Who is Emily Renda and why is she at the center of the rape hoax at UVA?

Stacy McCain has written an important article A Coven of Liars: Sabrina Rubin Erdley, Emily Renda and Catherine Lhamon that starts to connect a few of the dots that may help explain the why and wherefore of the UVA Rape Hoax.  How did this thing get started, who facilitated it and who is even now trying to cover their tracks?  Here are three dots:

Left to right: Sabrina Rubin Erdley, Emily Renda, Catherine Lhamon

The UVA rape hoax did not suddenly appear - ex nihilo - from the fevered fingers of Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She was looking for a story that would support her narrative of a campus "Rape Culture" and was pointed to "Jackie" by Emily Renda.

And who is Emily Renda?

She is a self described "rape survivor" who appeared before congress with Catherine Lhamon.  But what evidence for that do we have? There is no evidence she filed a complaint with the university or the police. In fact, she's like "Jackie" except her story is less lurid.

Via K.C. Johnson:

“Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual-assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia.” So opens the Columbia Journalism School’s review of Rolling Stone’s retracted story about the University of Virginia. The piece confirms that it was Renda who informed Erdely about Jackie, the fabulist whose tale became the spine of the Rolling Stone article. Though the CJR labels Renda a “rape survivor,” she appears never to have filed a complaint with the university, much less with the police.

She testified before congress, claiming to have been raped and then recounted the story of "Jackie" who she identified as "Jenna" in her testimony. We already know that the story about "Jenna/Jackie" was false. So what reason do we have to believe that she was actually raped, as opposed to making up a story to give her "rape survivor authority?"

As for Jackie with Rolling Stone, for the CJR, Renda’s word about her status as a victim of crime is enough....

What Johnson is pointing out here is the circular logic of self-validating authority that the “rape survivor” Emily Renda presents as the crucial credential of her own expertise. Neither Rolling Stone nor the New York Times would dare question Renda’s authority, so that when Renda vouched for Jackie, this was like the Certified Rape Survivor Seal of Approval as far as Erdely and Rolling Stone were concerned. When it turned out Jackie was a liar, however, the New York Times cited Renda to criticize Erdely’s reporting. Yet it seems quite likely that Erdely never would have thought to make the University of Virginia the focus of her story, had it not been for Emily Renda’s Senate testimony about “Jenna”/Jackie getting gang-raped at a frat house.

Read the whole thing and you begin to question if the Obama administration, via Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights may not be using the feminist movement to create the whole "campus rape epidemic" as a political tool.

[UVA Dean of Students] Groves wrote that he was “one of the professionals vilified by name” in Erdely’s article.  He claimed that Erdely completely mischaracterized remarks he made at a Sept. 2014 meeting with university trustees about sexual assault and that Lhamon disparaged him with comments she made to Erdely. .

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McCain summarizes:

Lhamon, Renda and Erdely are part of a coven of liars who have conspired to fabricate a crime that never happened in order to justify this ongoing “rape epidemic” hysteria. This dishonest campaign of purposeful falsehood is being orchestrated directly from the White House as part of a systematic effort to create regulations that deprive college students of their due-process rights.

Read the whole thing and then start to question what you think you know about the truth; whether anything is quite what it seems.