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Comment by jonathannat | Hacker News Reader

I find it odd that I've had to click through a few times on both hacker news and reddit to get the info for the person in question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor

> Aimee Challenor, who currently works at reddit, is, at best, sympathetic to pedophilia. She has hired her father after he raped and tortured a 10 year old girl, a fact I find it hard to believe that she wasn't aware of, due to her living with him at the time of the crime, which happened in their house over several days. Her boyfriend also posted clearly pedophilic tweets, and he is now her husband.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/mbqgx2/a_clarif...

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Wow, there's Richard Stallman level Epstein/pedo comments, then there's this. I don't know why she has a job right now. I get that some people have rough childhood, go through things that a normal person can't comprehend and we shouldn't hold that against them, but why in the world would you take someone who is either that stunted or a pedo and put them in a position of power?

Please don't compare RMS and Epstein. RMS made a comment re consent, which I believe he said he had reconsidered.

Epstein was not just a pedo but a pimp for all sorts of rich and powerful people, complete with a pedo-jet, private-pedo-island and shitloads of money nobody seems to know from whence it came.

He didn't compare RMS to Epstein, he referenced RMS' comments about Epstein.

Phrasing-wise, it did sounded like a comparisson/association.

They meant there's comments Stallman made about Epstein/pedophilia and then there's this.

It is common for sexual abusers to have been abused as children themselves. Her father was a pedophile. There is a decent chance she was abused, which would explain the weird behaviour.

> Wow, there's Richard Stallman level Epstein/pedo comments, then there's this.

But on one hand you have an old, white male. On the other, a clearly oppressed minority who happened to make a little mistake. In the current climate, where do you think this is going?

Wow, that sounds a lot like what happened with Ghislaine Maxwell and theories how she's the owner of one of the most influential powermod accounts on Reddit [0]

The actual content of that submission has by now been removed, linking to it on frontpage subs used to get people banned, with mods arguing how linking to that thread is equal to accusing Reddit moderators of being pedophiles/child traffickers.

Which is a bit of a weird reasoning considering afaik Ghislaine Maxwell wasn't yet convicted of anything.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/hnckn0/umaxwellhil...

Here's an article I found about her husband also fantasizing about pedophilia: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/something-rotten-at-the...

I'm posting that link because it also contains information around their claim his Twitter account was "hacked".

Graham Linehan is one of the most doctrinaire anti-transgender individuals, anything he writes on the subject should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

> Graham Linehan is one of the most doctrinaire anti-transgender individuals, anything he writes on the subject should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

Aimee Challenor advised an LGBT rights charity called Stonewall from 2015. Stonewall advises Girlguiding (UK’s equivalent of girl scouts)[0]. If one accepts that accusations made against her are legitimate, one has to take Stonewall’s recommendations—and hence trans-related Girlguiding policies—with a large pinch of salt, too.

(Hint: those policies made headlines in 2017, when Girlguiding started to admit males who identify as females but choose to remain biologically male. Weigh that together with Challenor’s and her husband’s background, and the evidence of her father working together with her and influencing her political agenda.)

Challenor remained on Stonewall’s advisory board, even though she left the Green Party over her “serious errors of judgement”, until 2019.

I can’t help thinking that perhaps trans community is doing itself a disservice by not being picky as to whom it lets to represent itself, which in some cases may give ammunition to anti-trans sentiment.

[0] Stonewall has downplayed the involvement Challenor has had with their policies, but they’d be bound to do this regardless.

True, but it doesn't make what he's showing (in this instance) to be false.

Yeah. He's pretty awful and when I find my myself even partially in agreement with his public statements I double check carefully.

Wait, the IT Crowd creator?

Yes, he went off the deep end on twitter over the last decade, culminating with getting banned about a year ago for continued harassment of specific transgender individuals.

How am I supposed to feel about this? Someone has sexual fantasies about clearly immoral and horrible acts, but has apparently (I only skimmed the article) never acted on them. I am supposed to, what, think this person is vile? That anyone who associates with them is vile? Why is it any of our business what this guy is into?

I guess the outrage is more that someone associated with both him and with her father (who was convicted of acting on those fantasies) was put into a moderation position at Reddit. And people were being banned for calling this out.

Sure, fair, I just don't think anyone dredging up this guy's sexual fantasies up and associating them with actual child molestation is taking the moral high ground. There is a difference between watching John Wick murder people and doing actual murders, and it is the same difference between harboring immoral sexual fantasies and actually committing them.

I don't think the John Wick movie is useful analogy. People are "dredging" these up to raise real questions about the judgement of someone who was hired to use that judgement to moderate their social networks.

Sure, so why don't you let this person tutor your kids. Nothing wrong with that right?

So you want this person working in a school or daycare? Do you want such a person to adopt some kids, or tutor kids in his spare time?

I think it definitely matters when a person has such fantasies.

Does the same standard apply to crime writers? Movie makers? Why fantasy about gruesome killing is just fine, but fantasy about perversion suddenly is not?

