Jacob Appelbaum, as seen in this 2013 photo. (credit: Tobias Klenze)
Tor Project officials say that one of their most public-facing developers and a member of the “Core Team,” Jacob Appelbaum, left the organization on May 25 after “public allegations of sexual mistreatment.”
In a statement published Saturday on the Tor Project’s website, the organization wrote:
These types of allegations were not entirely new to everybody at Tor; they were consistent with rumors some of us had been hearing for some time. That said, the most recent allegations are much more serious and concrete than anything we had heard previously.
We are deeply troubled by these accounts.
We do not know exactly what happened here. We don’t have all the facts, and we are undertaking several actions to determine them as best as possible. We’re also not an investigatory body, and we are uncomfortable making judgments about people’s private behaviors.
The statement continued, saying that Tor is “working with a legal firm” specializing in sexual misconduct. The statement added: