--Rudy Bond in his role as the Judge addressing the jury in the movie 12 Angry Men (1957).[1]
Billionaire sex-trafficking criminal Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in New Jersey on July 7, 2019. In 2008 he had faced similar charges in Florida that could have put him in prison for life, but thanks to a shameful non-prosecution agreement (NPA) facilitated by US attorney Alexander Acosta (subsequently US secretary of labor under Trump), Epstein managed to avoid full prosecution and ended up serving just 13 months in prison under extraordinary privileged conditions [2] #NPA
Excerpts of emails and letters disclosed in 2015 revealed a covert negotiation between Epstein's lawyers and the Government to keep the non-prosecution agreement secret from the victims and the general public. This secrecy was a violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act that prevented the victims from discussing theterms of the agreement or taking action to prevent it. The agreement was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in February 2019, but was not invalidated by the Department of Justice.[3]
Victims were abused not only by Jeffrey Epstein, but also by the Government.
Epstein's high-profile social circle included American and foreignpoliticians, business magnates, scientists, academics, celebrities, and even a member of the royalty. Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Bill Gates, Professor Lawrence Krauss, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, Britain’s Prince Andrew, to name a few.[4]
It would not be an exaggeration to say that among the elite, scores of people either knew Epstein or were connected to him to some extent.
He built ties with academic circles by hosting science conferences—typically in his property in the US Virgin Islands—that were attended by some of the most prominent scientists in the country, and by donating large amounts of money for scientific research to elite schools like Harvard University and MIT. Both MIT and Harvard accepted gifts even after Epstein's 2008 conviction.[5]
Two events in August 2019 exploded into a scandal at MIT:
The acknowledgement by MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito that the laboratory had surreptitiously accepted Epstein's post-conviction donations.[6] #mit-scandal
MIT commissioned an investigation, the results of which were published on January 10, 2020. The report shows that Epstein had sponsored, through his charitable foundations, the projects of several professors at the Media Lab, starting with a donation to Marvin Minsky's artificial intelligence project in September 12, 2002—four years before Epstein was first charged with sex crimes. Earlier that same year, on April 14-16, Minsky and some of his colleagues had held an AI symposium in the US Virgin Islands, and a second one took place in December 2011, both sponsored by Epstein.[7]
The investigation found no evidence of further donations from Epstein to support Minsky's work.[8] Professor Minsky died in 2016.
The unsealing of a deposition by one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Giuffre née Roberts (born August 9th, 1983), in which she testified, among many other things, that Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell had “directed” her to have sex with MIT Media Lab professor Marvin Minsky and other men.
The other men (including Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz) are mentioned in all of the suits in the case and by multiple testimonies, with clear statements that they committed sexual abuse, complete with specific details of the circumstances.[9] Marvin Minsky's name, on the other hand, appears only once in the claims, in terms that raise doubts about whether Minsky actually had any sexual contact with the victim. The only certain statement is that the victim was “directed” to have sex with Minsky. #giuffre-deposition
From Virginia Giuffre's deposition on May 3rd, 2016. Unsealed on August 9, 2019.
According to the flight logs and a deposition by pilot David Rodgers, Marvin Minsky appears to have flown for the first time on one of Epstein's planes on March 29, 2001, from Teterboro (NJ) to Santa Fe (N. Mex.), flight 1479. Virginia Roberts—aged 17 years, 7 months and 20 days old—was on that flight.
Flight logs in the case Epstein vs Edwards, et al. Unsealed on August 9, 2019.
From David Rogers' deposition on June 3rd, 2016. Unsealed on August 9, 2019.
According to the documents and the various affidavits, it is clear that Virginia Roberts and other victims were being forced into a scheme of sexual exploitation. However, it's unclear whether any sexual encounters actually took place with Minsky.
Physicist and science fiction author Greg Benford reported that he was present when Virginia Roberts approached Minsky: If Marvin had done it, she would say so. I know. I was there. Minsky turned her down. Told me about it. She saw us talking and didn’t approach me.
[10]
#benford
Benford is probably referring to the conference held in the US Virgin Islands in April 2002, when Virginia was 18. #eighteen
Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, has said: We were always together. We didn’t stay at his house or anything.
