Relying on text messages between Jackie and one of her closest friends at the time, Eramo’s lawyers argue that Jackie not only fabricated the account of her alleged sexual assault but also created the false persona of her perpetrator, whom she repeatedly identified to her friend as Haven Monahan. Charlottesville police said that no one by that name ever attended U-Va., and extensive efforts to find the person were not successful.
Also, photographs that were texted to one of Jackie’s friends showing the alleged attacker were actually pictures depicting one of Jackie’s 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 and said he barely knew Jackie and hadn’t been to Charlottesville for many years.
“All available evidence suggests that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a figment of Jackie’s imagination,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court documents.
Ryan Duffin, who was a U-Va. freshman in 2012 when he came to Jackie’s aid that September night, said in an interview Thursday that he no longer finds much credence in Jackie’s account. She wrote in texts to him that “Haven” had stopped by to apologize to her after the attack and that the attacker had dropped out of school days later; Duffin contemporaneously questioned the account, according to the texts, after students could find no evidence there was ever such a person at U-Va.
“It makes the most logical sense to say that it was fabricated,” said Duffin, who provided hundreds of text messages for the case under subpoena. Duffin said that he read through the messages he sent to Jackie and received from “Haven Monahan” before handing the documents over.
“It was strangely emotional, but I think for all of the wrong reasons,” Duffin said. “For realizing that we probably got duped, and it’s not a good feeling to have.”
