[devinjflick]

I think your point about rehabilitation and "paying one's debt to society" is very valid. Unfortunately in Epstein's case the punishment hardly fit the crime, ultimately he served 13 out of an 18 month sentence. "after 3 1⁄2 months allowed to leave the jail on "work release" for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. This contravened the sheriff's own policies requiring a maximum remaining sentence of 10 months and making sex offenders ineligible for the privilege. He was allowed to come and go outside of specified release hours"[0]

Ito visited Epstein several times at Epstein's residences, which all apparently are plastered with enough "art" to make someone question if he really was a "reformed" sex offender. It should be perfectly clear to everyone that Ito understood two things: Epstein wasn't rehabilitated and Ito could claim enough plausible deniability if his dirty laundry ever got aired. His apology would be more meaningful if he actually donated to charities out of his own pocket rather than promising to externally raise funds...

Check out the his Wikipedia entry on how lax that sentence was.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Conviction_and...

[simplicio]

Even with Epstein's light sentence, I'd be open to Ito saying he believed Epstein had served his time and been rehabilitated.

But Ito doesn't even try to use that defense in his apology, because it would make explicit that he knowingly took money from a sex-offender. So instead he doesn't mention Epstein's conviction at all, uses some weasel language to make it sound like he was unaware of it without explicitly saying so, and tries to make it sound like he (Ito) was just a victim of circumstances.

It's a pretty impressive non-apology apology, since he makes a big show of apologizing for something, but not the actual thing most people find troubling about his behavior.