Ryan Duffin was a freshman at the University of Virginia when he met a student named Jackie.
Both teenagers were new to campus in September 2012, and the pair quickly became friends through a shared appreciation of alternative rock bands such as Coheed and Cambria and the Silversun Pickups. Early on, Duffin sensed that Jackie was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with him. Duffin valued her friendship but politely rebuffed Jackies advances for more.
Just days after he met her, Duffin said, he was goaded into a text message conversation with a U-Va. junior named Haven Monahan, whom Jackie said she knew from a chemistry class.
What followed was what lawyers representing U-Va. associate dean Nicole Eramo described in new court documents as an elaborate scheme to win him over a practice known as catfishing that morphed into a sensational claim of gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity and a Rolling Stone story that rocked the U-Va. campus and shocked the nation.
A Charlottesville Police investigation later determined that no one named Haven Monahan had ever attended U-Va., and extensive efforts to find the person were not successful. Photographs that were texted to Duffin that were purported to be of Monahan were actually pictures depicting one of Jackies high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a student at a university in another state, confirmed to The Post that the photographs were of him.
