Allegation: I had sex with Y while she was intoxicated and when she did not want to

Y did not appear intoxicated on the evening in question, or any other evening we spent together. She had poured herself a cup of sparkling wine before I arrived in Berlin, which was unfinished when I arrived. I did not see her drink any. She told me she did not like the wine, and did not want it. On this basis, I am confident that she had barely drunk any alcohol and was sober. The idea to drink alcohol at all was proposed by Y. I also had a cup of wine which I did not finish.

The allegation that we had sex when Y did not want to refers to a particular identifiable occasion. On that occasion, I stopped prematurely, and Y told me only afterwards that she had not wanted to continue.

The Allegation

Sex without consent is rape. If the other person is so intoxicated they can’t understand, evaluate or communicate consent, they are incapable of legally giving consent.

Y does not claim that she was incapable of giving consent, but says that she was ”intoxicated” and “could not remember how much she drank”. This does not meet the legal standard for rape, but it does suggest that her judgement might have been impaired by alcohol.

Nevertheless, many readers interpreted her publication as an allegation of rape. When it was discussed on Hacker News in 2021, the word “rape” or a variation of it appeared in comments 205 times and there was a lot of discussion about whether the experience she described constituted rape.

Remembering that he had suggested I get milk and wine in our previous conversation, I also bought them. I don’t remember how much I drank. I don’t remember him drinking. But I remember feeling uncomfortable when he made advances on me. I felt being taken advantage of that he had unprotected sex with me when I was intoxicated. Nothing felt right. I remember panicking and crying. Y, My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

Y does not say it explicitly, but you may infer that the reason she does not remember how much she drank is because she drank a lot. You may read her words and believe that the amount of alcohol she had consumed put her close to the threshold above which she might not have been able to give consent.

I intend to show that she was not only below this threshold, but was sober. Furthermore, I intend to show that she is unlikely to be uncertain about the amount she drank and the amount I drank.

Tolerance

I am not teetotal, but I drink alcohol occasionally; typically less than the equivalent of five glasses of wine per year. This has been my normal intake for all of the last twenty years. I do not enjoy the experience of being even slightly inebriated. I have been drunk fewer than ten times in my life. I prefer soft drinks to alcoholic drinks. I dislike beer and almost never drink it.

I do not know Y’s drinking habits with any certainty, but she mentioned drinking on several occasions, and spoke about it as something she does in moderation.

On 1 May 2018, she told me that she enjoyed drinking and that she had a high tolerance for alcohol, and no desire to be drunk.

A few days later, she told me that she had drunk “only a bottle” of wine, which she described as “not much”.

While my interpretation is that Y alone drank the bottle of wine, she could have meant that one bottle was shared between her and her friend (who is mentioned briefly in earlier messages).

A few days later, on 10 May 2018, she asked if I could tell that she had been drinking, from a photo she had shared on Instagram. I no longer have the photo.

It is reasonable to assume that Y could have exaggerated the amount of alcohol she drank on these occasions, and could have understated the amount to which it affected her. But even allowing for this, her words suggest that she would be able to drink a moderate amount of alcohol without her judgement being impacted.

Moreover, she had given me every indication that she could drink a moderate amount of alcohol without it impairing her judgement, and I believed this. Specifically, at the time I arrived in Berlin, I would not have expected an amount equivalent to one glass of wine to have any noticeable effect her.

When I met her that evening, she appeared completely sober, and I believe she was.

Therapy

A few days before we met in Berlin, on 9 May 2018, I shared some private details about myself which Y had found idiosyncratic. She proposed that she would give me “therapy”.

This was not the first time she had proposed “therapy”. Previously—either face-to-face when we had met in Kraków or during a phone call—she had suggested talking and drinking beer. I had rejected the idea of beer—I don’t like it—and had proposed wine instead, since some form of alcohol was apparently part of the proposal.

It was in the context of this past discussion that I proposed wine, then joked that I would rather drink milk, because she already knew I didn’t like to drink alcohol and I knew that she could not drink milk.

It is unclear whether this is the conversation Y refers to in which I proposed buying “milk and wine” or if I had made my request to buy milk during a phone call, and for the more likely reason that I wanted to drink it with coffee. There is no other record in our messages where I ask for milk. I do not believe that Y took this as a serious request for milk. I would be surprised, therefore, if she bought milk because she did not realize I was joking.

I saw Y’s proposal of “therapy” as an allusion to have a deep, personal discussion; and I liked the idea. I decided to indulge her in the pretence that she could give me the insight of her therapy. I even sent Y a calendar invitation for a ”therapy session”, which she accepted. I regarded it as flirting by both of us.

