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From the report http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf Professor Lloyd's dealings look

From the report http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf Professor Lloyd's dealings look very, very shady: > Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008. He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence. Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and he has acknowledged Epstein in his academic publications. While Professor Lloyd clearly valued Epstein as a source of potential funding, he also told us he believed that, by continuing to engage with Epstein post-conviction, he could be part of Epstein’s rehabilitation. Professor Lloyd told us that, in 2005 or 2006 (before Epstein’s conviction), Epstein gave him a personal $60,000 gift to support his MIT research that Professor Lloyd did not submit through MIT. In possible violation of MIT policies and certainly in violation of MIT norms, Professor Lloyd deposited the gift into a personal bank account and did not report it to MIT. > Eventually, in July 2016, Professor Lloyd affirmatively contacted Epstein by email to ask for funding to support his upcoming sabbatical. On June 1, 2017, Epstein emailed his accountant and Professor Lloyd: “send 125 k to mit for seth lloyd from gratitude.”

gautamcgoel 7y ago
Wow. Seth Lloyd is a very well-known name in Quantum Computing. It's pretty shady that he's depositing $50,000 gifts from known sex offenders directly into his personal bank account...
- teachrdan 7y ago
  It would appear to be $50,000 plus $125,000 if I'm reading that last note correctly.
  - simlevesque 7y ago
    the last note says "send to mit", not "send to lloyd" so I'm not sure
    - willis936 7y ago
      “ps make sure my work gets paid this time so they can pay me to take an extended vacation”
  - perennate 7y ago
    The $60,000 gift in "2005 or 2006" is the only one the report says was deposited into his personal bank account. Because it was not sent to MIT, "this gift ... is not included in the $850,000 in" total donations the report indicates were accepted by MIT. In contrast, the $125,000 is included in the $850,000, as indicated by the breakdown in the table on page 9. Thus, though not stated explicitly, the report indicates that the $125,000 was sent to MIT (to fund Seth Lloyd's research but not into his personal bank account). (At any rate, the fact that he accepted a gift of any amount, especially into his personal bank account, is very concerning. Sounds like currently he has been put on administrative leave and we'll see what happens after they're done deciding what to do.)
    - ehsankia 7y ago
      What does "ask for funding to support his upcoming sabbatical" even mean? Is that for research, or is it money for him to just go on vacation for a year?
      - kd0amg 7y ago
        Full-year sabbatical is the norm, but the home institution does not necessarily offer salary for that full year, so it's up to the professor to find funding for the rest of it from the host or some grant. According to their web site[1], MIT pays salary for half of the sabbatical year, leaving Lloyd to raise the other half himself. 125k sounds to me like a believable half-year salary for a full professor at MIT. 1: https://vpf.mit.edu/300-sabbaticals https://vpf.mit.edu/300-sabbaticals
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Usually it means the professor is taking a break from teaching so they can focus on their research. There's no sabbatical police force though, so if the professor wants to hike the AT or backpack across Europe or something that's their prerogative.
      - perennate 7y ago
        Reif's e-mail [1] indicates he was forced into administrative leave, and that the leave was not Lloyd's decision. > The actions of a senior faculty member have raised new concerns. In keeping with MIT practice on faculty discipline, I have asked his department head to consider any appropriate action. In the meantime, in consultation with the provost, dean and department head, I have placed him on leave. Also I think administrative leave is different from other types of leave, which are all also different from sabbatical. [1] http://news.mit.edu/2020/letter-president-reif-fact-finding-report-0110 http://news.mit.edu/2020/letter-president-reif-fact-finding-...
- rolltiide 7y ago
  > Q: What steps is MIT taking to ensure that its fundraising processes and practices are consistent with Institute values? See most people have never been faced with the position of making sure convenient sums of money offered to them are consistent with the values they represent
- preommr 7y ago
  Can't these people just go to facebook and get like a 300k salary for a few years?
  - cotelletta 7y ago
    They are academics, so likely, no. Notoriously bad at actually accomplishing something with real world constraints, an actual timeline, and customer requirements.
    - mratsim 7y ago
      While I have a lot of critics for Academia in particular regarding code publication or reproducibility or the chase for the next conference paper, this is completely uncalled for. Their real world constraint is publish or perish, and they do have a timeline: the next conference. And their requirements does not include usability and maintenance. Also writing a good paper is a long endeavor, often frustrating, sometimes with politics involved.
