Matt Blaze Recounts Teenaged Harassment By John Draper
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Context: Kevin Collier's Buzzfeed piece about conferences banning Draper due to his habit of persuading young (teenaged) attendees to participate in private "exercises" that are clearly tantamount to sexual molestation:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/hacker-hero-is-said-to...
A lot of people from my "generation" of hacker-scene hackers are commenting on Facebook about how they warned people back then what Draper was about. Which, they did. But mostly, Draper's proclivities were a joke to us.
I don't blame us too much. We were 18-19 years old and it was the mid-late 1990s.
But I'd sort of want to remind, um, us? that there are a bunch of other people with comparable reputations. I don't think they're my stories to tell (or, in my case, I guess my rumors to spread). But there are a lot of missing stairs in this field, not just that one.
Probably best to remove the tracking stuff in this case.
[edit: just read the full twitter thread. Backrubs, right ...]
I used to hang out with him a bit in the mid-'70s. I'd read about him in the famous Esquire article, and it was pretty cool when I finally got to meet him. He wanted to learn how to program, and we had both recently discovered FORTH. Most importantly, he had some really good pot (for those days).
So I would drop by and we would stay up late at night hacking and smoking. Then he asked me if I wanted to work out.
I thought that sounded like a good idea. Goodness knows, everyone can use more exercise!
Then I found out what he meant, and it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. So we went back to hacking and kept it at that level. It was really no problem, just a simple misunderstanding, and we continued to have fun hacking together.
I didn't see John for many years, and then ran into him at the 2013 Homebrew reunion. I introduced myself and he didn't quite remember me at first. Then his eyes lit up and he asked me, "Did we work out?"
https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/in/dateposte...
Next time I saw John was at the 2015 CES, and he was in a wheelchair recovering from back surgery.
You know, whatever feelings any of us may have about the guy, at this point he's not in the best of health. My personal feeling is that perhaps we could wish him well and let bygones be bygones?
Well it can sometimes be hard to reconcile the person you know and like with the bad things they have done, it would appear that he systematically assaulted a very large number of young men over a period of decades.
Criminal charges might be a more appropriate response.
>Then his eyes lit up and he asked me, "Did we work out?"
^ Especially considering that this question suggests these weren't a few isolated incidents, but an abusive pattern repeated so often that he can't remember who he has done it with.
It is a crime. Period. As with any crime statutes of limitations should apply, but they should be that. Not "bygones because someone who got lucky feels pity for him".
And you got lucky. As you demonstrate, to him these things are only dim memories. For people who got it bad they're scars they carry for their rest of their life and feel vividly every single day.
It's also important to consider what consent actually is. Just because someone doesn't say no doesn't necessarily mean that they want something to happen.
Don't lose sight of the power imbalance, as well as the youth and inexperience of the victims.
Does that not imply there was no power imbalance as the weak or inexperienced were not coerced ?
Do you have a story of someone coerced ?
OR do you just prefer to make shit up ?
> In a series of interviews, six men with direct knowledge of Draper, now 74, described him as habitually meeting young, often teenage men at conferences between 1999 and 2007, touting “energy” exercises or stretches. These included him massaging men in public and urging them to come to his or their hotel room for private sessions. In multiple cases in which the men agreed, Draper would leap on their backs in ways the men described as unwanted sexual contact.
That explains a lot! I read about Wozniak hiring Draper, in secret behind Jobs back, to work on modem for Apple 2(or 2gs?). I was wondering why such conspiracy, now we know.