CAMBRIDGE, MA—Shortly after it became widespread public knowledge that the research institution had accepted contributions from the late convicted sex offender, the MIT Media Lab announced Monday that it had agreed to return all of Jeffrey Epstein’s donated girls. “As soon as we learned that several high-level Lab officials had accepted underage girls on Mr. Epstein’s behalf and then worked to conceal his identity as their contributor, we immediately returned them all,” said MIT president L. Rafael Reif in a statement, adding that he was launching a full investigation into why longtime Media Lab director Joi Ito continued to accept donations of 14- and 15-year-old girls from Epstein well after his 2008 conviction for sex trafficking of minors. “These girls were obviously donated anonymously, but as soon as we learned that they were from Mr. Epstein, we decided to take immediate action to divest ourselves from them. We realize it reflects poorly on us, but we must note that we are a large organization that takes in many pubescent girls, and are simply unable to check the source of every donation. Of course, many of the girls have been used in MIT Media Lab projects over the years, and some of them don’t speak English well, so it may take time to ensure that every last one of them has been returned. We apologize for accepting Mr. Epstein’s teenagers, and vow to ensure that we vet our girl donors more carefully in the future.” At press time, MIT announced plans to atone for the mistake by agreeing to make a sizable donation of girls to the Clinton Foundation.

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