Famous cybersecurity researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire allegedly beat and raped a number of women in past years, according to accusations detailed in a Sunday report from The Verge.
The alleged victims — hailing from North America to New Zealand, the home country of Marquis-Boire — spoke under anonymity. Through the pseudonym Lila, one of at least nine accusers gave The Verge “a chat log” as well as encrypted emails signed by Marquis-Boire through a PGP (cybersecurity program) key.
“In the e-mail, he apologizes at great length for a terrible but unspecified wrong,” the report reads. “And in the chat log, he explicitly confesses to raping and beating her in the hotel room in Toronto, and also confesses to raping multiple women in New Zealand and Australia.”
Lila was reportedly able to get Marquis-Boire to send over incriminating information of his severe misconduct by forcing him to communicate through those respective mediums. When she retells her account of what happened, Lila’s voice gets noticeably angry, according to The Verge, which did not publish the specific pieces of electronic communication.
After a number of alleged pleas for him to stop trying to have sex with her, Lila says “he ignored all of that, while he fucked me in the ass.”
Lila later found out that she wasn’t the only person with such accusations.
Marquise-Boire has been widely celebrated in the larger tech world, as well as part of the media industry. He’s had extensive profiles in big name publications like CNN and WIRED, and served as a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He also worked on the security team at Google, and as a member of the Free Press Foundation. All mentions of his affiliation, like profile pages, at these organizations appear to have been removed, but it is not clear when.
Lila told The Verge that she gave Marquis-Boire a chance to repent for his alleged crimes, and get some form of help so he would never do it again.
“But he also tried to weasel out of any responsibility for what he did to other women,” she said. “In the end he was not ready to face what he had done. And in the end, that is why I am doing this.” (RELATED: Tesla Says Sexual Harassment Accuser Received ‘Special Treatment,’ But ‘Chose To Purse A Miscarriage Of Justice’)
Marquis-Boire is just the second influential techie to have his life upended in recent days through a publicization of past actions.
Recent allegations, for example, have pinned Legendary hacker John Draper as a sexual miscreant. Specifically, several people — including Ethan Smith of The Wall Street Journal — have accused Draper of sexually molesting them.
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