I thought he initiated while she was unconscious, and then she woke up during the act and made no objection. The accusation is that there was some previous condom-only agreement, though it hasn't even been clear how that agreement was made or how strongly those wishes were expressed, and I image the reasoning for not objecting during the act would be that she either couldn't tell (which would be hard to believe...) or was just too caught up in the moment and developed regrets later.
Yeah, I see a lot of grey area there.
Less so with the other one, where it sounds like they were in a consenting situation, but at some point he held her down and she struggled. The account is really vague, but there would be some heavy context required for that to be ok in any case.
I do really dislike the way the word rape works here... anybody too lazy to read up on it will hear rapist, and associate that with the worst possible definitions. I know Vector hates that kind of talk, but I see it as a serious problem.
I don't see why someone else can't just take over his work. Its not like he was the only person working on wikileaks.
As I understand, he's a founder of the organization, which he was able and motivated to accomplish due to some very unique qualities.
1. His family traveled extensively and spent considerable time in hiding when he was young.
2. He's a world-class hacker.
3. Connections.
How many people like this exist, and of those, how many will be willing to fill in for a role in an organization left by someone whose character has just been publicly mutilated? People may choose to form other organizations instead, but current efforts to do that are either horribly executed or intentionally set up for failure and it's unlikely that authorities will allow such an organization to gain significant public presence and momentum like this again.