femcog

I was in an abusive relationship with Jake for six months in 2009. We parted on ostensibly amicable terms and have had little contact since then. When the accusations of professional misconduct and predatory sexual behavior were made public, I believed them, not just because I value and respect the men and women who made these accusations, but also because they sounded just like him. I saw him use those same strategies years ago.

I considered coming out at the time, but frankly I was terrified. I spent the last half of our relationship trying to convince Jake that he wanted to break up with me. It worked; he has never terrorized me since then, and I hear he speaks fondly of me. I read the statements people made about him, and I told myself that their stories were similar enough to mine, that I didn't need to make myself a target by adding to them. I thought they were horrible enough that people would take them seriously. But apparently they weren't. Many organizations and members of the community have responded by denouncing his actions and formally barring him from their spaces, and I appreciate the subset of the hacker community which is now potentially a safe space for his victims. But no one is really holding Jake accountable for his behavior. And worse yet, a lot of people seem to not really think this is something to take seriously.

John Gilmore misunderstands this situation perfectly, calling it a "trial-by-rumor". This isn't a trial, and it's not all rumors. A rumor is "I heard somebody say something happened", but "this happened to me" is a first-hand account. There are many first hand accounts, and they form a largely consistent picture of Jake's predatory behavior. The important thing to realize is that the first hand accounts which are publicly available are not the only victims. Those are the subset of people who were brave enough to volunteer for abuse so that the rest of us could feel safer. And I am so grateful to them. I do feel safer.

In the first weeks of our dating, Jake and I were very smitten with one another. We had a lot of sex, but always used protection. One night I woke up to find him having intercourse with me. At first I was only annoyed, because we did not have any previous agreements about sex being fair game while I was sleeping, and I would not have consented to any sort of sex-while-sleeping agreement. But then I discovered he wasn't using a condom. I certainly would not have consented to having unprotected sex, and that's something you can never take back. He told me that he had been sleeping and just woken up to find us already having sex. At the time, I knew intellectually that this was rape, and I felt incredibly violated, but I didn't tell anyone. I cared about him and I didn't want him to be a rapist.

Towards the middle of our relationship, I had figured out that I was in an abusive relationship but I didn't know how to deal with it. I had only ever been involved with kind, decent people, so I kept trying to talk about his problem behaviors with him. During these discussions there was a lot of gaslighting. One discussion in particular, he claimed that I had somehow deeply injured him (I don't remember what I did) and was inconsolable. I kept asking him what I could do, and finally he insisted that for him to feel better I needed to clean his floors naked. And I did it. I cried the whole time, in surreal horror. He cheered up and took photos of me, crying and naked, scrubbing his floor. I want to be perfectly clear that there was nothing fun or kinky about this. I don't enjoy humiliation, and it was not a consensual part of our sex life.

There were other incidents but they are harder to describe or more plausibly deniable. I learned a lot about consent by dating Jake and watching him with other women and men (we were non-monogamous). Sometimes I had to say "No," or "Stop" several times before he would listen. Sometimes I stopped trying. When he was angry with me, he was too rough during sex, sometimes leaving marks which I hid in shame. I confronted him about some of these behaviors, but he made every conversation into a conversation about how I had hurt his feelings. After we broke up I slowly drifted away from the hacker community over the years—not so much because I was trying to leave, but because there was nothing that really made me want to stay. When I saw people standing up to publicly support Jake's victims, I felt for the first time in a long time like maybe I wanted to be a part of the hacker community again. But I felt heartbroken by how many people were unwilling to confront this.

It's like Jake has an abusive relationship with the whole community now. People who are trying to support Jake are completely focused on his feelings and his experience of these allegations. They're letting him style himself as a victim, and then claiming that his victimhood is somehow equivalent to that of his actual victims. If people want to support Jake, they should support him in taking responsibility for his actions. People who care about him don't want to believe that he's a sexual predator, and I can understand that. I didn't want to believe it either. But that's the first step.

