Why Did So Many People in Epstein’s Circle Look the Other Way?

Here's what I learned from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal: If you're rich, practice the art of flattery, generous with favors, connections and donations, throw dinner parties with the stars and offer flights on your private jet, no one cares whether you hired a 14-year-old girl for sex. Even if you went to jail for it – although Alan Dershowitz and future Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta made a deal where you didn't serve the entire sentence and you were released during the day and on weekends. No one will ask many follow-up questions about your activities in the years since your run-in with the law. It was just one time! Error of judgment!

As Jeffrey Epstein's very good friend Noam Chomsky (yes, that Noam Chomsky) put it in 2023, when Wall Street Journal asked him about his extensive contacts with Epstein over the years: “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he was convicted of a crime and served his sentence. Under US law and regulation, this marks a clean slate.” (Not really—he was, after all, a registered sex offender in two states.) Never mind the gaggle of pretty young women who surrounded Epstein seemingly everywhere he went, or the Miami Heraldextensive reporting on his 2018 robberies or how the private jet that ferried girls and guests to his Caribbean island was called the “Lolita Express” by locals in the Virgin Islands.

Sorry, but how stupid should we be? Here is a middle-aged man, convicted of child molestation, and navigating the academic and financial stratosphere accompanied by very young women. According to Mother Jones interview with Epstein's longtime friend, art collector and industrialist Stuart Pivar: “If the conversation went beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt with, 'What does this have to do with pussy?!' And his friends thought there was nothing to see here? Seriously?

Epstein had no problem attracting famous, brilliant, extremely powerful people, almost all men, into his circle. Of course, not all of them took advantage of the sexual services offered, the so-called “massages.” Some needed money to support their projects or the opportunity to network with each other and meet billionaires and other important people such as Ehud Barak, Woody Allen, Steve Bannon, Larry Summers, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and others. piss Christ artist Andres Serrano and many, many top-notch mathematicians, scientists, financiers and economists. But everyone would see young women, and perhaps very young ones. And yet no one seemed to think to ask where they came from, who they were, why they were here.

Everyone who interacted with Epstein had more than enough information to ask difficult questions about their dear friend Jeffrey, and they chose not to ask them. Or maybe even think about them. As Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, who himself left Arizona State University amid allegations of sexual misconduct, said in a 2011 interview: “As a scientist, I always judge things based on empirical data, and there are always women around 19 to 23 years old, but I have never seen anything different, so as a scientist, I guess that whatever the problems, I would believe him more than other people… I don’t feel this. I was somehow tainted by my relationship with Geoffrey; I feel lifted by them.” The empirical data obviously does not include a conviction for solicitation of a minor and a lifetime placement on the sex offender registry.

To ask questions about women, they would have to see women as real people, just like their own daughters or students. How does a teenager get into a mansion or private island offering “massages” to middle-aged and older men? These are people accustomed to looking deep and looking for what is hidden, wherever this leads – in science, language, world affairs. But towards these women, these men showed deep indifference. They were mere props, aids, or, as Dominique Strauss-Kahn memorably put it, “equipment.” In degree, but not in kind, they are similar to the men in the south of France who were invited to rape the drugged Giselle Pelicot and who justified this strange situation on the grounds that her husband had given permission.

Epstein has become known as a pedophile, to the chagrin of Megyn Kelly, who for some reason points out that there is a difference between a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old. The “well, actually” crowd never tires of arguing that men who have sex with teenagers should properly be called hebephiles and ephebophiles. In addition, as Epstein's friend, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, told Reuters in 2015, girls are now growing up quickly. “By the time they're 14 or 15, they're the same as grown women were 60 years ago, so I don't think these actions are that disgusting.” But in a letter to the editor New York Times As noted, the point is not that on her 18th birthday a girl turns from a child into an adult, even if the law draws a sharp line. These were very young women thrown into a sea of ​​sharks. Where is the protective drive that we are always told is what it means to be a man?