Abuse, rape claims roll in against TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington appears to be in increasingly hot water. After Gawker unearthed allegations that the blogger and businessman beat his girlfriend and raped another woman, a slew of reports came in from colleagues and tech heavyweights appearing to confirm Arrington’s abusive tendencies.

The allegations started late last week when one of Arrington’s ex-girlfriends, Jenn Allen, the CEO and founder of start-up RTist.com, posted a public status update to more than 4 500 Facebook followers, claiming that Arrington had been physically abusive towards her and had threatened to “murder” her if she ever told anyone.

When Gawker posted an article centring around Allen’s claims, she took to the comments section alleging that Arrington had also raped a friend of hers.

Loren Feldman, a tech blogger and former friend of Arrington’s, appeared to back Allen’s allegations up calling his abuse of women the “worst kept rumour in the valley for years”. He also claimed to know of other women abused by Arrington over the years.

At the same time, Arrington’s former business partner, the entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, said that he too had heard a number of horror stories. “Story after horrific story of unimaginable behavior were told to me in private,” he wrote.

Former TechCrunch writer and Inquistr founder Duncan Riley meanwhile said in an interview that although he had never seen him physically harm anyone, Arrington “regularly used his height and stature to psychically intermediate others (standing over them, waving his arms around etc), and screaming and temper tantrums was a typical day in the TechCrunch office.”

The other side of the coin

Patrick Gallagher, a university friend and former colleague of Arrington posted a statement on Facebook stating that he’d never seen Arrington physically harm anyone in the 24 years he had known him:

It’s been difficult reading the horrible, unsubstantiated things written about Michael Arrington over the last week. I’ve known Mike since 1989. We went to college together, have worked together, have lived together and I have met just about every woman he has ever dated. I have never seen him physically threaten or harm anyone, woman or man and can’t imagine him doing so. I also worked at RealNames where I was interviewed as part of an internal investigation about a sexual harassment claim from another employee that was obsessed with Mike where he was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing. The investigation actually showed that she had threatened Mike and his girlfriend at the time.

Among those backing Gallagher’s statement was Techmeme founder Gabe Revera who said:

Same here. Never seen physical threats or harm. Known him since 2005, seen him at various events since then, and even rented a room at his home in 2006.

The man speaks

Arrington has responded to the allegations on his Uncrunched blog. In the blog post, he confirms that some of the allegations against him are criminal in nature but denies that there is any veracity to them:

There have been some extremely serious and criminal allegations against me over the last week. All of the allegations are completely untrue, and I’ve hired a law firm to represent me in the legal actions against the offending parties.

I know this isn’t, for now, much information. I will have a full and complete response to these allegations sometime later this week. My goal will be to direct as much sunlight as possible on the issues so that the absolute truth can be known and I can begin to put my life back together.

I’ve also asked my attorneys to contact appropriate law enforcement agencies about these false allegations. Given the gravity of the claims, I think it’s important that the police be involved in this now.

Image: Joi (via Flickr).