The Jeffrey Epstein disgrace shows – again – that American authorities protect themselves first and young people last

The elites! How they might suffer! Let’s obsess over that.

In the Jeffrey Epstein sex-predator disgrace that has no heroes, 99.9% of commentators’ furor is fixated on how the scandal might affect the fortunes of President Donald Trump, his ever-enraged yet -obsequious MAGA base, moralizing media ratings, and financial and celebrity topsiders who lurk in those hidden files, CDs, pictures.

The 150 (at least) girls and women victimized in Epstein’s plush denizens? Oh yeah, them.

Former-bff Trump once waxed ecstatic about “terrific guy” Epstein, who (along with big-time pals flying the “Lolita Express” to his exotic hotspots) liked his “beautiful women… on the younger side” – as in, teenage, even middle school. Now, Trump frets that “innocent” broligarchs might be smirched if he releases the files. Epstein-implicated Democrats like ex-president Bill Clinton, monied CEOs, ”sweetheart deal” prosecutors, UK royalty, U.S. and Israeli intelligence blackmailers, all sweated the exposures those files suggested. Funny how many kept cordially associating with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for child prostitution.

Needlessly. Big Powers united to protect the protected classes – just like churches, youth programs, sports, universities, schools, families, police, spy agencies, etc., rally to shield their grownup abusers and hierarchies from menacing, abused kids.

Trump’s soulless administration minions, none worth the ink to name, who previously cross-their-hearts swore full disclosure have now closed ranks: no show no way no how.

Just to fantasize the impossible…

… an America that actually cares about young people…

… why not at least release the testimonies of the girls and women (redacted only to protect their anonymity) trafficked into Epstein’s palatial parlors?

The universal political/media characterization of these seldom-mentioned girls as mostly “underage” serves the cover-up. “Underage” humans, especially girls, are dismissed as interchangeable inferiors with no agency, victims of their own immaturity, gullibility, celebrity worship, and “Pretty Woman” delusions… oh, yes, sure, sure, also a rich pedophile rapist.

Media quippers liberal and right-wing alike feel the need to re-inform us daily on how stupid teenagers as an age and generation are. In contrast, hearing teens’ own voices tends to demolish anti-youth bigotry, as the Minnesota judges who heard over 3,000 girls who applied for a “judicial bypass” from their state’s barbaric “parental consent for abortion” law found, unanimously compiling a brief attesting to their maturity and reasoned points.

Releasing victimized girls’ testimonies is vital to humanizing them and pinpointing exactly what conditions led to their victimization – information crucial to preventing exploitation of trafficked populations, which the Epstein case proves again is not a priority of powerful interests.

From scant information available, nearly all of the girls in the Epstein case were victims of severe poverty and adrift on their own, bereft of family or societal protection in an America that affords girls few ways to protect themselves (“their coping mechanisms for their victimizations are criminalized,” criminologist Meda Chesney-Lind puts it).

Census figures in the early 2000s, when Epstein partied, show some 1 million girls ages 12-17 living in severe poverty (family incomes less than half already-meager poverty levels). Child Maltreatment’s severely understated figures substantiate over 100,000 girls violently and sexually abused by parents and adult caretakers every year.

Child, teen, and young-adult poverty are American crimes. Impoverished and victimized girls with no survival options are vital to feeding predatory operations like Epstein’s, prime candidates deliberately targeted by his recruiter (now imprisoned) and powerful exploiters. Victims’ heavily redacted testimonies indicate Epstein paid them $200 to $300 per session and often forced non-consensual acts.

We need to hear their individual stories; not salacious details, but what circumstances led to their exploitations. Exactly what powers-that-be don’t want us to dwell on.

The larger evils

The Epstein disgrace, like so many before, shows authorities will not responsibly use their vast power to act in the best interests of young people. The MAGAs don’t care about kids. They care about shouting “pedophilia” lunacies to attack Democrats, the “deep state,” and immigrant pizza parlors. Democrats don’t care about kids. If Bill Clinton, or U.S. or Israeli spying agencies, or big funders might be harmed by releasing the Epstein files, they’ll bellow in public while quietly standing with Trump in hiding them.

The moralizing commentariat, far left to far right, doesn’t care about young people, who they denigrate as stupid and shallow. They banter endlessly over how the scandal will affect the powerful and jockey for ratings. Some lucky victims might get payoffs (Epstein’s estate ponied $121 million) to shut up.

Leaders are fine, though, using victimization scandals to ratchet down teens’ rights still more (i.e., the Oakland Police Department sought youth curfews and restrictions on teens’ use of library internet to prevent “child prostitution”). The lawsuit to exploit fears over youth going online filed by a dozen attorneys general, excerpted by Jonathan Haidt’s After Babel, pretends that social-media executives’ indifference to the well-being of teenaged users is some un-American aberration. In fact, it’s standard institutional procedure. The only difference is that churches, youth organizations, schools, sports leagues, etc. (entities Haidt champions) have hundreds of documented real-life victims, while the attorneys general can find just about none to blame on social media.

For their survival, young people, especially poorer, abused, disadvantaged ones, can see yet again that pious authorities respond to big-dollar campaign donations and flying congressmen, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, et al to party paradises. Only by their own independent organizing, aided by unrestricted social media access, can younger ages and their advocates begin to forge a more humane future.