      - kiliantics 7y ago
        Yeah but all of that actual work is typically done by grad students and then professors just put their name on the top of it. (Even the grant proposals are often written by grad students.)
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Maybe that's not their goal in life? Tenured professors do sometimes take leaves of absence to work for a period with some company on a problem they think is interesting. And many do consulting on the side. Tenured professor at an elite school certainly isn't a bad gig. But compensation isn't mostly at the senior engineer FAANG levels that people like to throw around. But then LOTS of jobs that people both enjoy and are useful to society aren't.
bobbles 7y ago
Does it seem strange that epstein would ask his accountant to move money around? Is this a normal accountant activity?
- BryantD 7y ago
  Yeah, it's normal. A personal accountant can and often will handle a lot of bookkeeper duties on top of the accounting work. See https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040115/do-i-need-personal-accountant.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/04011... for more.
ergothus 7y ago
> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, I live a fairly privileged life as a U.S. West Coast techie...and stopping at a private island for a few hours sounds crazy. Do non-billionaire people (active academics at that) really lead lives like this? `
- perennate 7y ago
  It is typical for academics to visit both potential and current sponsors to discuss research funding and collaborations. It is not typical for sponsors to own private islands, and I think visiting for a day is common but a few hours sounds short (but for a one-day visit, the discussions themselves would only be a few hours). These visits are generally paid for by the sponsor (flights, hotels).
  - dnautics 7y ago
    That's pretty interesting, my only experience of the sort was the sponsor (DARPA) visiting the academic's ocean-overlooking mansion (with two teslas in the garage) with very nice hors d'ouvres. Of course this academic was very well known for owning a yacht and doing "experiments" on the yacht (to be fair the project I was on used the results of one of those experiments). To be fair, my entire life story has been rather topsy turvy in many ways (went to an undergrad with more grad students, went to a grad school with no undergrads).
- nikhizzle 7y ago
  I imagine he was on St. Thomas, and took a small boat over.
- closeparen 7y ago
  In my upper-middle-class life, I’ve been an invited guest in some pretty mind-boggling old-money spaces a handful of times. Lots of kids growing up had stories from a week on their crazy rich family friend’s palatial vacation property or mega-yacht. At a highly selective university, the son of a teacher or an accountant might be dating the daughter of a household name CEO. Those people do sometimes have friends like us & a desire to entertain.
sequoia 7y ago
> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch Normally one would give the benefit of the doubt, but given the abhorrent acts people were perpetrating or turning a blind eye to in this case, I'm inclined not to. Hence this question of fact: Unless there are credible witnesses attesting to the fact that he spent his few hours on that island eating lunch, the report should refrain from speculation and simply say "he visited Epstein's island for a few hours." We don't know what he was doing.
- voxic11 7y ago
  I think the claim that he was stopping by for lunch is important to report on. But it should have been presented as a claim along with the source of the claim, rather than just asserted as fact.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Yeah he got $60,000 as an unreported funding gift that bypassed normal research funding mechanisms and went into his private bank account and was actually spent on ???, followed by a $125,000 donation that apparently followed the same route in order to "support his sabbatical", and this is on top of the $225,000 that Dr. Lloyd got through official channels from Epstein. The $185,000 made as alleged gifts to MIT but which went into Lloyd's bank accounts won't be returned by MIT or donated to charity, nor will the interest they earned on their investments from the officially given $850,000 money given over the last 15 years or so. And was there other side channel off the books funding beyond the $185,000 to Lloyd? Was he really the only one that saw huge sums of cash magically appear in his private bank account? All interesting. Will Lloyd return the $185,000 or donate it? Was any of that cash declared as income on his tax returns? So he says oh I just flew out to a Caribbean private island renowned for pedophilia for a brief lunch and nothing more, nothing to it, what's the big deal. Yeah... maybe that's what happened. We'll probably never know, but everyone that went to that island has a black mark.
    - awb 7y ago
      Why did Epstein transfer money to Lloyd though? If Lloyd was taking advantage of Epstein's island, wouldn't one expect money to be flowing from Lloyd to Epstein?
