Fake attacks

November 2017 - Racial slurs - U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School

In late September, five black cadet candidates found racial slurs scrawled on message boards on their doors at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School. One candidate found the words “go home n‑‑‑‑‑‑” written outside his room, his mother posted on social media, according to the Air Force Times.

[...]

But on Tuesday, the school made a jolting announcement. The person responsible for the racist messages, the academy said, was, in fact, one of the cadet candidates who reported being targeted by them.

November 2017 - Racist graffiti - Riley County

A man who defaced his own car with racist graffiti and filed a false police report to Riley County Police Department will not face charges because “having done so would not be in the best interests of the citizens who comprise the Manhattan community.”

Dauntarius Williams, 21, of Manhattan, “was genuinely remorseful and expressed sincere regret” of the negative media attention received as a result of his actions, Riley County Police Department said in a Nov. 6 release.

November 2014 - Jackie Coakley - "A Rape on Campus" - University of Virginia

Rolling Stone magazine retracted its article about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity after the release of a report on Sunday that concluded the widely discredited piece was the result of failures at every stage of the process.

The report, published by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and commissioned by Rolling Stone, said the magazine failed to engage in “basic, even routine journalistic practice” to verify details of the ordeal that the magazine’s source, identified only as Jackie, described to the article’s author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Rolling Stone has agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by the University of Virginia fraternity at the center of a discredited article about an alleged gang rape, effectively closing the door on a pivotal and damaging chapter in the magazine’s history.

Under the terms of the settlement, the magazine agreed to pay the Virginia Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity $1.65 million. The fraternity had originally sought a trial by jury and $25 million in damages.

August 2012 - Charlie Rogers - Homophobia - Omaha

Three masked men allegedly bound Rogers and carved homophobic slurs into her skin Sunday, Lincoln police said. The incident has been classified as a hate crime because derogatory terms for lesbians were used, said Officer Katie Flood, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Police Department.

But the Lincoln Police Department said Tuesday that "the physical evidence conflicted with Charlie Rogers' version of events" and that "extensive investigation revealed numerous inconsistencies."

Rogers was arrested Tuesday, police said.

Her attorney, Brett McArthur, told CNN Tuesday night that Rogers had agreed as part of an arrangement to turn herself in, in exchange for a personal recognizance bond.