Wired’s Nitasha Tiku reports that Justin Caldbeck, a venture capitalist with a number of sexual harassment claims made against him, sent apology emails containing the same wording to multiple recipients.
Several women who’ve received the apology emails compared notes and found similar or identical wording in the messages. Two emails viewed by WIRED included the line, “I also completely understand that you may not believe my actions yet to be sincere and it is up to me to demonstrate over time that they are.” Both also included slightly different versions of this sentence, “I want to first let you know how incredibly deeply and profoundly sorry for everything I did to make any woman feel uncomfortable.”
What could be more Silicon Valley than using a “Dear $girl” form letter to apologize to one’s victims? A PHP script that scrapes LinkedIn to identify and preemptively form-apologize to likely future claimaints, perhaps.