Do you have a link for this? What I recall of that whole scenario was that Stallman said something fairly minor regarding Minsky, and the nuance of the words written were lost on the mob and he was accused of saying something worse than that.
I'm not aware of him providing any defense of Epstein himself.
MIT scientist Richard Stallman resigns in the wake of his Jeffrey Epstein remarks https://share.google/L9w5zAnDjbvnrWhex
What Stallman said is "the people who were trafficked, probably did not tell the people they were trafficked to, that they were being trafficked and were there unwillingly."
I don't see how saying that is a "defense of Jeffrey Epstein".
Through personal conversations in recent years, I’ve learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per1 psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.
Children: Humans up to age 12 or 13 are children. After that, they become adolescents or teenagers. Let’s resist the practice of infantilizing teenagers, by not calling them “children”."
THESE ARE THE WORDS RICHARD STALLMAN POSTED ON HIS OWN WEBSITE WITHOUT BEING PROMPTED.
please defend this. i really really want to see you stoop this low.
EDIT: OKAY i'm being DOWNVOTED for bringing these words to light. officially y'all are now covering up for child sex criminals. Sickening.
He is assigning the blame to Epstein's victims.
The scenario being described was that Epstein was ordering some of his victims, who were ostensibly employed as masseuses at his resort, to go and offer sex to specific people who were at an event taking place there.
You don't keep a sex trafficking operation going as long as he did if you don't coerce victims in that situation to play along with the story that they are masseuses and that the offer of sex is coming from them.
“We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing,” Stallman added. “Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.”
"Sex trafficker probably told the people he trafficked not to tell anyone that they were being trafficked. Trafficked people trapped on an island with their abuser may have done as they were told out of fear." Obviously.
I don't see how that statement is a defense of Epstein, or victim blaming.
But it didn't, so it isn't.