Accepted invitation for "therapy" with Y

Drinking

I arrived at the accommodation I was sharing with Y almost exactly at the pre-agreed time of our “therapy session”. We sat down together in the living room of the apartment within about ten minutes of my arrival. We were talking for about ten minutes before we kissed and moved to the bedroom. It was during these minutes that I drank some wine.

There was only this short period of time during which I could drink wine. Y brought the wine (which she had bought) to me, and one of us poured some into a cup. We could not find any wine glasses in the apartment.

When I arrived, Y already had her own cup of wine, but I did not see her drink any of it, and I do not believe she drank any in my presence. I tried to encourage her to drink more by offering to pour her more, but she declined because her cup was already full, and she told me she had tried the wine and did not like it. It was a sparkling wine, and my recollection is that she told me this was the reason she didn’t like it.

I drank some of the wine in my cup, but not all of it.

On a later evening during the time we were staying together, I offered Y some of the same bottle of wine. She declined, telling me again that she didn’t like it and adding that I would “have to drink it”.

I didn’t want to drink it, and the half-finished bottle remained in the fridge of the apartment until we both left. I left one day before Y, so she was responsible for checking out of the apartment.

I spoke to her on the phone on 26 May 2018 for 48 minutes, after we had both left. During this call, I asked Y about checking out of the AirBnb and asked specifically if she had removed the wine (and some other items) from the fridge. This was a concern because I wanted to leave the AirBnb in good condition when I left, and cared about the review I would receive. Y told me that she had not emptied the fridge before she left.

I do not know for certain whether Y drank a cup of wine before the cup she didn’t finish. But it seems unlikely that she would drink one cup then pour herself a second cup which she then chose not to drink for the reason that she did not like it.

Therefore, by my best estimate, Y drank about half a cup of wine. Nothing about her state when I saw her suggested to me she was anything less than sober.

In determining the total amout of alcohol that Y drank that evening, there is a hard maximum of one bottle of wine, from which the wine already accounted for can be subtracted: one cup which I had, Y’s unfinished cup, and an amount that was left in the fridge.

Since Y knows that she bought only a single bottle of wine, even if she had forgotten how that wine was distributed, she would know that the maximum she could have drunk was much less than one bottle.

Given what she knew, I find it hard to reconcile her claim of, “I don’t remember how much I drank,” with the details I remember.

To the best of my knowledge, she did not drink in the apartment on any other day we spent together.

Sex

This is a sensitive topic, and I have a duty to protect Y’s privacy. I will share no more detail than I believe is necessary to address the allegations she made against me. More details certainly exist and I am consciously omitting some. This should not signal that I am aware of a particular detail or that I’m not. And it should not signal that I have nothing to say about it; only that I do not consider addressing it necessary in this response to the allegations made against me in public. I am available to answer any questions in private.

Y and I had sexual intercourse on four occasions during the nine days we spent together in Berlin.

The first time was soon after we kissed. We went to the bedroom and, to the best of my recollection, had between half an hour and an hour of intimacy without penetrative sex. We talked to each other frequently but not continuously.

I asked Y if I should “go and get something”, which I intended as a euphemism for getting a condom from my bag. To the best of my recollection, it was not initially clear to her what I meant, so I asked her explicitly. When she understood, she told me, in a tone that appeared to be half-joking and half-serious, that bringing condoms was “presumptuous” of me. I found the comment slightly unfair.

We began having penetrative sex, using protection. After a short time, Y told me she wanted to go to the bathroom, without elaborating. She was quite abrupt, and I wondered if something was wrong.

After she had been gone for a couple of minutes, I presumed that she had changed her mind, and I removed the condom, and concluded that we were not going to have sex. Between ten and fifteen minutes passed before Y came back from the bathroom, and I asked her if she was alright.

She told me she was, and that she wanted to try again, and we began having penetrative sex almost immediately. I was no longer using any contraception, and not knowing whether Y was taking contraception, I took steps to avoid an unnecessary risk.

Afterwards, we talked for several hours into the night. We stayed in bed late the following morning, and had penetrative sex a second time, with protection. It was notable that we were interrupted when the AirBnb host entered the apartment unexpectedly.

We attended the opening day of the conference that evening. We held hands on the way, but stopped, at my request, as we approached the venue.

Afterwards

I had decided by 17 May 2018 that I did not want to continue the relationship, and I told Y this. I have not shared my exact reasons, but I was certain that the relationship did not have a long-term future. This was around three days into the nine days we were spending together. I told her that for the remaining nights, we should sleep apart. (The apartment had two beds.)

Initially, she received the news well, and we spent that night apart.

