For all the data released about Jeffrey Epstein, and all the data still to be (or not to be) released, there are still pieces of the big picture that go eerily unnoticed. They go unnoticed for the same reason than Epstein’s pedophilia ring went unnoticed to begin with. Though actually, it’s not true to say that it went unnoticed. What’s true is not that it was unnoticed, but that it was protected. And not just by Epstein’s powerful friends. It was protected by an entire system of banks and other financial institutions, and with the full complicity of the criminal justice system… in Florida and beyond.
Why? Because of an answer so obvious that while it stares us in the face, the misogynistic prejudices of our society create a delusional sense that it couldn’t be true. We’re quick to say, “Only a monster would do that to those innocent girls.” But the monster had many friends in high places. And one thing they all tacitly agreed on was this: it’s just girls. He got away with it not despite the fact that they were innocent girls, but because of the fact that they were innocent girls. He got away with it because it was girls, and to the system that protected him such girls don’t matter.
For years we’ve heard these women’s stories, yet only when it became a political football in a game where men were pitted against men did anyone care to say “We should listen to the women.” Why didn’t the system listen to the women long before now? It’s not as though any of these stories are new. You can kill people, imprison others, and prosecute many more, but none of that will itself address the deeper stain on America’s character that needs to be exposed here. We need more than justice; we need brutally honest self-awareness. American culture was far too fertile ground for such a crime as this.
Here, of course, was a perfect brew of vulnerability. They weren’t just girls. Most of them were poor girls. Girls that came from the foster care system, broken families, or families that were homeless. Girls who wanted to be more. To earn some money, so they could go to school, or help a parent with cancer. Girls who wanted to be loved, and were perfect fodder for the evil manipulations of Epstein and Maxwell.
Still, however, this is not just a story about the predators. It’s equally a story - or should be - about the predator’s protectors. It’s about people like…hmmm, let me think…. yep, people like Pam Bondi who, when she was Attorney General of Florida, did not pursue a new investigation at the state level even though new evidence against Epstein emerged, victims’ lawsuits were filed, and the absurd nature of his initial “deal of the century” became widely known.
Yeah, so maybe guys like Larry Summers and his ilk turned out to be creeps. But who in their right mind could have ever thought otherwise? Derision for anyone not as smart as he, as privileged as he, fairly dripped from his every erudite statement. But even then, it’s not about Summers. It’s about the club of callousness he belongs to. He isn’t accused of a crime at this point, although the shame now being heaped upon him seems well deserved. Ask a lot of women and they’ll tell you: the most polished pillars of the patriarchy know how to dress up good. Beneath that elite pedigree lies a cold, cold character. The last thing such men lose sleep over is the idea that anything they do might traumatize a few young girls.
The deeper problem is not a person, or even a particular group of people. The deeper problem is a creed: that girls don’t matter. Not that boys do, by the way. On a deeper level, the societal crime is that the suffering of the powerless does not matter. And no one is more powerless in this society than children. When Ghislaine Maxwell was asked the identity of a particular girl she was shopping with one day, she replied, “She’s nobody.” Because to her, that was true.
Young women and girls are exploited in this society, horribly and criminally, every single day. By pimps. By traffickers. By all manner of merchants of evil. In 2024 alone, 198,686 females under the age of 21 were reported missing in the United States (and that’s only the ones who were reported!). And where do you think they are now? You think they found nice desk jobs somewhere? Have you ever seen a picture of the burns created by hot irons, regularly inflicted by pimps on the skin of girls who had the audacity to say no, or otherwise get out of line? 100,000 to 300,000 girls, some as young as 12 or 14, are thought to be at risk of sex trafficking at any given time in this country. I remember seeing the short film Sex Slaves in the Suburbs several years ago on TV. It changed my life, and hopefully it would change yours. No one’s child is not at risk these days. I repeat that. No one’s child is not at risk.