AlanYx 7y ago
My jaw dropped when I read page 9 of the report, it says "Professor Minsky (who passed away in 2016) had worked with Epstein to organize an off-campus conference on artificial intelligence that same year." That's quite a charitable characterization! The conference in question wasn't just any "off-campus conference" -- it was held on Epstein's island. Minsky had also organized a two-day symposium on Epstein's island several years prior (in 2002), a fact also totally omitted from the report.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Ugh. Everything about that island creeps me out. Hopefully someone (maxwell) is talking about what really happened there.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    We have testimony about what happened there: underage girls were taken there and had their passports taken away. Listen to TrueAnon to hear all about it and enjoy banter with your fellow SF labor organizing comrades.
    - astronautjones 7y ago
      long live warkrime
  - friendly_fren 7y ago
    Maxwell is an Israeli spy. She was responsible for procuring underage girls.
    - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
      How do you know this stuff though? Where are you getting the info? I see lots of speculation but not a lot of proof.
throwaway21210 7y ago
Harvard Professor Mark Newman also has similar shading dealings with Epstein. His own book, SuperCooperators [1], has nearly 3 whole pages dedicated to describing his experiences on Jeffery Epstein's Island, thanking him for all his support and basically sucking up to him by describing his (Epstein's) incredible intelligence. Stephen Hawking even makes an appearance in these stories with a talk about how Epstein rented a submarine so Hawking could experience being underwater. Epstein occurs so frequently in Newman's own book that he even is listed in the index (you can view the index on amazon for free). The book was published in 2011 after Epstein's first convictions. I find it very hard to believe all these scientist didn't know what was going on nor would I be surprised to find out they participated in it. [1] (https://www.amazon.com/SuperCooperators-Altruism-Evolution-Other-Succeed/dp/1451626630/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=mark+newman+supercooperators&qid=1578693595&sr=8-1-fkmr0 https://www.amazon.com/SuperCooperators-Altruism-Evolution-O...)
- mlyle 7y ago
  Yah-- Epstein did something nice for Hawking -- unknown if before or after the conviction-- therefore one can reasonably expect that Hawking knew Epstein was raping underage girls on his island and that Hawking participated. /s
  - throwaway21210 7y ago
    I'll admit the Hawking part was poorly worded. I didn't intend to specifically point the finger at him. However Mark Newman's own descriptions of spending days on this Island, eating breakfast with Epstein and all of his guests. Well I'm very suspect.
    - AndrewBissell 7y ago
      Epstein was, by all accounts, absolutely obsessed with sex and abusing underaged girls. One of his victims described the abuse he and Ghislaine Maxwell committed as "a full time job." So the question is, was he more or less restrained in broadcasting his proclivities in the early 2000s before his first conviction? And, was he more or less restrained on his private island which was essentially constructed for the purpose of facilitating his abuse?
selfishgene 7y ago
So many people left academia after completing their PhD because they could not find legitimate funding to continue their research. Lloyd should resign from MIT immediately. There is simply no excuse for soliciting money from a child trafficking racketeer like Jeffrey Epstein. If your research is worth pursuing, compete honestly for federal research grants like everyone else.
thatsenough 7y ago
What would Epstein get from Lloyd? If Epstein was in fact blackmailing the rich and famous, or running a sex trafficking operation for profit, how does he benefit from supplying donations (and whatever else he allegedly supplied) to a quantum computing professor?
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Epstein was most likely backed by Israel, so you should ask what they would want with quantum computing.
  - thatsenough 7y ago
    So your accusation is that Epstein blackmailed Seth Lloyd or converted him into an Israeli spy/consultant on quantum computing? Many engineering professors consult with private companies for a fee. So it seems odd that a country would need to take a roundabout and scandalous approach like this to pick a professor's brain, when they could just work though a legitimate-seeming company as an intermediary.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      We don't know what Epstein and his backers were after. Maybe Seth Lloyd had influence over someone or some other leverage they wanted. It definitely warrants further investigation though.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
Once you slipped and accepted the "gift," he and all Epstein's handlers had the person by the, you know what. So after that, nothing is rational. I also think it's easy to say "how could they do x and y with a 17 year old..." but humans are made of flesh and blood.