Our work as a community is not done. People talk about how awful this whole ordeal has been, and I agree. But the way to prevent awful situations like this isn't talking less about rape. It's less rape. It needs to be possible for sexual predators in our community to be exposed and held accountable. I hope that sharing some of my experiences will help the community to understand Jake's behavior, and to find more constructive ways to make our community safer. I want to engage in a dialog about this. You can contact me at feminaecognosce@riseup.net, or via twitter @feminaecognosce.

River

Jacob Appelbaum is one of the first reasons why I became inspired to work on open source privacy technology, after hearing him speak years ago. I looked up to him, because of his passion and single-minded drive. I also wanted to be someone who would make a difference in protecting our fundamental right to privacy and anonymity. In short, Jacob was a role model.

I didn't know until very recently that nonconsensual sex, by a friend, is rape. It is for this reason that I am writing this account.

When I became romantically involved with Jacob, I clearly told him that I wasn't interested in group sex, or having sex in front of other people. I told him this more than once, and clearly stated that if we were going to be intimate, I wanted it to be with him in a private setting. He tried hard to convince me otherwise, but I just brushed it off.

One night, he invited me to his apartment to party with him and several of his friends. I went, not thinking twice that anything further would happen. We were all watching a movie and laying on the couch. I was intoxicated and not thinking clearly, and it took me a long time to realize that Jacob was going down on me, in the living room, in front of everyone. I told him that I didn't want to do that, and he stopped, but I don't remember what happened directly after, except that he kept touching me. The next thing I realized was that one of his friends in the room was touching me instead of Jacob, and Jacob told me to go down on his friend. I asked them to stop, however, all of this had a really long delayed effect because I was under the influence. I remember that his friend did stop touching me when I asked him to, but then I blacked out, and when I came back into consciousness, Jacob was having sex with me in the living room with his friends watching. When I realized what was happening, I told him again that I wanted to stop. He asked why, and I said that I didn't want to do that in front of everyone. He did stop, but replied, "well, that's what we've already been doing", and turned extremely cold. Eventually, he brought me into his room, but I felt like I was being punished.

Later, when I wasn't intoxicated, Jacob again tried to persuade me to have sex with his group of friends. It was then an easy no, but it felt like I lost my value to him once I wouldn't give him or his followers what they wanted.

What is most terrifying about this situation is how systematic all of this felt. I very clearly understood that I was not the only woman that this happened to. In fact, it felt like this was quite common. No one in that situation seemed to be surprised about any of these events, chillingly, not even my discomfort.

This cannot continue.

He cannot be a leader in this community, the first name that many people think of, an inspiration to those new entering the field, and also someone who uses his power and influence to sexually prey on individuals who think he is trusted.

It is critical that our community is safe for women, and for any individual who is passionate about protecting privacy and anonymity.

I'm most angry that Jacob has not only done this to me, but other women as well. I have been told that other women are afraid to come forward, as they are worried that Jacob will use his power and influence to ruin their lives. I also share these fears. However, I hope others will also speak out.

I am grateful to the people who have fought to do the right thing once they learned of Jacob's actions. I have seen how many people in this community are incredibly noble and compassionate. The Tor Project in particular should be recognized for how they have handled this respectfully and honorably.

It is these people, not people like Jacob, that should be the leaders of our community.

Sam

Jake and I had some minor romantic interest in each other when he invited me to his apartment one evening. He told me he wanted to take a bath, and invited me into his bathroom to hang out with him. I said, okay, but I don't want to take a bath with you. I sat down on the toilet and started chatting with him, and he immediately began coercing me to get into his bathtub. I was hungover, possibly still a little drunk from the night before, and although I wasn't interested in getting in, I wasn't so firm in my resolve because of my somewhat compromised state. I kept saying no, and he kept asking (while chatting about other things), and eventually I said, okay, I'll keep my underwear and tshirt on and put my legs in the water. I did that, and he kept asking me to get in all the way, even as I told him I wasn't interested. He then kind of pulled me into the tub halfway, turned me around, and started to wash me. I was thinking, what the fuck, get out of this situation, why are you in this fucking bathtub with this man when you repeatedly told him no. But anyone with experience of Jake's manipulative powers will know exactly what I was feeling -- somehow you tell him no, and he convinces you that what you just said was yes. His nonconsensual washing lasted about a minute or two before I leaped out of his bathtub and started crying in the corner of his bathroom. During all this, he kept talking like nothing was happening! Later, he called me a coward for not wanting to date him. I eventually confronted Jake about this, plus other behaviors I'd witnessed: he started drunkenly kissing another person at the bar with no invitation, he started giving another friend a really aggressive shoulder massage with no invitation, plus a million stories that I'd heard through backchannels. Jake kind of apologized and then spent an hour telling me that the real injustice was that there were people who make up stories like this about him for political gain. Not, you know, the actual things he'd done.

