Commentary: ‘Epstein is the tip of a very large iceberg’

[DKW 86 7,410]

Commentary: ‘Epstein is the tip of a very large iceberg’

By Nicholas Kristof | The New York Times

 · Published: 19 hours ago
Updated: 11 hours ago

Jeffrey Epstein got away for years with raping underage girls, and the public is properly outraged that powerful people seemed to shrug and let him off easy.

But the problem isn’t one tycoon but many tens of thousands of men who pay for sex with underage girls across the country. And society as a whole reacts with the same indifference that authorities showed in the Epstein scandal.

“We see it as this singular narrative about this one guy,” said Rachel Lloyd, who wrote a superb book, “Girls Like Us,” about her own experience being sexually trafficked as a teenager. “There’s a much larger narrative out there about girls, often girls of color, who are commercially sexually exploited, often with impunity.

“It’s part of the same behavior, part of what we allow as a society,” Lloyd added. “He got away with it because society said he could, and that’s what other johns think as well.”

Lloyd now runs a first-rate program, GEMS, in New York for girls and young women who have been trafficked. The people she helps haven’t been whisked off to Caribbean islands on private jets, but the pattern is the same: sordid exploitation of vulnerable girls by older and more affluent men who get away with it.

Indeed, girls across the U.S. are often treated even worse than in the Epstein case: Some end up arrested for prostitution while their rapists get off scot-free.

If we want to channel our outrage at the Epstein case in a productive way, we could: A) ramp up prosecution of pimps who traffic children; prosecute johns who rape girls and boys; C) assist programs for survivors of trafficking; and D) support initiatives that help vulnerable youths avoid being victimized by predators.

“They’re not billionaires, but it happens all the time,” said Shelia Faye Simpkins, who ran away from home at 14 and into the arms of a pimp.

She was raised by an alcoholic who was addicted to drugs and taught her, when she was 6, how to perform oral sex on a man. Simpkins said intervention by social workers might have spared her a brutal career being beaten by a pimp when she didn’t earn a daily quota of $1,000.

She estimates that over the years she was arrested about 200 times for prostitution and other offenses; her pimp, never.

Eventually, Simpkins escaped that life and now works with an outstanding program in Tennessee called Thistle Farms that helps exploited women start new lives and find employment.

As world leaders prepare to gather at the United Nations, some 40 million people are effectively locked into modern forms of slavery, according to the Global Slavery Index. That includes sex trafficking but also child marriages and a great deal of forced labor.

In the United States, no one knows exactly how many children are sold for sex, but estimates have run between 10,000 and 100,000 in any given year. Whatever the number, it’s too many.

President Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump have both denounced sex trafficking, with the president saying he will leverage “every resource” to address this “urgent humanitarian issue.” Ivanka Trump has said that fighting trafficking is a major priority of her father’s administration.

But while the attention is welcome, it seems to be largely hot air — and Trump’s lurid descriptions of trafficking seem mostly to be a misleading rationale for his border wall. In fact, under Trump, the federal government is easing up on human traffickers.

Federal prosecutors initiated only 171 human trafficking cases last year, substantially fewer than the 241 in 2017 or the 223 in 2016, according to the Federal Human Trafficking Report series. Bradley Myles of Polaris, the organization that runs a human trafficking hotline, (888) 373-7888, notes that the number of T visas, which are given to trafficking victims, has also dropped, and a housing program for trafficking survivors has been canceled.

“I’m glad the issue has bipartisan support, but I don’t think enough is happening,” Myles said. “Epstein wasn’t this one bad apple; this is more of a systemic issue.”

If we could leverage outrage, there’s evidence of what works abroad and in the U.S. A group called the Freedom Fund has a report coming out this month showing that expanding grassroots initiatives could lead to huge reductions in forced labor in India.

Likewise, new studies of My Life My Choice, a Boston program for children who have been trafficked or are at risk of being trafficked, find that the girls become less likely to use drugs, engage in delinquent behavior or be arrested when provided counseling, mentoring and other support. The program’s participants on average were first sexually exploited at the age of 14 which should remind us that we need more help for vulnerable children, and less impunity for pimps and johns who exploit them.

“What was so painful about the Jeffrey Epstein case is that it wasn’t shocking,” Lisa Goldblatt Grace, co-founder of My Life My Choice, told me. “A wealthy white man leveraged his money, privilege and power to sexually abuse, to rape, young girls.”

Or, as Yiota Souras of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children put it: “Epstein is the tip of a very large iceberg.”

 

[DKW 86 7,410]

[DKW 86 7,410]

https://babylonbee.com/news/bill-clinton-epsteins-cause-of-death-depends-on-what-your-definition-of-suicide-is?fbclid=IwAR0iivSO-t7ewGwP2G6Rf2oBgO8Ki2fhSc171DbZAERMYRwn2unvHNxVN2Q

 

[aubiefifty 16,695]

think we will ever get to see the list? i heard it would never happen because of powerful people high up in our gov. personally i hope they burn every single abuser and politics should have nothing to do with it.

[DKW 86 7,410]

We are never going to see any list. These people are willing to do whatever it takes to keep this story from ever reaching critical mass...

[DKW 86 7,410]

[alexava 6,973]

I think this murder conspiracy s*** is ridiculous. 

[DKW 86 7,410]

4 hours ago, alexava said:

I think this murder conspiracy s*** is ridiculous. 

Those of us that think for ourselves find it incredible that some folks will buy any amount of horse***t their party apparatchiks tell them, no matter how much it defies reason and logic. 