[11]
Did Marvin Minksy have sex with Virginia Roberts? As of the date of publication of this article, there is no confirmation of whether Minsky actually had sex with Virginia or any of Epstein's victims. There are no further affidavits to shed light on the matter, and the fact that the various suits were privately settled out of court does not enable the general public to definitively know what happened.
It is therefore sensible to presume there is reasonable doubt, to refrain from passing judgement based on passion rather than reason.
For those interested in more details, the Internet Archive keeps a complete set of documents, including Epstein's audio recordings.
Virginia Roberts' 18th birthday was in August 2001. Any sexual activity she might have had with older people before that date would be called “rape” according to law. There are suggestions that age of consent in the US Virgin Islands was 16 at that time, to be later raised to 18, but we have found no evidence. However, whether or not that's true is hardly relevant. We agree with Stallman that it's not the law to determine what is moral and what is not. She and the other victims were being trafficked and coerced, that is what makes it immoral, whatever the age and whatever the jurisdiction.
We cannot trust the law to tell us what is moral or immoral. Slavery has been perfectly legal for centuries in the United States and other parts of the world. The United States of America has made racial segregation legal for decades.
For more information, see Age of Consent in the United States; Marriage Age in the United States (we strongly disagree with laws allowing the marriage of children); age of consent in the US is 16 in 34 States at the time of writing, April 6, 2021.
Stallman never met Epstein and never received any gifts from him.
Richard Stallman was never part of the MIT Media Lab involved in the scandal, but was instead part of CSAIL, a different entity. How, then, did Stallman know Minsky? When Stallman began working at the Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, Minsky was there as its co-founder and head. Stallman quit his job in 1984. When Stallman was assigned an office at the AI Lab as a visiting scientist around 1991, Minsky was no longer there, he had joined the Media Lab in 1989. There was little if any interaction between Stallman and Minsky. In 2003, the AI Lab was merged with the Laboratory of Computer Science, giving birth to the current Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). #not-medialab
In April 2019, when Stallman learned about Epstein in the news, his crimes, and the Non-Prosecution Agreement, he stated that the plea deal was illegal and saw it as grounds for a longer prison term.
True to his fixation on the correct choice of words, Stallman observes that post-pubertal people aren't children, and he points out that the expression “sex offender” minimizes Epstein's crimes, suggesting the term “serial rapist” instead.
Richard Stallman on Epstein (Archived) (emphasis added): #serial-rapist-article
25 April 2019 (Plea deal for Epstein)
(Now) Labor Secretary Acosta's plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein was not only extremely lenient, it was so lenient that it was illegal. [Archived]
I wonder whether this makes it possible to resentence him to a longer prison term.
I disagree with some of what the article says about Epstein. Epstein is not, apparently, a pedophile, since the people he raped seem to have all been postpuberal.
By contrast, calling him a “sex offender” tends to minimize his crimes, since it groups him with people who committed a spectrum of acts of varying levels of gravity. Some of them were not crimes. Some of these people didn't actually do anything to anyone.
I think the right term for a person such as Epstein is “serial rapist”.
Indeed, Stallman's objection to framing Epstein as a mere “sex offender” is correct, so much so that Epstein himself used the flawed terminology to downplay the seriousness of his crimes:
I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an “offender.” It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.
—Jeffrey Epstein.[12]
A powerful man subjecting minors to sexual exploitation, government officials aiding the perpetrator to escape prosecution while hiding this outcome from the victims, prestigious institutions accepting money from the criminal, are all injustices that added up to utter frustration, anger and pain among survivors, advocates of the #MeToo campaign, and every community that fights for women's rights and against sexism.
A protest was organized at MIT against the institution's involvement with Epstein. On September 10, 2019, an email announcing the protest was sent to the CSAIL mailing list.
It was in this atmosphere of shock and anger that Richard Stallman responded to that email. For more details, continue onward.
--Author Unknown.
A protest[13] was organized at MIT against the institution's involvement with sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. The announcement of the protest, sent to the CSAIL mailing list on September 10, 2019, triggered a contentious discussion over the description of Marvin Minsky as accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims.