gautamcgoel 7y ago

Wow. Seth Lloyd is a very well-known name in Quantum Computing. It's pretty shady that he's depositing $50,000 gifts from known sex offenders directly into his personal bank account...

teachrdan 7y ago
It would appear to be $50,000 plus $125,000 if I'm reading that last note correctly.
- simlevesque 7y ago
  the last note says "send to mit", not "send to lloyd" so I'm not sure
  - willis936 7y ago
    “ps make sure my work gets paid this time so they can pay me to take an extended vacation”
- perennate 7y ago
  The $60,000 gift in "2005 or 2006" is the only one the report says was deposited into his personal bank account. Because it was not sent to MIT, "this gift ... is not included in the $850,000 in" total donations the report indicates were accepted by MIT. In contrast, the $125,000 is included in the $850,000, as indicated by the breakdown in the table on page 9. Thus, though not stated explicitly, the report indicates that the $125,000 was sent to MIT (to fund Seth Lloyd's research but not into his personal bank account). (At any rate, the fact that he accepted a gift of any amount, especially into his personal bank account, is very concerning. Sounds like currently he has been put on administrative leave and we'll see what happens after they're done deciding what to do.)
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    What does "ask for funding to support his upcoming sabbatical" even mean? Is that for research, or is it money for him to just go on vacation for a year?
    - kd0amg 7y ago
      Full-year sabbatical is the norm, but the home institution does not necessarily offer salary for that full year, so it's up to the professor to find funding for the rest of it from the host or some grant. According to their web site[1], MIT pays salary for half of the sabbatical year, leaving Lloyd to raise the other half himself. 125k sounds to me like a believable half-year salary for a full professor at MIT. 1: https://vpf.mit.edu/300-sabbaticals https://vpf.mit.edu/300-sabbaticals
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Usually it means the professor is taking a break from teaching so they can focus on their research. There's no sabbatical police force though, so if the professor wants to hike the AT or backpack across Europe or something that's their prerogative.
    - perennate 7y ago
      Reif's e-mail [1] indicates he was forced into administrative leave, and that the leave was not Lloyd's decision. > The actions of a senior faculty member have raised new concerns. In keeping with MIT practice on faculty discipline, I have asked his department head to consider any appropriate action. In the meantime, in consultation with the provost, dean and department head, I have placed him on leave. Also I think administrative leave is different from other types of leave, which are all also different from sabbatical. [1] http://news.mit.edu/2020/letter-president-reif-fact-finding-report-0110 http://news.mit.edu/2020/letter-president-reif-fact-finding-...
rolltiide 7y ago
> Q: What steps is MIT taking to ensure that its fundraising processes and practices are consistent with Institute values? See most people have never been faced with the position of making sure convenient sums of money offered to them are consistent with the values they represent
preommr 7y ago
Can't these people just go to facebook and get like a 300k salary for a few years?
- cotelletta 7y ago
  They are academics, so likely, no. Notoriously bad at actually accomplishing something with real world constraints, an actual timeline, and customer requirements.
  - mratsim 7y ago
    While I have a lot of critics for Academia in particular regarding code publication or reproducibility or the chase for the next conference paper, this is completely uncalled for. Their real world constraint is publish or perish, and they do have a timeline: the next conference. And their requirements does not include usability and maintenance. Also writing a good paper is a long endeavor, often frustrating, sometimes with politics involved.
    - kiliantics 7y ago
      Yeah but all of that actual work is typically done by grad students and then professors just put their name on the top of it. (Even the grant proposals are often written by grad students.)
- ghaff 7y ago
  Maybe that's not their goal in life? Tenured professors do sometimes take leaves of absence to work for a period with some company on a problem they think is interesting. And many do consulting on the side. Tenured professor at an elite school certainly isn't a bad gig. But compensation isn't mostly at the senior engineer FAANG levels that people like to throw around. But then LOTS of jobs that people both enjoy and are useful to society aren't.

bobbles 7y ago

Does it seem strange that epstein would ask his accountant to move money around? Is this a normal accountant activity?