[DKW 86 7,410]

 

[DKW 86 7,410]

 

[DKW 86 7,410]

[alexava 6,973]

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

Those of us that think for ourselves find it incredible that some folks will buy any amount of horse***t their party apparatchiks tell them, no matter how much it defies reason and logic. 

You just went “reason and logic “ with that s***? You’ve ******* lost it. Lmfao 

[DKW 86 7,410]

So, you think it is reasonable for the Federal Govts most important witness to be held Suicide Watch but released hours before he supposedly committs suicide?

That the Guards never checked on the govts most important witness.

That the guards slept thru the whole shift?

That the other inmates reported hearing a scuffle in his jail cell, but no one came to help him?

 He commits suicide right after being cleared by psychiatrists?

That he had "tried to commit suicide once before but was still removed from suicide watch?

That his lawyers reported him in very high spirits just hours before. 

That the cameras on that floor were disabled/not working.

All the other issues about his apparent suicide but you dont have one qualm about his death?

Why do you think so many are making fun of this? 

[DKW 86 7,410]

NEWS

Epstein Suicide: Feds Just Subpoenaed 20 Prison Staff Members

[DKW 86 7,410]

[DKW 86 7,410]

[DKW 86 7,410]

[autigeremt 6,569]

The number of high roller, high influence individuals who hammed it up with Epstein is so enormous that once the dominoes fell we'd have to send them all to a facility in Siberia to house them sufficiently. 

Pure evil exists and they are examples of it. 

[Zeek 16,613]

Clinton body count stays strong lol

We'll never know the truth until maybe decades from now where there's some documentary and our grandchildren are asking us why no one did anything.

[DKW 86 7,410]

FROM YAHOO NEWS: Anchor says Buckingham Palace pressure killed ABC's story on Epstein (Finally, a major news company pushing the story.)

The video was published Tuesday morning by Project Veritas, a right-wing organization that has attempted a number of “sting” operations against media organizations. The group said the video was leaked by an “ABC insider.”

Robach also said that she believed Epstein was murdered, saying, "So, do I think he was killed? One hundred percent, yes, I do. He made his whole living blackmailing people. There were a lot of men in those planes, a lot of men who visited that island, a lot of powerful men who came into that apartment. When I heard he was found dead in his jail cell, I was like ... I knew immediately.”

In August, Epstein was found unconscious in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center — the federal jail in downtown Manhattan — and pronounced dead at a nearby hospital in what medical examiners later ruled a suicide. Following Epstein’s death, Trump promoted the conspiracy theory that the Clintons had him murdered. A pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother to perform an autopsy said last week that he believed there was evidence it was murder, not suicide.

NPR reported earlier this year on how ABC News failed to air Robach’s interview with Giuffre. Harvard law professor emeritus and Epstein defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose name has also come up in the investigation of Epstein, pressured the network to kill the story.

“I did not want to see [Giuffre's] credibility enhanced by ABC,” Dershowitz told NPR, stating that he believed he spoke with two producers and a lawyer within the same 24-hour period.

ABC News also declined to air the interview a few months later when Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been accused of recruiting girls for Epstein to abuse. Maxwell is the daughter of British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, who drowned under suspicious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell has denied any involvement in Epstein’s crimes.

Giuffre alleges that Epstein told her to have sex with Prince Andrew, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico Gov. Democratic Bill Richardson and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. A spokesperson for the Dubin family said in an emailed statement: “The Dubins were horrified by and completely unaware of Jeffrey Epstein’s unspeakable conduct. They categorically deny the allegations and have evidence disproving them.” Mitchell and Richardson have also denied Giuffre’s allegations.

“I was defeated, once again, by the very people I spoke out against, and once again, my voice was silenced,” Giuffre told NPR. “I could not believe that a formidable network like ABC had backed down and given in."

In statements following the video’s release, Robach and ABC News said that the 2015 story failed to reach their editorial standards.

"As a journalist, as the Epstein story continued to unfold last summer, I was caught in a private moment of frustration," said Robach. "I was upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia [Giuffre] didn’t air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence to meet ABC’s editorial standards about her allegations. My comments about Prince Andrew and her allegation that she had seen Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private island were in reference to what Virginia [Giuffre] said in that interview in 2015. I was referencing her allegations — not what ABC News had verified through our reporting."

ABC News released a statement saying that “at the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we have never stopped investigating the story. Ever since, we've had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it. That work has led to a two-hour documentary and six-part podcast that will air in the new year.”

Epstein was arrested in July on charges that he sexually abused and exploited minor girls. In addition to Clinton and Prince Andrew, Epstein also had associated with Donald Trump. Records show that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet on occasion, and they were photographed together at social events.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” said Trump in a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta was U.S. attorney in Miami when Epstein faced charges in 2007 for, as the Miami Herald put it in its award-winning reporting on the case, “assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day.” Acosta, who negotiated what has been criticized as an inappropriately lenient plea deal in that case, resigned after Epstein’s arrest this year.

[TexasTiger 12,801]

I agree it’s the tip of a disgusting iceberg involving many influential people. It’s unfortunate this was quickly spun by the right into a Clinton thing. And this thread has become too silly to have a meaningful discussion.

[DKW 86 7,410]

I am just having fun. I forgot the pretend woke crowd can never hear a joke with looking for the reason to throw another pity party.

Epsteins clients are Elites on both sides. That is clear. The idea that I think that this is Clinton only is crazy. I am just having fun sharing memes by people I  know on FB and elsewhere

[DKW 86 7,410]