You are a government. You are looking for any and all ways to gain domestic and international strategic advantage . You operate in the shadows to entrap the rich/powerful (the “you” from the above quote) in compromising positions and develop a vast web of blackmail and influence. One of your lowly errand boys (Epstein) realizes that - absent any nationalistic ideology and with criminal tastes of his own - he is better off as a free agent. And off he goes…
My personal theory is that he wasn’t an actual CIA agent but that he was mentored by former/current agents who worked in the shadows.
I hate to say it – but I think it’s always been like this.
Read The Sewing Girl’s Tale by John Wood Sweet. From Amazon: *“A riveting Revolutionary Era drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two centuries—and how much has not”
And this, also from Amazon:
On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape.
Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. The ongoing conflict attracted the nation’s top lawyers, including Alexander Hamilton, and shaped the development of American law. The crime and its consequences became a kind of parable about the power of seduction and the limits of justice. Eventually, Lanah Sawyer did succeed in holding her assailant accountable—but at a terrible cost to herself.
Based on rigorous historical detective work, this book takes us from a chance encounter in the street into the sanctuaries of the city’s elite, the shadows of its brothels, and the despair of its debtors’ prison. The Sewing Girl’s Tale shows that if our laws and our culture were changed by a persistent young woman and the power of words two hundred years ago, they can be changed again.
When I read about Karen Mulder and the tactics used to silence her, I remember this book: The Woman They Could Not Silence, by Kate Moore, which is set in civil war era Illinois. Elizabeth Packard was so brave.
But I have to lob in a truth bomb as we all wonder what it is about the psyche of the billionaire. Statistically, a kid is more likely to be abused or trafficked by a family member, friend, “trusted adult” than by a random billionaire. Yes, the news from all of this is disgusting and horrifying, and the cover up is appalling and I hope a lot more of these awful people are identified and made to pay- not just by stepping down from some prestigious job, but actual legal consequences.
There are no billionaires in my town (I am very confident of that). But a check of the sex offender registry shows a lot of offenders. And in the cases where the records aren’t sealed, you can download details of the case. And the grandpa, uncle, step-brother, etc. cases- nauseating in their detail– likely couldn’t have happened without a LOT of family members choosing to ignore what they saw in front of them. And it seems like absent a mandated reporter (a pediatrician reporting a 9 year old with an STD; a teacher reporting something that did not add up) the situation could have continued for years without anyone trying to protect the kids.
100% Kids are definitely more likely to be kidnapped or abused by a family member.
But at the moment we are trying to find the truth and make it public and hold people accountable. I want to hold anyone accountable for any crime especially crime upon kids.
I want every rich elite person involved with Epstein be brought down even the ones who might have turned a blind eye.
Another unfortunate truth bomb - that list of “trusted adults” very much includes Catholic priests, and the Catholic Church was 1000% involved in a global pedophilia conspiracy for decades.
Not arguing, of course you are right. But if we are to learn any lessons from those tragic situations, wasted lives, etc. we need to make sure that the “I didn’t know anything, he was just giving me tax advice” (the Epstein version of the Cardinals who were moving priests from parish to parish claiming “they needed someone who could engage the youth”) gets exposed for what it is.
This is true - when I joined my love’s family, almost 30 years ago, my D was 81/2 - my loves mother took me aside one day “I don’t want to share specifics, but do not leave JustaDaughter alone with grandpa” - my response…thank you! (I didn’t need specifics!)
I remember growing up and all the “dirty old men” my own mother would warn me about. The “creepy guy” in the house down the street that my friends and I would cross the to the other side in order to not pass his place. The other guy down the street that offered my best friend and me (when I was 10) a ride to 7/11 then pulled out his genitalia and asked if we wanted to touch it (my friend was 18 months older than me, and very quickly said, “Oh there’s my auntie, we can get out here” (it was just a random lady walking on the sidewalk). Or the old dude that followed us as we (at 9!) walked to the beach making crude remarks - we ducked into a stationary store, and told the female clerk we were being followed and she stepped out of the store and told him to “get lost, or else” (while holding a broom) - and soooooooooo many more, including a time I was physically assaulted (at 12) by a doctor in an exam room (you can bet I never let D go into an exam room without me, and have never chosen a male doctor since). I (and most of my friends) could write a book of cautionary tales…None of these were billionaires, nor influential. But after reading countless stories of people starting their careers in TV, film, music, etc., I can totally see how the sphere of influence (perceived or otherwise) could make a parent (or the abused person themselves) less wary of these people.
yes. Someone needs to do a doctoral dissertation in Psych or Sociology to compare the per capita rates of abuse in various evangelical movements vs. the Catholic Church. Every day it seems another religious leader somewhere who has screamed from the pulpit that “deviants” are taking over our country gets arrested for something unspeakable.
I remember in the early days of “Me Too” we were at a get-together of the neighbors a bunch of couples all of a similar age. Not one of the women did not have some horror story about men behaving badly. We were a lucky group, none of us had been raped, but we all knew someone who had. And we’d all been groped, dealt with flashers, been terrified that we’d gotten ourselves into a situation that we couldn’t get out of… The men were dumbfounded, they had no idea how ubiquitous this behavior is.