BryantD 7y ago
Yeah, it's normal. A personal accountant can and often will handle a lot of bookkeeper duties on top of the accounting work. See https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040115/do-i-need-personal-accountant.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/04011... for more.

ergothus 7y ago

> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, I live a fairly privileged life as a U.S. West Coast techie...and stopping at a private island for a few hours sounds crazy. Do non-billionaire people (active academics at that) really lead lives like this? `

perennate 7y ago
It is typical for academics to visit both potential and current sponsors to discuss research funding and collaborations. It is not typical for sponsors to own private islands, and I think visiting for a day is common but a few hours sounds short (but for a one-day visit, the discussions themselves would only be a few hours). These visits are generally paid for by the sponsor (flights, hotels).
- dnautics 7y ago
  That's pretty interesting, my only experience of the sort was the sponsor (DARPA) visiting the academic's ocean-overlooking mansion (with two teslas in the garage) with very nice hors d'ouvres. Of course this academic was very well known for owning a yacht and doing "experiments" on the yacht (to be fair the project I was on used the results of one of those experiments). To be fair, my entire life story has been rather topsy turvy in many ways (went to an undergrad with more grad students, went to a grad school with no undergrads).
nikhizzle 7y ago
I imagine he was on St. Thomas, and took a small boat over.
closeparen 7y ago
In my upper-middle-class life, I’ve been an invited guest in some pretty mind-boggling old-money spaces a handful of times. Lots of kids growing up had stories from a week on their crazy rich family friend’s palatial vacation property or mega-yacht. At a highly selective university, the son of a teacher or an accountant might be dating the daughter of a household name CEO. Those people do sometimes have friends like us & a desire to entertain.

sequoia 7y ago

> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch Normally one would give the benefit of the doubt, but given the abhorrent acts people were perpetrating or turning a blind eye to in this case, I'm inclined not to. Hence this question of fact: Unless there are credible witnesses attesting to the fact that he spent his few hours on that island eating lunch, the report should refrain from speculation and simply say "he visited Epstein's island for a few hours." We don't know what he was doing.

voxic11 7y ago
I think the claim that he was stopping by for lunch is important to report on. But it should have been presented as a claim along with the source of the claim, rather than just asserted as fact.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Yeah he got $60,000 as an unreported funding gift that bypassed normal research funding mechanisms and went into his private bank account and was actually spent on ???, followed by a $125,000 donation that apparently followed the same route in order to "support his sabbatical", and this is on top of the $225,000 that Dr. Lloyd got through official channels from Epstein. The $185,000 made as alleged gifts to MIT but which went into Lloyd's bank accounts won't be returned by MIT or donated to charity, nor will the interest they earned on their investments from the officially given $850,000 money given over the last 15 years or so. And was there other side channel off the books funding beyond the $185,000 to Lloyd? Was he really the only one that saw huge sums of cash magically appear in his private bank account? All interesting. Will Lloyd return the $185,000 or donate it? Was any of that cash declared as income on his tax returns? So he says oh I just flew out to a Caribbean private island renowned for pedophilia for a brief lunch and nothing more, nothing to it, what's the big deal. Yeah... maybe that's what happened. We'll probably never know, but everyone that went to that island has a black mark.
  - awb 7y ago
    Why did Epstein transfer money to Lloyd though? If Lloyd was taking advantage of Epstein's island, wouldn't one expect money to be flowing from Lloyd to Epstein?

