the reporting, editing and fact-checking of the article. Police in Charlottesville also said they found no evidence of a crime.

Upon publication of the Columbia investigation, Dana wrote: “This report was painful reading, to me personally and to all of us at Rolling Stone. ... With its publication, we are officially retracting ‘A Rape on Campus.’... We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students.”

The Columbia report was commissioned by Rolling Stone’s co-founder and editor, Jann Wenner. He declined to discipline any members of his staff in the wake of its release in April. (excerpted from the Washington Post for educational purposes; byline Paul Fahri)

The fraternity spotlighted in a discredited Rolling Stone article describing an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia will take legal action against the magazine. "After 130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone magazine, today the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi announced plans to pursue all available legal action against the magazine," the fraternity said in a statement released Monday.

The statement from the fraternity outlines how the Rolling Stone story, viewed by millions, has affected members of Phi Kappa Psi at U.Va..\ Fraternity members were "ostracized," the fraternity house was vandalized, and national media cast the fraternity as "the iconic symbol of this troubling issue" of sexual assault, the statement says. "Clearly our fraternity and its members have been defamed, but more importantly we fear this entire episode may prompt some victims to remain in the shadows, fearful to confront their attackers," the Virginia Phi Kappa Psi chapter's president, Stephen Scipione, said in the statement. "If Rolling Stone wants to play a real role in addressing this problem, it's time to get serious."

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on Sunday night released a report on the story blasting Rolling Stone for rampant failures in reporting and editing the story, "A Rape on Campus." The magazine sought the independent examination after details of the gripping article, published in November, failed to hold up under media scrutiny. Eventually, local police also failed to find any evidence supporting the claims made by a student identified as "Jackie."

The magazine issued an apology in December. Author Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who defended her reporting when the controversy first blew up, now also has apologized.

"The report by Columbia University's School of Journalism demonstrates the reckless nature in which Rolling Stone researched and failed to verify facts in its article that erroneously accused Phi Kappa Psi of crimes its members did not commit," Scipione said in the statement. "This type of reporting serves as a sad example of a serious decline of journalistic standards." (Excerpted from USA Today for educational purposes; byline: John Bacon and Emma Hinchliffe)

This week, the University of Virginia announced that it is reinstating the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The chapter was suspended when Rolling Stone published allegations that an undergraduate named Jackie was brutally gang-raped at one of its parties.

Rolling Stone's feature has since been discredited by commentators and news organizations including The Washington Post, which rigorously debunked its reporting. The debunking is consistent with the findings of police in Charlottesville, who've concluded that while Jackie may or may not have been raped or assaulted on the night in question, she was not attacked at Phi Kappa Psi.

Fortunately, no individual members of Phi Kappa Psi were named in the false allegations. It is nevertheless worth reflecting on the collective ordeal that they suffered when it was widely believed that many of them engaged in premeditated evil.

"Due process must work for both parties—accused and complainant."Prior to these allegations, the collegians were living in their frat house. After the publication of theRolling Stone story, the young men began to receive hate emails, voicemails, and threats of violence. Angry protestors massed outside their house and shouted as if at gang-rapists. That alone must've seemed surreal and difficult to face, especially for a group of 18-to-22-year-olds. Then in the wee hours of one morning, vandals broke several frat house windows with chunks of cinder block and bottles and tagged the outside of the house. "This situation is just beginning," the perpetrators soon threatened in an anonymous letter. "We will escalate and we will provoke until justice is achieved for the countless victims of rampant sexual violence at this University and around the nation." Needless to say, the vandals achieved no justice for rape victims by victimizing these young men.

The college students living in the frat house ultimately fled to different living quarters, even as they were trying to wind up their academic work for the semester. "Our brothers are obviously concerned with their personal safety and the safety of the house,” fraternity president Stephen Scipione told the student newspaper. Meanwhile, people were shouting "rapist" at fraternity members on campus. Men in Phi Kappa Psi were presumably questioned by police in the course of their investigation. Alumni from the frat asked themselves if the institution to which they once belonged had morphed into a venue for gang rape and felt stigma for their bygone association. Parents of members were stressed and upset too, whether because they felt their sons were being unfairly maligned or worried that they'd joined a fraternity that conducts gang rapes as a matter of course.

The fact that Phi Kappa Psi's membership was falsely accused of this crime does not mean that most rape accusations are false–the opposite is true–or that there isn't a need to reduce the number of rapes and sexual assaults that happen on college campuses, even granting that some activists overstate the number of victims.

It should be possible to push for reforms that would reduce the too-high number of rape victims while advocating against rushes to judgment in individual cases. All credible rape accusations should be investigated. Before the results are in the accuser should have the private support of friends and various resources. But nothing is gained when angry mobs with no particular knowledge of a case gather en masse to shout epithets at people who weren't even accused as individuals.

In Charlottesville, young men were attacked by folks so certain about their guilt that they hurled objects through their windows and threatened their safety. Yet even now that they've been exonerated, there is little acknowledgment that the boys were wronged or sense that the people who wronged them should apologize. Why? Even if their antagonists had good intentions, the young men look to be innocent of the gang-rape accusation in the  Rolling Stone story—and that's what matters.

UVA's student newspaper is an exception. Its editorial on Phi Kappa Psi's reinstatement noted that many sexual assaults at UVA go uninvestigated or unpunished, and that there is reason to believe more protections are needed on campus. "What we can be certain of is this," the student editorial continued. "There is no justice in a case which accuses a party that did not commit the crime in question. Phi Kappa Psi was undeservingly condemned and threatened by a community which did not wait until the facts of the case were investigated to issue judgment. But due process must work for both parties--accused and complainant. The community is only made safer if the correct offender is apprehended." (Excerpted from an article by Conor Friedersdorf, in The Atlantic, for educational purposes)