We have compiled a PDF containing the conversation chain in a way that is clear and easy to read, following the chronological order as they were sent. We also replaced the redacted names of people with alphabetic letters, to distinguish different speakers and make direct exchanges more clear. Re-compiling was necessary because the PDF published by Vice[14] back in 2019 has three problems: 1) it's missing some important emails; 2) the emails are listed in reverse chronological order, which makes it difficult to follow;3) they include irrelevant text that only adds noise and distracts, such as footers and re-quotes. However, we also provide a copy of the PDF published by Vice for those interested.
We're presenting the email trail here very carefully so that people can see for themselves. We believe the email trail answers some pertinent questions:
The email numbers and letters used below in place of names (i.e., “Poster A”) come from the PDF compiled by us.
Here's the relevant snippet from the announcement (extracted from Email #1 by Poster A in the chain):
[...] deceased AI “pioneer” Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting
one of Epstein’s victims [2]), [...]
The use of inverted commas around the word “pioneer” suggests it was written under a strong emotional state, otherwise it's unreasonable to think that whatever wrong Minsky might have done is grounds to refute the undeniable fact that he was actually a pioneer in his field. It was probably this emotional strain that also led to describing his alleged misconduct as an “assault.” In fact, the cited newspaper article never uses that word.
Richard Stallman is known for his obsession with correct terminology. Even though it was out of place in that context, he couldn't suppress his nature and did as he always does whenever he sees a word is being misused: he pointed it out. As someone who is committed to justice, he also spoke up against what he saw as the unfair treatment of a dead man he had known in his early days at the AI Lab. A dear professor, a mentor. A familiar feeling to many is the pain of seeing a dear person being attacked.
It was in this atmosphere filled with pain and affliction that he replied (emphasis added):
Email #2 by Richard Stallman#email2
The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:
> deceased AI “pioneer” Marvin Minsky (who is accused of
> assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])
The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.
The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein's harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
The word "assaulting" presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.
I've concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
Clearly, what Stallman is saying here is that the expression “sexual assault” is innacurate in this context.
Stallman is known for chiming in whenever he sees a term is being used incorrectly, in his view. This case was no exception, with the added motive of seeing his friend being accused exaggeratedly. He also did it when he saw Epstein had been labeled as a “sex offender” according to law, and proposed to describe him as a “serial rapist” instead.
Stallman's observation was completely on target. Epstein himself used the inaccurate term “sex offender” to diminish the gravity of his crimes.
Nadine Strossen—feminist advocate of human rights, children’s rights, former ACLU president and lawyer— agrees that the overuse of the term “sexual assault” minimizes the serious crimes: It [sexual assault] trivializes the serious infractions that are committed by people like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. So that is one point that he [Stallman] made that I think is very important that I strongly agree with.
#not-sexual-assault
Epstein was forcing Giuffre to offer sex to his friends, so it's reasonable to think that he was also forcing her to hide she was being coerced. Stallman argues that based on available testimony, we don't actually know what Minsky understood about the situation, facts that should be crucial to judging his behavior and holding him accountable.
Stallman's words, “presented herself to him as entirely willing” were widely misquoted all over the web as if he had said “she was entirely willing.” The difference in meaning is obvious. Stallman in fact says the opposite, that he believes she was coerced by Epstein.
The announcement of the protest at MIT is in part based on an article by The Verge, but that article never mentions “sexual assault.”
Email #3 by Poster B
For the record, a witness denies this, saying that Minsky turned her down: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/
That's a reference to Gregory Benford's report.
Email #4 by Poster C
Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it _rape_ in the Virgin Islands.
The witness (who was not named as someone present by Giuffre) claims that the deposition never directly accuses Minsky of participating, based off a convoluted sentence by the New York Times. The Verge article includes a depostition snippet, which is not ambiguous at all: Giuffre directly says she was forced to have sex with Minsky.
Let's stop grasping at straws to defend our friends, and instead listen to the women who were harmed.
Actually, we still don't know if, when or where Giuffre had sex with Minsky. The suits were settled out of court, and nobody has sued Minsky's estate so far. As for the age, Giuffre was 18 in April 2002, although things could have happened before that. Again, we are missing key information, thus we should refrain from passing judgement based on passion rather than evidence.
It seems that Stallman did listen to the women. Referring to Giuffre's deposition, he assumes Giuffre had sex with Minsky; in Email #2 above he writes, Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
References and Notes