Rape allegations ventilated in a retracted Rolling Stone article, later proven to be false, may have undermined future efforts to expose sexual assaults, the magazine has admitted.

The article drew criticism within days of its publication last year and Rolling Stone asked for Columbia University dean of Journalism Steve Coll to review its journalistic practices in producing the story.

A young woman, Jackie, alleged she had been “gang-raped” at a fraternity party in September 2012 at the University of Virginia.

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Her account of the story appeared in the magazine’s December 2014 in a piece titled ‘A Rape on Campus‘ by journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

The article was printed after being fact-checked, but Jackie’s account raised doubts.

The article as it originally appeared in the December 2014 issue.

Charlottesville, Virginia Police said there was “no substantive basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article”.

After widespread criticism and concern, the magazine was forced to retract the piece, as well as publishing a condensed version of a report into the incident in its April issue.

“This report was painful reading, to me personally and to all of us at Rolling Stone,” managing editor Will Dana wrote in an article titled ‘What Went Wrong?’.

“It is also, in its own way, a fascinating document ­— a piece of journalism, as Coll describes it, about a failure of journalism. With its publication, we are officially retracting ‘A Rape on Campus.’ We are also committing ourselves to a series of recommendations about journalistic practices that are spelled out in the report.”

“Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honoured too many of her requests in our reporting,” Rolling Stone section editor Sean Woods said.

“We should have been much tougher, and in not doing that, we maybe did her a disservice.”

“The magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations,” Rolling Stone reported, adding that an analysis of rape allegations showed two to eight per cent of rape reports are false.