On the following day, Y asked me if we could go back to sharing a bed. I told her that I did not think this was a “good idea”. I knew very clearly that I did not want the relationship, and did not want to give her any hope that it still had a future. Sleeping apart seemed like the best way to maintain that.

She tried to convince me that “we might as well” sleep in the same bed for the remainder of the time we were staying together. This conversation was friendly—she was smiling throughout—but at the same time adversarial: when I gave reasons why we shouldn’t share a bed, she refuted them or responded with new reasons why we should (or why it wouldn’t matter if we did). She seemed to treat it as a game she wanted to win—by getting me to agree to something I didn’t want to agree to.

I felt disadvantaged because I wanted to hide my reasons for breaking up from her—she would have been hurt to hear them—though I hadn’t stopped being her friend, and I hadn’t stopped being physically attracted to her. But I didn’t want to rekindle it. It was over.

The conversation itself only made me more sure of my decision. But it became so frustrating that I eventually gave in and agreed.

I feel weak that I gave in to her persistence. It’s easy to read my description and think that I was too easily persuaded. I hold myself accountable for not being as resolute in that moment as I was when in ending the relationship. But it was not a normal conversation. Y’s responses were incessant and the conversation was becoming repetitive; it went on for several minutes. I could have stopped it by being more forceful, and created fresh tension between us, but I came to conclude that my life would just be easier if I agreed with her. I came to accept her point that it didn’t matter if we shared a bed for a few more nights.

I did so begrudgingly, but our interactions were still amicable. We slept in the same bed for the remaining nights. Predictably, perhaps, that led again to intimacy, and then to sex. For the avoidance of doubt, nothing happened that I did not fully consent to.

There was another time that he insisted on having intercourse regardless of me didn’t want to. I did not blame him for what happened, and didn’t think those behaviors were problematic at the time, because it didn’t even cross my mind that he would do anything that I wasn’t comfortable with. I trusted that he would not hurt me. I even blamed myself for not being clear. Y, My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

While we were having sex on this occasion, I felt that Y was tense, and did not appear to be enjoying it. I asked her if she wanted to stop and she didn’t answer, but she still seemed tense as if holding her breath; I told her to relax more, because I thought this would help. I asked her once or twice again if she wanted to stop, and she still didn’t answer. By this point I was not enjoying the experience, so I stopped unilaterally.

Afterwards, I asked her about it, and she told me that she had felt some soreness and hadn’t wanted to continue. I asked her why she didn’t reply when I asked her, and she told me that she had. However, I had asked her several times, and I heard nothing. I know without any doubt that I would stop immediately if she wanted me to. If she had spoken, then she had spoken so quietly that I couldn’t hear her, but I do not believe she said a word. In the end, I stopped anyway because I did not want to continue.

I was annoyed that Y hadn’t been clear with me, and I criticized her for not being clear when I had asked her. We didn’t talk any more about it then, or ever again.

Although it is not true that I “insisted on having intercourse”, I believe this is the occasion Y refers to in her statement, because it is the only time that anything happened that bore any resemblance to her portrayal.

Nine Days

Y and I spent nine days together in Berlin. She described that time as ”horrifying”. I know that Y experienced a full range of emotions during the time we spent together. Only Y knows these emotions with certainty, and there may have been times when she was horrified. But I do not believe that it accurately reflects her predominant emotions and the emotions she expressed to me for the majority of the time we spent together.

During those horrifying days, I felt that he was treating me as an object. Y, My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

But I know that Y had both highs and lows in that time, and I know that most—but not all—of these can be attributed to our relationship, which quickly became serious, and soon after ended abruptly.

I have nothing to say here about the lows. But in those nine days we also had fun, before and after I asked to break up. We talked and laughed. We went for coffee in my favorite coffeeshop. We went running together in Mauerpark. We visited Tiergarten and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

A contemporary summary of how Y felt overall about the nine days we spent together might have be expressed through an interaction on the day I left.

I was departing Berlin one day earlier than Y. Just before I left, she told me she wanted to say “goodbye” to me properly. She told me to stand in a certain position as she ran a few paces towards me, jumped and held me in a long embrace. It was melodramatic; it was playful; it was juvenile. But it was also warm, tender and affectionate.

My Request

If you signed the Open Letter in 2021 because you found Y’s publication compelling, please reconsider her words in light of the evidence above.

Her post was hugely damaging to me. The complete absence of due process meant that none of her claims were ever verified with me before they were published.

If, like many others, you feel like justice may not have been rightly served, you can make a meaningful step towards helping me get my life back by removing your name. I am grateful for your consideration.

❧

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