AlanYx 7y ago

My jaw dropped when I read page 9 of the report, it says "Professor Minsky (who passed away in 2016) had worked with Epstein to organize an off-campus conference on artificial intelligence that same year." That's quite a charitable characterization! The conference in question wasn't just any "off-campus conference" -- it was held on Epstein's island. Minsky had also organized a two-day symposium on Epstein's island several years prior (in 2002), a fact also totally omitted from the report.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
Ugh. Everything about that island creeps me out. Hopefully someone (maxwell) is talking about what really happened there.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  We have testimony about what happened there: underage girls were taken there and had their passports taken away. Listen to TrueAnon to hear all about it and enjoy banter with your fellow SF labor organizing comrades.
  - astronautjones 7y ago
    long live warkrime
- friendly_fren 7y ago
  Maxwell is an Israeli spy. She was responsible for procuring underage girls.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    How do you know this stuff though? Where are you getting the info? I see lots of speculation but not a lot of proof.

throwaway21210 7y ago

Harvard Professor Mark Newman also has similar shading dealings with Epstein. His own book, SuperCooperators [1], has nearly 3 whole pages dedicated to describing his experiences on Jeffery Epstein's Island, thanking him for all his support and basically sucking up to him by describing his (Epstein's) incredible intelligence. Stephen Hawking even makes an appearance in these stories with a talk about how Epstein rented a submarine so Hawking could experience being underwater. Epstein occurs so frequently in Newman's own book that he even is listed in the index (you can view the index on amazon for free). The book was published in 2011 after Epstein's first convictions. I find it very hard to believe all these scientist didn't know what was going on nor would I be surprised to find out they participated in it. [1] (https://www.amazon.com/SuperCooperators-Altruism-Evolution-Other-Succeed/dp/1451626630/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=mark+newman+supercooperators&qid=1578693595&sr=8-1-fkmr0 https://www.amazon.com/SuperCooperators-Altruism-Evolution-O...)

mlyle 7y ago
Yah-- Epstein did something nice for Hawking -- unknown if before or after the conviction-- therefore one can reasonably expect that Hawking knew Epstein was raping underage girls on his island and that Hawking participated. /s
- throwaway21210 7y ago
  I'll admit the Hawking part was poorly worded. I didn't intend to specifically point the finger at him. However Mark Newman's own descriptions of spending days on this Island, eating breakfast with Epstein and all of his guests. Well I'm very suspect.
  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    Epstein was, by all accounts, absolutely obsessed with sex and abusing underaged girls. One of his victims described the abuse he and Ghislaine Maxwell committed as "a full time job." So the question is, was he more or less restrained in broadcasting his proclivities in the early 2000s before his first conviction? And, was he more or less restrained on his private island which was essentially constructed for the purpose of facilitating his abuse?

selfishgene 7y ago

So many people left academia after completing their PhD because they could not find legitimate funding to continue their research. Lloyd should resign from MIT immediately. There is simply no excuse for soliciting money from a child trafficking racketeer like Jeffrey Epstein. If your research is worth pursuing, compete honestly for federal research grants like everyone else.

thatsenough 7y ago

What would Epstein get from Lloyd? If Epstein was in fact blackmailing the rich and famous, or running a sex trafficking operation for profit, how does he benefit from supplying donations (and whatever else he allegedly supplied) to a quantum computing professor?

malvosenior 7y ago
Epstein was most likely backed by Israel, so you should ask what they would want with quantum computing.
- thatsenough 7y ago
  So your accusation is that Epstein blackmailed Seth Lloyd or converted him into an Israeli spy/consultant on quantum computing? Many engineering professors consult with private companies for a fee. So it seems odd that a country would need to take a roundabout and scandalous approach like this to pick a professor's brain, when they could just work though a legitimate-seeming company as an intermediary.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    We don't know what Epstein and his backers were after. Maybe Seth Lloyd had influence over someone or some other leverage they wanted. It definitely warrants further investigation though.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

Once you slipped and accepted the "gift," he and all Epstein's handlers had the person by the, you know what. So after that, nothing is rational. I also think it's easy to say "how could they do x and y with a 17 year old..." but humans are made of flesh and blood.