He met the girl via a website that claimed to be age-verified. Turns out she lied about her age, and the site didn't actually (properly) verify her. He still should've verified her age himself, but it kinda changes the narrative.

Well that's quite a lie you've made here. He didn't sexually assault anybody, it was consensual with a minor.

Consensual sex with a minor isn't by definition. I mean, even the _charges_ say 'sexual assault', so this is not something the GP is inventing out of thin air.

The fact that different countries have different cutoff ages for statutory rape (the girl was 16, whereas some countries set the limit to be as low as 15, in particular most of Europe is 16 or below) makes this much less of a clear cut than your comment implies.

It really isn't a lie. The state of Texas considers a 30 year old man fucking around with a "girl younger than 17 years" to be sexual assault. He has been charged with 4 counts of sexual assault.

Why can't they just be a standup guy that has issues dealing with women in specific circumstances? Why are they defined by that specific case and not their holistic behavior?

Judging someone for their holistic behavior doesn't mean ignoring their sexual assault. What are you even asking?

Why can’t Josef Stalin just be a standup defender of the arts that has issues with killing people in specific circumstances?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> That doesn't mean they remain a standup guy when left alone around women.

Agreed, of course. I'm just speaking of my own experience.

The girl was 16, which means what he did is perfectly legal in most of Europe.