If you have sexual fantasies about the opposite sex, you're straight. If you have sexual fantasies about the same sex, you are gay. Even if you never had sex with another person, it would still make you gay. If you have sexual fantasies about both, you are bi. If you have sexual fantasies about young kids, you are a pedophile. If you have sexual fantasies about sex with corpses, you are a necrophiliac.

The same doesn't go for acts of violence. You can quickly think "I'm gonna kill this person", but it doesn't make it so. Most people have such a quick thought, which basically makes all of us killers. This is considered normal, because most of us are that way. Most of us do not fantasize about sex with kids or corpses, which makes it abnormal.

> If you have sexual fantasies about young kids, you are a pedophile. If you have sexual fantasies about sex with corpses, you are a necrophiliac.

Yes, but simply being those things isn't something they chose any more than gay or trans people chose to be what they are. Unlike gay or trans people, acting on those fantasies would be wrong, but there's nothing wrong with just having them. There is a difference between being a pedophile and being a child molester.

Do you have any idea how many people have rape fantasies? The vast majority of them never rape anyone or want to be raped for real, it's just something that excites them sexually. Are we to condemn them as well? How about those who harbor fantasies about slavery like the aforementioned Larry Garfield?

> You can quickly think "I'm gonna kill this person", but it doesn't make it so. Most people have such a quick thought, which basically makes all of us killers.

To you maybe, but to those of us who realize there is a difference between fantasy and reality it doesn't mean much of anything. Also, perfectly normal people often play games about murdering people for hours on end.

> This is considered normal, because most of us are that way.

Is your problem that it is amoral or that it is abnormal? Or are the two the same to you?

> but there's nothing wrong with just having them.

It is indeed not a crime to have them. But I would strongly suggest that those people do not work in places where they have power over kids. (teachers, tutors, youth clubs, etc)

We have a saying "putting the cat next to the milk". And that is exactly what is going on here. If you hire a teacher, and you know this person has sexual feelings towards kids, you are really some dumb fuck. You should also be punished for negligence when shit hits the fan.

Would you let a woman you cared about work on a project with Larry Garfield?

I don't know why this concept is so difficult for some people. Fantasy and reality are not the same thing. Millions (if not billions) of people occasionally have fantasies about strangling their boss, or murdering people they don't like, and they never actually do those things because they're abhorrent. Add some "think of the children!" into the mix and otherwise rational people are suddenly very much in favor of lynching.

In a word, yes. This is how society polices itself. Just like dogs. When a dog does something that isn't beneficial for the group, it gets a nip. The entire pack sees and learns from this. And the entire pack also helps in enforcing this behaviour.

However these days Twitter is the pack and "cancelling" is the nip. What's missing is a pack leader or at least a sense of what is truly "right" or "wrong" at this point in humankind's development.

So it might seem heavy-handed or a knee-jerk reaction, but I'm on board with this simply because it aligns with my moral views. It's a choice.

I think it is ridiculous to condemn someone for what happens solely in their imagination. I don't believe in thoughtcrime.

I appreciate your username, but really, is this the hill to die on? Being morally relativistic about this subject is beyond the pale.

And to make it obvious: yes, yes you should find this and the notion that someone would fantasize about it utterly gut wrenching.

> And to make it obvious: yes, yes you should find this and the notion that someone would fantasize about it utterly gut wrenching.

I don't. Theft is obviously immoral, should I condemn people who enjoy heist fiction? People who enjoy roleplaying soldiers in a Civil War re-enactment? People who murder people in video games?

There is a difference between fantasy and reality.

Then you are a true nihilist.

Guessing said person has no children. I wouldn't have my kids within 10 km of this utter creep.

Jeez, that's disgusting and concerning to say the least.

Wonder if this is another case of reddit admins went rogue or even sanctioned by reddit.

Important to note that this article is written by a huge "anti-trans activist" Graham Linehan.

Are the facts wrong?

Did I claim that?

Is that not the implication?

The implication is that they have an extreme agenda and bias, so everything they say should be scrutinised extra carefully and examined for twisted or distorted truths.

Wow. Truly disturbing.

In addition she hired her father to act as an employee for her political party after he was charged with his crimes and convicted.

Remember when censorship was supposedly about protecting the children? This woman had publicly shown herself to be more accepting of pedophilia and child rape than 99.99% of the population, and Reddit hired her as a censor. It really makes me wonder, what exactly were her qualifications?

i'm going out on a limb here and __speculating__ it's the identity of this person to fulfill some kind of quota, I can't explain it otherwise.

It appears she is pretty good at rallying troops for her cause, even despite this controversy. It’s not that far fetched she could have seemed a good community manager.

What's the end game here? If she is a free person - is the end goal that she never works again, anywhere, ever? Or is the goal that Reddit allow their employees be targeted and bullied by users?

There’s a bit of a difference between “working” and “being given the power to moderate teenage-oriented communities and censor/silence all criticism on a mainstream website”.

It’s very humane to forgive, but also incredibly stupid and irresponsible to forget.