Forest

Jake and I had been friends and coworkers for years. Looking back on it, I'm not sure why. From the very first Tor developer meeting I had attended, he repetitively propositioned my partner and I for sex. He even went so far as to, on the very first meeting on the first morning, in front of all the other developers — whom I had not yet met — tell me that he was okay with my partner and I fucking in the same bed as him while he watched, causing both of my partner and I to feel completely humiliated that our private sex life was being discussed in front of colleagues we had hoped to build a good start towards friendly, professional relationships.

While travelling, the first time he came to the city I lived in, I invited him to stay at my house. As politely as I could, I explained, "You can have the floor, and I'll take my bed, or the other way around. If you're comfortable with it, we can share my bed, as friends. Meaning no physical contact." We both slept in my bed.

That turned out (mostly) fine. (Except, of course, being propositioned again, this time for a threesome with Jake and one of my roommates.) In fact, Jake and I proceeded to share beds in a friendly manner over the years, and nothing bad ever happened.

Once Jake had moved to Germany, I came to visit friends there for a while, and one night I stayed at Jake's place. Again, we shared a bed, as friends. There weren't even any discussion or attempts beforehand to convince me to do anything sexual with him. It was freezing cold, and I went to bed with several layers of street clothes on.

Sometime around 5 o'clock in the morning, I woke up very confused and startled because my pants were unzipped and Jake's arm was wrapped around me, his hands in my underwear and he was rubbing my clit and rimming the edges of my vagina. I tried to shove him off me and wake him up. He's physically much bigger than me, so the shoving didn't work as well as it should have, but nonetheless he rolled over, a bit exageratedly, mumbling as if asleep.

In the morning, I confronted him about it. I was really confused. I didn't know if he was actually asleep, but if he was, how did my clothes come undone? Assuming that if I was super confrontational about it, he'd have some excuse like "Oh, but I thought it was okay that time because you didn't explicitly give me the we're-just-friends lecture before bed…" When confronting Jake about this, I said, "Dude, what the fuck. You started fingering me last night." It took a few seconds for there to be a reaction on his face, and then he seemed confused, saying "Oh… what? I don't remember that." I glared at him.

The really disconcerting thing for me was that, half an hour later, he said, "I thought you were her." Here, "her" was Jake's fiancée. At the time, she didn't live in Germany, and they hadn't seen each other in weeks. Jake's fiancée was also gorgeous and super curvy, and I am basically a scrawny, little twig. "I'm not sure how you could confuse us, even asleep." I said. He continued muttering some excuses about having wet dreams about her. He seemed to suddenly and extremely vividly remember whatever dream. Nowhere did he say, "I didn't put my hands in your panties," nor did he apologise.

Daniel

Several years ago, I was dating someone in the Tor community and we desired to keep this quiet to avoid stigma. Jake suspected us, and set about asking our friends and my partner if we were dating. We denied it to him, again to avoid stigma and because we wanted to keep our personal lives private. Despite that, I was later directly asked if we "were fucking", in front of several others.

This boundary violation combined with public shaming is part of a larger pattern of behavior. On numerous occasions, Jake also joked in front of others about other aspects of my personal life that I wished to keep private. Despite repeated requests from me to stop, the jokes continued. At one point, Jake made a joke in a public venue during a speech. Video of this event is published on the Internet.

