Chapter Thirty-Four From Bad to Worse #2
Just as Stallman defended Minsky, many friends and colleagues of MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito defended him after it was revealed that he had cultivated a close (and lucrative) relationship with Epstein.
Ito apologized, and for a little while, it appeared he’d keep his job.
Then The New Yorker revealed just how extensively Ito had worked to cover up Epstein’s visits to the MIT campus, as well as Epstein’s direct donations and donations that Epstein had helped prompt from other people.
One day after that article ran, Ito resigned.
The chips were beginning to fall for other men who’d been connected to Epstein too.
A month after Ito’s downfall, Brown University—who’d hired an MIT fundraising official who’d worked with Ito to cultivate Epstein—put that official on leave to make sure his behavior could be reconciled with Brown’s “core values.” Harvard University—which had received over $9 million in gifts from Epstein—would soon shut down its program for evolutionary dynamics after investigating the link between its director, Martin Nowak, and Epstein.
The ripples of Epstein’s public shunning were soon being felt outside academia as well.
Leon Black would resign as chief executive of Apollo Global Management and Jes Staley would resign as CEO of Barclays Bank—both after inquiries into the two men’s relationships with Epstein.
And it wouldn’t be long before Melinda French Gates would tell CBS’s Gayle King that while there were a number of factors that led her to divorce her husband of twenty-seven years, Bill Gates, his work with Epstein was definitely one of them.
“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” Melinda would tell King, adding that she herself met with Epstein “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.” Her reaction: “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.”
If only everyone felt such empathy for Epstein’s victims. In December 2020, The Telegraph ran a story about me that was headlined “Prince Andrew’s Accuser Was a Prostitute Paid Off by Jeffrey Epstein, Court Papers Allege.
” Based on a recorded conversation between a New York publisher and the tabloid journalist Sharon Churcher, who was trying to sell a book, those court papers implied that I was making up allegations as a form of blackmail, only seeking to get paid off.
In my darkest hours, especially when the pain in my neck immobilized me, reading headlines like those cut me to the quick.
The fact that I suspected this was my critics’ intent—Call her a whore!
That’ll shut her up!—didn’t make it any easier to read.
Ten days before Christmas 2020, when I was really struggling, I recorded a video of myself that I shared on Twitter.
“I’m not asking for a pity party,” I told my followers, who numbered more than one hundred thousand.
“I don’t want that. I just want to know I’m on the right path and helping people.
Some days, it’s just—” At that point my voice cracked, and tears filled my eyes.
I’d spent so long believing that it was my responsibility to demand accountability from those who’d hurt me.
But to the extent that meant repeating what happened to me again and again and again, as if on a tape loop, I wasn’t sure how much more of that I could take.
“It’s hard,” I said to the camera. “I just feel quite alone.”
Still, there were other, less lonely times that I sensed I was part of a movement that was forcing positive change.
On January 14, 2021, L Brands shareholders filed a complaint alleging that Leslie Wexner, among others, created an “entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment” at the company.
They also said Wexner, who had stepped down as CEO the previous year to return to his mansion in New Albany, Ohio, had breached his fiduciary duty because he was aware of abuses being committed by Epstein.
Among other things, Epstein was alleged to have preyed on Victoria’s Secret models, and shareholders claimed this caused a devaluation of the brands under the company’s umbrella.
Six months later, in July, the company settled, pledging to invest $90 million to clean up its act, improving sexual harassment and antiretaliation practices and ceasing to enforce nondisclosure agreements that had silenced women victims in the past.
Not even a year later, a singer and former American Idol contestant named Jax released an ode to body positivity that quickly climbed the pop charts.
“I know Victoria’s secret,” she sang, “And, girl, you wouldn’t believe / She’s an old man who lives in Ohio / Making money off of girls like me / Cashin’ in on body issues / Sellin’ skin and bones with big boobs / I know Victoria’s secret / She was made up by a dude.
” Victoria’s Secret’s new female CEO soon wrote Jax a letter, thanking her for raising “important issues.” One by one, some in Epstein’s inner circle were being called out.
If I had played even a small part in that, I thought, maybe I could keep going.