My point is that just kicking Larry Summers off the board of Open AI isn’t going to fix this. Years ago, a highly placed politician allowed me to listen in on a phone call with someone in the FBI. It was after the discovery of the horrifying case of Jaycee Dugard, an eleven-year-old girl who had been abducted from a street in California and forced to live as a sex slave for over 18 years. Among other things, she was forced to bear two children by her abductor.
On the phone, the officer at the FBI was as deeply concerned as you’d want to think he was. In fact, I heard real sadness in his voice. But I remember what he said that day, that “The truth is, we know there are still lots of Jaycee Dugards out there. We just don’t have near the resources necessary to go find them all.” I’ve heard that from police regarding pimped girls, trafficked children, and all manner of the most vulnerable and victimized young people in this country.
The rich and powerful men who indulged their most craven, criminal impulses on Epstein’s island were no different than any other villains allowed to prey upon our children every day of every year. And that’s what America needs to face. Our country has a strange characterological trait when it comes to bearing witness to human suffering. If you show Americans one suffering child, we do care and we care greatly. But if you point out that millions of children suffer in the same way, our capacity for denial is off the charts. It’s too painful to face the questions then inevitably raised: why as a society do we cater so much less to the needs of powerless children than to the appetites of powerful adults? And if Epstein wasn’t so rich, and his friends so powerful, even now would we really care?
The problem is both ethical and legal. Ethically, the problem is not just those who raped the girls but also those who chose to look away. Politically, the answer lies in the corruption of our politics by the undue influence of. money, of course (the cancer underlying so many cancers). Children aren’t old enough to vote, so they represent no constituency. They’re not old enough to work, so they have no financial leverage. The resources we spend each year in addressing this problem are probably a fraction of what we spent on that whore fest at the White House last night.
Until we address this deeper scourge - our too easy acceptance of officialdom’s disregard for the suffering of children - then the evil will continue. Releasing the Epstein files is just one move on the chess board. There is a much deeper problem than the salacious drama played out in Epstein’s lair. Let’s not let the soap opera distract from the larger picture. Epstein’s crimes were allowed. The story is not just that it happened, but that it happened so easily.
It happened in a world where, in a horrifying underground of evil, such kids simply do not matter. Not just to Epstein. Not just to his friends. But to an entire system that protected them, and protects them still. To address that, we will need to look beneath the hood of all this. We need to look in our hearts, and revive our national conscience. We need to look at our continued acquiescence to a system that allows far too much pain to be inflicted on the powerless by the powerful. The problem is not that as citizens we do not know better, but that we the citizens are not running the show. Far too often, the better angels of our nature are kept contained within a world of faux politeness and political correctness. And whenever that happens, the demons have their way with us.
It’s one more situation where We the People need to take it from here.
I have faced down powerful men, and their female enablers, at the local level of the Navajo Nation, when it involved the abuse of children. Twice, the Superintendents of the school district in which I worked were apologists for the abusers. I didn't care about their status then, and I don't care about the status of the abusive class now. They are flesh and blood, same as the rest of us. Bring them to justice!
Yeah. We need to look at the extent and the kinds of corruption that create and sustain systems of slavery: sex slavery, wage slavery, trafficking laborer slavery, etc. ad infinitum. And of course, as Yoko Ono cried out so many years ago "Women are the niggers of the world." She said niggers for shock effect and because she is Japanese, but what she meant is slaves. You are a woman of wisdom and insight, heart and courage. So let us now take this moment to acknowledge not only the surface but the root of the problem. In case anyone else has had their heart shredded by the recognition that the drive behind the degradation and exploitation has names other than greed, unbridled capitalism, male hegemony, et. al. It also goes by the name egoic delusion, and in more ancient cultures, unmitigated evil. So yes, we desperately need societal and economic reform, so that we aren't so downtrodden that we have no opportunity to explore our inner being and take steps to open to our wider, truer, and more heart centered true selves. Some have posited that we are at the turning of the wheel of time, on the edge of the dawn of a new and more enlightened age, and perhaps that is true. At any rate, to be true to those of us who have looked most clearly at our eternal struggle to evolve, we must also ask the deepest questions: who are we, really, and what makes life worth living?