In one instance, Jake deliberately created a situation where my partner was made to feel safe - devices were removed from a room, lights were turned off, warm blankets were provided. My partner was made to feel that it was safe to confide in him that we were in fact dating, and was led to divulge details about our relationship and sex life to him.

With this information, we were repeatedly made to feel uncomfortable with either insinuations in front of others or direct approaches for sex. On more than one occasion, we had to decline requests for a threesome, within earshot of others, despite Jake being well aware that we were neither interested, nor wanted the others within earshot to become aware that the two of us were dating.

Because of this behavior, Jake and I had a falling out for a long period of time. Finally, years later, Jake made a tearful apology, promising to do better by me and everyone else. To my great dismay, I saw what appeared to be the same behavior targeted at another member of the Tor community just two months later. That story was then quickly altered and confused, and he claimed that the incidents were highly dependent on context. Nonetheless it struck me as the same exact kind of public shaming that I had experienced repeatedly. I felt and still feel that regardless of the context, this type of shaming is extremely alienating for folks to witness, and makes them unwilling and uncomfortable to participate in meetings with him.

I had really hoped that after the last incident that he would be on good behavior, but once again I am left to conclude that this behavior has only relocated elsewhere. It's as if he learns not to be abusive with people who happen to have enough power/stature/influence to make him stop, but then simply moves on to the next target.

Kiwi

Like many others I found out about Jacob after being inspired by his public speeches on Internet privacy and against censorship. I joined the digital rights community because of him. I looked up to Jacob.

Very quickly Jacob began to react aggressively to my building my own professional contacts and publishing my work without going through him. As soon as that started happening he reacted as if it were a threat and spent years shaming me in public, manipulating me into embarrassing situations and attempting to control what I was working on. He spent serious effort into burning all the bridges I built for myself so that I was forced to go through him. Jacob regularly made up lies about me and used personal information against me in public without being provoked in any way… I can't count how many times Jacob would start yelling at me in the middle of professional meetings.

Sexual abuse is not the only form of abuse. Jacob's reactions had a huge impact on my personal, professional and emotional development as someone starting out on their own.

A lot of the anxiety I still feel today can be attributed to the years of torture Jacob forced me through just while I was trying to do my job.

I was never strong enough to fight someone with so much social power as Jacob… I was just starting out. I hope Jacob is not allowed to ruin other lives. Thank you Tor Project and people who have come out for making the right choice.

West

At a hacker event, Jake kissed me on the mouth in public in front of others without invitation or any indication of consent. I am personally very wary of communicable disease, especially cold sores and herpes (which I have taken great care to avoid). I expressed my concern, and others present voiced their disapproval of the surprise advance, especially given my concerns about disease. I do not recall being told even after the fact that there was no risk of contagion.

Phoenix

I was in Berlin running a three-day workshop on whistleblowing platforms in summer 2014. Jake essentially crashed the workshop on the middle of the second day, and I was told by my colleagues to let him interrupt the schedule for "story time with Jake" as he pleased. He had some good things to say, and everyone else seemed to know him well enough to tolerate him with a wink. I knew the least about him, so I hung back.

The 16 or so of us went out to dinner that night, and I ended up seated next to Jake and across from my client. It was the most uncomfortable meal of my professional life. I thought I was doing a good job being "cool" with all these people I wanted to impress while not giving him firm answers and minimal encouragement.

1) Jake propositioned me, before appetizers, casually in front of everyone, and when I told him I was married he smoothly extended the invite to my husband.

2) Jake brought up Julian Assange in a weird party trick way. He asked what I'd say if I got to talk to him, and then proceeded to pull his phone out of its faraday pouch and dial. I stopped him, feeling like the poor guy had enough to deal with, and he said "oh, he's used to me putting him on the phone with drunk girls I want to sleep with." I was visibly shocked and stopped drinking at that point.

3) During the main course, he used me to tell a joke. He picked up my spoon, a chunk of meat off my plane, said "it's the terrorists flying into the World Trade Center" and made airplane noises/motions with it until I opened my mouth and let him feed me. Then he said "but you still eat it up". I was horrified. This was in front of people I wanted to work with, and they all laughed.

