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| Photo by Robbie Lawrence for The New Yorker |
for BigTrial.net
The New Yorker has just weighed in on the Mackenzie Fierceton case, and the result is a public relations disaster for UPenn.
The headline of the story published today and written by Rachel Aviv: "How An Ivy League School Turned Against A Student."
The subhead: "Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rohdes Scholarship. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying."
On Dec. 21st, Big Trial was the first to break the story about an explosive lawsuit filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court that charged that top officials at the University of Pennsylvania conspired with journalists at The Philadelphia Inquirer to smear a Penn grad student who had just won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Mackenzie Fierceton claimed that Penn officials targeted the grad student for retaliation after she became a key witness in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the university.
The New Yorker story breaks new ground by publishing excerpts from Fierceton's diary that detail allegations of abuse against her mother, a prominent doctor in St. Louis, as well as Fierceton's accusations of sexual abuse against the mother's boyfriend, a weightlifting champ from Missouri.
In the The New Yorker story, the Inquirer gets a pass, but the magazine piles up on Penn. According to The New Yorker, as part of its crusade against Fierceton, a foster child living in poverty, Penn sunk so low as to threaten the student with a $4,000 fine.
In the winter of her sophomore year of high school, Mackenzie Morrison sat in her bedroom closet and began a new diary. Using her phone to light the pages, she listed the “pros of telling”: “no more physical/emotional attacks,” “I get out of this dangerous house,” “the truth is finally out, I don’t have to lie or cover things up.” Under “cons of telling,” she wrote, “damaging mom’s life,” “could go into foster care,” “basically I would probably lose everything.” After she finished, she loosened the screws of a vent panel on the wall outside her closet and slipped the notebook behind it.
The magazine interviews parents of Fierceton's high school friends who wondered why Fierceton was always walking around with bruises and black eyes. The New Yorker also quotes Fierceton as testifying in court "that her mother had pushed her down the stairs and that, after she had fallen, 'my mom was on top of me and she was striking me in the face.'"
The incident resulted in the mother's arrest and her daughter being placed in foster care. When a Penn official asked Fierceton what happened during the incident, the magazine quotes Fierceton as saying, “My mom tried to kill me.”
Here's how the New Yorker describes alleged abuse by the mother's boyfriend, and Mom's reaction when her daughter told her what had happened:
[Mackenzie] had fallen asleep watching a movie in her mom’s bed and woke up to [the boyfriend] on top of her, “feeling my boobs, running his hand around my inner thighs & exploring other places.” She got out from under him, ran into her own room, and eventually called her mother, who wasn’t home, and related what had happened. “She just bursts out laughing,” Mackenzie wrote. Her mother told her that it was an accident, saying, “I’m flattered that he got me mixed up with my 15-year-old daughter.”
The irony of the situation: In their crusade to get Fierceton to voluntarily give up her Rhodes scholarship because she had allegedly lied in her application, Penn relied on information obtained from Fierceton's mother and boyfriend to discredit her.
The New Yorker quotes one of Fierceton's academic advisors as Penn as saying, “I cannot avoid the sense that Mackenzie is being faulted for not having suffered enough. She was a foster child, but not for long enough. She is poor, but she has not been poor for long enough. She was abused, but there is not enough blood.”
In the lawsuit filed on behalf of Fierceton by attorney Dion Rassias of The Beasley Firm, Fierceton's lawyer claimed that as part of the conspiracy to smear and retaliate against Fierceton, Louisa Shepard, Penn's news officer, leaked "false and baseless accusations" against Fierceton to her husband, Gabriel Escobar, editor and senior vice president of the Inquirer, as well as "presently unnamed co-conspirators at The Philadelphia Inquirer."
As a result of what the lawsuit describes as "orchestrated pillow talk" between Shepard and Escobar, the "conflict-laden editor" subsequently assigned Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Wendy Ruderman to conduct a year-long investigation of Fierceton, the purpose of which was to "dig up any dirt possible."
The lawsuit claims that during her investigation, Ruderman interviewed "anonymous unreliable sources" that included Fierceton's biological mother.
In response, Penn filed an 80-page answer to Rassias's complaint that was filled with denials and more attacks on Fierceton.
In the legal battle, Penn lost a bid to have the case transferred from Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to Commerce Court, where business disputes are often handled outside of the public eye, and without a jury trial. In Common Pleas Court, where the case remains Fierceton's lawyer is demanding a jury trial.
Penn's public response to the Fierceton lawsuit has been stonewalling.
The Inquirer is doing the same thing as Escobar, the newspaper's top editor, and Ruderman, who has left the paper, have not responded to requests for comment.