How many child sex abusers have you known over the course of your life? How many have you suspected?
One that I knew never got caught. Learning only later in life his history of raping pre-teen girls, I am flummoxed by how he was able to lord it over me, because I was openly gay, while he retained the moral high ground as a straight husband and father, for himself. To him, my most useful contribution to society was my ability to change a tire, which astonished him when I did it once, and little else. For the record, no, he was not my own father.
The whole thing about the Epstein operation is that it was all about power and the entitlement that comes with it. A child who is raped, especially if repeatedly by a so-called loved one, carries a trauma for the rest of their life that profoundly impacts her ability to assess her role and her potential in the world.
The violation of trust associated with such situations is irreparable, but to the straight male, exercising what he feels is his “right,” even if slightly frowned upon by society, there is no consideration of this. Even if he feels the need to apologize to a victim later in life, it is almost always out of fear that he will be exposed, and even if there’s more to it, there’s no way for the victim to know if that’s so. Occasionally, he will catch a glimpse in his conscience about just how horrible what he did was, and feel remorse.
Now we can see why our society needs a religion that offers unconditional forgiveness. Not that I believe forgiveness is not central to all our lives, because it surely is, and the offer of it lifts clouds of guilt and shame even when their source goes unnamed. It gives us all the potential for a new start, except for those who were victims of the kinds of hidden abuse they were unable to shake for the rest of their lives.
I am hardly qualified to diagnose the best pathways such a victim can take to overcome their abuse, except to say that there is little in life more important than the ability of anyone to own a level of personal integrity and honesty, even if the whole world doesn’t need to know the details of anyone’s personal life.
More power to former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in this regard, whose turning point against Trump came when she was told by male abusers to shut up about the lives of the victims of Epstein and Trump. That is one of those lines that should not be crossable.
No one is perfect, that’s for sure. Maybe there are true saints, but I don’t know if I’ve met any. The rest of us struggle to one degree or another with our mortality and the more honest we are able to be with ourselves, the better our chances, I think.
But this Epstein network is something else. Stanley Kubrick tried to touch on it in his last movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.” But the evil ran, and runs, so much deeper. There is the report of a justice department move to call off an investigation of an Epstein ranch in New Mexico where reportedly two 12 year old girls were buried after being subjected to rough sex at the hands of an older man.
If humanity is to be able to move forward beyond this current troubled time, the whole truth about the unspeakable ugliness of the whole Epstein/Trump affair must come out.
That which has been hidden must be made fully public, and the penalties for egregious, conscious crimes against humanity must be harsh. A new level of anger needs to rise among the just to purge our society of the kind of sickness that has been allowed to fester at such high levels.