After the last one, I went to the bathroom, had a firm talk with myself, stopped eating, went back until the first group of people were ready to leave. I think the worst part was afterwards, telling my friends back home, and all my male friends who work in technology were jealous that I had a personal story with their hero, even if it was disgusting. But then one of them tipped me off to this investigation, so who knows.

Nick

Editorial note from the Jacob Appelbaum's Victims Collective:

For reasons appertaining to victims' fears of retaliation, further abuse, and humiliation, the JAVC has decided that anonymity is the default and that editorial changes to submissions may be made in cases where certain details of a report submitted to us are identifying. In cases where we cannot anonymize a report, we will attempt to contact the submitter for revision.

In the case of Nick Farr's report, a very similar (i.e. no major substantial changes, only minor edits) has been cross-posted on Medium. In light of this, it is not possible for us to anonymize the report, so here it is, in full, as it was sent to us:

Hi. I'm Nick Farr. (@nickf4rr)

I used to be a pretty effective organizer and worker with various things at Hacker Events in Europe, but after a deliberate campaign of abuse orchestrated by Jake at the 30c3, I don't feel safe or welcome in that scene anymore. In fact, I physically shut down every time I try to head out to one.

I'm both relieved to talk about it and ashamed that it took me this long.

Jake has targeted, abused and silenced many close friends of mine. Whether it's ripping off research, rape or just harassing someone into submission, somehow we all felt powerless to do anything about it. He's the perfect bully. Every criticism of him is met with suspicion, every accusation is some government-conspiracy-takedown. Huge kudos to whomever set up this site, and my apologies for not trying something like this sooner. There isn't a single victim who could count on community support...until now.

Those that tried to stand up to him were destroyed, one even took his own life. But that's not my story to tell. In the scope of people Jake has targeted, my story is fairly benign.

My first CCC congress was the 23c3 in Berlin. Having been invited on account of my work in the US, being there renewed my faith in the scene. Only a few months later, I'd be dragging 40 Americans from DEFCON to CCC Camp in 2007. Jake was on that trip (at a huge discount, paid for by someone else) and pretty much every person on that trip can tell you what an epic asshole he was.

At that time, Jake couldn't overshadow the awesomeness of the Camp and the burgeoning Hackerspace scene I wanted to get started in the US. Over the years of doing that, I enjoyed coming back to Europe to help organize whatever needed organizing. It was a way of recharging, taking in the amazing energy at those events in Germany and the Netherlands. One of the many things I used to help out with were Lightning Talks. From the 27c3 onward, I coordinated and emceed these sessions where anyone could speak pretty much about whatever they wanted in 5 minutes or less. The format that I developed over the years is basically what they use today. If you could follow basic directions, I did whatever I could to get you on stage.

Part of this open policy meant dealing with folks who may not be entirely stable. Often, these folks would end up not following basic directions and they'd fall off the schedule for that reason. Generally, they accepted that and trusted I was not trying to silence them, I was just being fair.

One person following this pattern submitted an LT proposal alleging that Jake was a US Intelligence Operative. I LOLed. After a few rounds of e-mail pestering, encrypted e-mails and a few texts, they insisted on being put on the schedule. I did so to appease, as was my strategy at the time, with every intention of pulling them off after they inevitably failed to follow directions. You can go look at the Wiki histories for any LT I organized to show this was what I often did with dubious presentations. Organizing the LTs, answering e-mails, checking slides and replying/confirming with each presenter took nearly 3 hours for every hour of LTs and a lot of that work happened while I was still in NYC, weeks before the event. I often went to bed well after 2 AM the nights leading up to my flight out to Europe and I wanted to be done with this fool and get some sleep.

The next day I wake up to an e-mail from Jake, followed by e-mails from very important people in the CCC chastising me for what I had done to Jake's reputation. Jake demanded all the e-mails and records I had received from this person, a demand which I refused since they had been sent to me encrypted in confidence. Jake also had the CCC edit the 30c3 wiki database to eliminate any trace of the offending talk.

