Richard Stallman, a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argued in emails this week that an alleged victim of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t assaulted because she most likely “presented herself” as “entirely willing,” Vice reports. In an email thread on the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory listserv, Stallman argued that AI pioneer Marvin Minsky—who was accused of abusing one of Epstein’s alleged victims—did not actually assault anyone. He explained the “most plausible scenario” was that the alleged victim, Virginia Giuffre, presented herself as a “willing” individual. He also argued against the terms “sexual assault” and “rape” being used to describe the alleged incident involving Minsky.
When someone noted that Giuffre was 17 years old when she was allegedly forced to have sex with Minsky in the Virgin Islands, Stallman replied that it was “morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”
Read it at Vice