> moderate teenage-oriented communities

Data point. My GF worked on a online multiplayer game targeted at tweens and teens. Everyone hired had to undergo a background check.

Just a job that doesn't involve interacting with and moderating a community seems reasonable. Nobody would be upset if she was, say, a software engineer quietly fixing bugs in application logic for tax software.

Honestly I'm not sure anyone has an end game here. Someone on UKpolitics posted a basic link to a recent news article and got banned. People are getting banned for mentioning her. This is what most of the controversy is about. They're stifling any discussion of what are quite serious issues, because they hired her. Posting a link to a public newspaper shouldn't be ban worthy. However now that Reddit has been grossly overstepping in their reaction, people are getting very upset about censorship and the perceived conflicts of interest.

Amongst other issues (judgement, personal connections, etc.) she was (is?) a moderator of subreddits tailored towards young, vulnerable people. It's a big safeguarding issue and one that any form of background check should have highlighted.

I've wondered this, too. When someone who isn't rich gets cancelled, did something legal, but egregious enough that they can't find a job, or had to "resign" because they oversaw an organization where something bad happens, how does this play out? Can they never find work again? Do they find work and are massively underpaid? In the US, relying on government support isn't really an option.

And that was for people who did something sort of bad. What about people like this woman who allegedly have very controversial opinions? What happens to cops who are fired after shooting someone? That, and what's the right thing to do? Are they unemployable? Does the government provide some sort of domestic political asylum payment?

I think she ought to have zero power over other people and possibly even animals. Given her life record so far, she is not to be trusted with having power over others, no matter how minuscule.

There are plenty of jobs that fit this description.

This is a big general unanswered question in our society when it comes to "disreputable" people whether they be criminals or involved in some serious scandal. The goto answer is to ban them from everywhere. They should not ever get a job, house, or have any associates. This seems dark to me, but most people seem to just accept it.

Why would reddit hire this kind of person and then _PROTECT_ and _HIDE_ this decision. Strange.

I've heard over the last 12 hours that just saying their name on reddit gets you banned. I've seen some posts with the name on them on reddit, so I'm not sure if that happened beforehand. They spun it as doxing, but this person was a politician and the subreddit that got targetted by them was political in nature. They also then blamed it on auto bots but their name was in an article in an instance, I doubt reddit bots are that thorough as to scrape through linked articles.

> I doubt reddit bots are that thorough as to scrape through linked articles.

I'll bet they are. The tactic of getting someone to make a coordinated blog post and then spamming it everywhere on reddit under the cover of "its public information now" is obvious. I'm reasonably certain that has happened to some other reddit employee in the past. That part is entirely believable.

What are the tweets which her boyfriend posted? If it's just about his fantasies, I'm not really concerned about that, so long as he isn't committing crimes himself, or encouraging others to do so. It can be an outlet for such predilections. Shaming someone for them doesn't make them magically go away. And I can imagine him being the only one willing to marry her with her association with her father.

Do you mean literal torture? Ouch, sadistic ones are scary.

I'm not surprised she hired her own father. People will do a lot of things, when their own family is involved. This isn't to defend the decision, but it isn't inherently irrational.

Is there anywhere where it would be appropriate for her father to work? A lack of stable employment could contribute towards him committing further crimes. Preferably, somewhere away from children?

You should have googled the situation before you made that assertion. Her father is in jail for 22 years due to the atrocity of the crimes he committed in his attic against that 10 year old girl. Per news coverage of the matter in the Guardian the role Aimee gave him after he had been charged with child abuse and rape(1) quote 'may have allowed him to interact with vulnerable people.'(2)

It is also of note that the claims the 10-year old girl made about the abuse conducted in the attic of the family home aligned with what the police found in the attic on the day of the arrest.

Source: 1. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/31/green-party...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/12/green-party...

I presume we're talking about the time he worked as her campaign manager?

If he was placed into a role which brought him into direct contact with vulnerable individuals, that would be very reckless, as sadistic offenders are commonly referred to as high risk in the scientific literature.

I'd like to imagine someone wouldn't risk doing that while on bail (the alternative is very terrifying), and perhaps, he would not, but it would still be very reckless.

Thank you for your post, I got a bit confused as some comments are insinuating the father was the moderator, and others insinuated the husband was.

I'll stand by my points about the husband (as it feels like people are trying to punish him by association + trying to shame him for his personal interests), although I wish Reddit had E2EE or some feature, so that no employee (no matter whether it's publicly known they're dodgy or not) can read someone's private messages. And if there isn't a strong audit trail, there should be one. There shouldn't be one super role with access to everything either.

A stable job can help to keep someone out of trouble. Someone who feels completely hopeless, and that everyone is against them, might just decide to take the step to committing a terrible crime.

The risk of any particular person with such interests committing a crime is very low, and it usually takes additional factors to push that up. I don't see enough things to give me reason to believe he would, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here.

If it does turn out she turned a blind eye to her father's abuses, then as far as I'm concerned, she is complicit, and shouldn't have the role at all.

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