Because the last thing anyone needs is to be targeted by Jake, I purged everything this person and sent and refused to hand over anything on privacy grounds. I more or less considered the matter over.

But really, I thought, why would Jake be so defensive about some random LT that might have otherwise gone completely unnoticed? If I were a government operative hell-bent on destroying the global hacker community, what would I do differently from what Jake is already doing?

Once I arrived at the 30c3, not more than 10 minutes went by before Jake himself comes and accosts me, warning "there will be severe consequences" unless I hand over everything this person sent. I told him that I no longer had the records he sought, but that simply wasn't good enough. Without warning, several times a day, Jake or one of his proxies would find me and say the same thing. Each time, no matter who I was with or how long they had known me, I was made out to be the one "causing drama", bringing down whatever group I happened to be around.

Every night, I came back to my hotel room, a typewritten note on my pillow stating, "Don't make us use extreme measures. Hand it all over."

I tried to reach out to people I thought I could trust. I tried to tell them what was going on. I tried showing them. I told Jake very calmly when he approached that he needed to stop harassing me. Everyone told me to just give him what he wanted, to "dialogue" with him to "find a solution" and to "stop creating drama".

You can't dialogue with a sociopath. What's worse is when people you consider your trusted friends take the sociopath's side.

At that point, I was rather well known, I had a pretty good deal of social capital, thousands of Twitter followers from Europe, and the confidence that people knew me and trusted me. But none of that mattered, Jake was a rockstar I couldn't compete with, whose followers went to great lengths to make me feel unsafe and unwelcome in the very place I felt most at home in the entire world.

Can you imagine how his rape victims feel? Victims with no social standing or even worse, who looked up to him as a hero?

By the last night of the 30c3, after one last ditch effort to get Jake and his cronies off my back was rebuffed, it got to be too much. I physically could not take it anymore, handed in my badges and phone and left with no intention of returning. It was only with a lot of support from 3 friends, one of whom was another victim of his abuse that I was able to fulfill my commitment to show up for the last day of the LTs.

After breaking my back the following August, my doctors had cleared me to travel internationally by the time the 31c3 was coming around. When it came time to actually figure out the logistics, my body shut down. While there was a lot physically wrong with me, the doctors told me that what ailed me was very likely stress-related. I had long since repressed why this was happening, chalked it up to my pain medication, really anything other than what I had experienced on account of Jake. But in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense why I physically couldn't bring myself to go. One measure of the support I enjoyed and recognition of my work was the hundreds of postcards I received from well-wishers at the 31c3, cards I still cherish today.

I had all intentions of going to the 2015 Camp, as well. But I couldn't. I tweeted about a "diagnosis" to avoid "creating drama" but the truth of the matter was by that point, the damage was done. Jake destroyed those events for me, and I didn't even realize it until I started writing out this story. Ironically, I feel safe writing this only after seeing others courageously come forward with their stories of how Jake raped them.

Some of you are going to (and already have) started poking holes in my story, calling these blatant accusations, calling me a coward and a fraud and a litany of other things. Fine, have at it, I left your scene a long time ago and I'm in a country where there's not a lot that Jake's cronies can do to me. The only thing cowardly about this story is that I took this long in telling it. Come at me all you want, don't believe me if you want. After all, the only thing Jake took from me was a community I loved, cherished and poured my soul into.

Whatever you do, don't cast doubt on Jake's victims of sexual abuse. It's one thing to be raped, that's enough to destroy someone's life. It's quite another thing to speak up after being raped by your hero and lose your job, your friends, everything you've worked for and your trust in humanity to boot. Imagine what that must be like. You call them cowards for using pseudonyms, but every time you defend Jake at their expense, it's like being raped all over again.

Even after all this, I still have my doubts that it will have any impact. Bill Cosby's rapist tendencies were an open secret for how many years? It was such an open secret that it took a comedian to send people to Google to find out about it before enough victims came forward to make the allegations credible and yet Cosby still walks around a free man.

Will Jake go on raping people like Bill Cosby did for decades? Will he go on destroying lives?

At this point, that's up to you.

Alice

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Briar

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