I will start by saying that there is no doubt whatsoever that Jeffrey Epstein carried out multiple sex offences against children. He was justly convicted in 2019, and should have been brought to justice earlier than he was.
But I was disturbed by one aspect of the way this story about Epstein that appears on the BBC website was reported: Epstein housed abuse victims in London flats, BBC reveals
Sex-criminal financier Jeffrey Epstein housed women who say he abused them in several London flats in the years after UK police decided not to investigate him, the BBC can reveal.
We found evidence of four flats, rented in the affluent borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in receipts, emails and bank records contained within the Epstein files. Six of the women housed in them have since come forward as victims of Epstein’s abuse.
Many of them – from Russia, eastern Europe and elsewhere – were brought to the UK after the Metropolitan Police decided not to investigate Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 allegation that she had been a victim of international trafficking to London.
The Met said it followed “reasonable lines of inquiry” at the time, interviewing Giuffre on multiple occasions following her complaint and co-operating with US investigators.
Some of the women housed in the London flats were coerced by Epstein to recruit others into his sex trafficking scheme, as well as regularly transported to Paris by Eurostar to visit him, according to emails in the files.
The BBC searched through millions of pages of records gathered by the US Department of Justice in its investigation of the disgraced financier, and released as part of the Epstein files, in order to piece together the most detailed picture yet of his operation in the UK.
It shows how the operation grew more extensive than was previously known – with more victims, established infrastructure such as housing, and frequent transportation of women across borders – right up to Epstein’s death, despite warnings to UK police.
We are not publishing any details about the young women to protect their anonymity as the victims of sexual abuse.
Our investigation found British police had other opportunities to open an inquiry into the disgraced financier’s activities in the UK, in addition to Giuffre’s complaint that she had been trafficked and forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in 2001. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied any wrongdoing.
Just a few months before his arrest on charges of trafficking children for sex, and his death in jail awaiting trial, our investigation found that Epstein was messaging a young Russian woman on Skype who was living in one of the London flats he paid for.
He sent her an image which is not included in the files but which seems to have been a picture of himself. The woman jokingly asked who the good-looking man in the picture was.
Epstein said it was her landlord – but said that unlike most landlords, he pays rather than collecting the rent.
The woman later went on to ask Epstein for money to pay for her English classes in London and to help buy cutlery and furniture for the apartment. She also asked for visa advice for another Russian woman who was due to come and stay.
The 2019 exchange reveals how Epstein remained in touch with the women he housed in London right up until his arrest and death in jail, and how involved he was in the detail of their lives.
In contrast to the photos released in the Epstein files, which are often decades old, we found the women housed by him in London pictured in Instagram posts, on Russian social media and in high-end fashion shoots.
The exterior of the flat mentioned in the Skype chat is pictured in one of these photographs. In the background a doorbell with the name of the building is visible, which enabled us to find the tenancy agreement in the Epstein files.
A shipment of gifts recorded in the files led us to another apartment. Details of yet another, rented in 2018 and 2019, were buried in a 10,000-page credit card bill. It also recorded the daily living expenses of the woman staying there, who had her own card on Epstein’s account with a $2,000 (£1,477) monthly allowance.
The thing that disturbed me about the BBC’s reporting was the uncritical way in which these adult women were described as “victims” and the way that their claim to have been coerced was reported as absolute fact.
Why should that disturb me? Not because I think that Epstein was incapable of such a crime: we know he was a twice-convicted sexual predator. I also know that sexual coercion can be combined with lavish gifts and a luxurious prison. And I utterly reject the barbaric belief that sexual coercion “does not count” if the victim had previously agreed to sex, including sex that was paid for. Allegations of this type of crime must be taken seriously. As I have said many times, “taken seriously” means “carefully investigated”, not “automatically believed”.
A pity my first reaction upon reading this story was to laugh.
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I understand and agree that we need to defend our policy decision that “under 18” is a child. Lack of capacity to consent, and all that.
But the Epstein mess has convinced me that few people understand what “pedophile” means, or even that there might be a difference between “he shagged a 17-year-old” and “he shagged a 12-year-old.”
Or – perhaps more likely – some think it best for partisan purposes to scream “pedo!” so long as they think that they can somehow link Trump to all of this.
But they cannot, and as more and more Democrats are linked to Epstein, they might regret that choice later.
So, giving votes to 16-year-old children is pedo enabling!
I find it difficult to believe that there are so many naive young people about. I was a completely innocent child growing up in the 1940s, but I still had the inner warning mechanism that warned me away from anyone who may pose a threat.There were several times I moved rapidly away from someone who I instinctively knew was wrong.
If these young girls were content to stay in Epsteins flats and accept money they were not as innocent as they are portrayed.
Johnd, I’ve defended 14-year-old prostitutes, and they don’t seem to exude innocence. Mostly cynicism and distrust. They’ve gotten old fast.
So, it is sad, but these 17-year-old girls at Ep’s Island knew what they were doing, and probably made decent money doing it.
There are plenty of jurisdictions, including quite a lot of the US, and the UK, where under 18 is not a child, for the purposes of consent. I do not have any plans to waste any breath defending the absurd proposition that the age of consent should be 18.
Lee Moore: Do you have any daughters?
(In my experience, that changes minds. I was thinking back then that 26 seemed a bit early. 😉 )
I entirely agree that there are lots of young women who are much too immature, at 18, to appreciate the costs, benefits and implications of engaging in sexual activity. Much the same could be said of young men at 18. Also people of both sexes at age 28, 38, 48 and 78. We are to some extent an immature species.
As for what my offspring might get up to, of course I would prefer them to select / have selected their partners wisely. So long as any delay does not deprive me of the six grandchildren per child to which I am entitled. Nuns are no use to me.
I think we should be more careful to distinguish between the act and the mitigation. It seems clear that Epstein had sex and procured women/girls under 18 and that (depending on the jurisdiction) was a crime. If the women/girls were willing then that is a (small) mitigation and might reduce the length of the sentence – depending on how ‘naive’ the girls were.
Whether the ‘victim’s were coerced, threatened, or paid, is still open to conjecture. However, I can still not get my head around the apparent fact that the hundreds of women were all mistreated or abused by only three people – Epstein, Maxwell and Mountbatten-Windsor. How on earth did these three manage to do anything else (sarc)? If course, every single visitor to Epstein’s island was an innocent, only wanting to enjoy fine wine, good food, and stimulating conversation (even more sarc). Will the full story ever come out? I doubt it as money and power have privileges.
Discovered Joys,
I can see no indication in the BBC report that any of the women mentioned in it were underage. The report refers to them as “women” throughout.
They claim to have been coerced. I will make no comment on those specific women and their specific allegation, but let us say that the general phenomenon of a young woman agreeing to provide sex on demand for an rich old man in exchange for money and/or comfortable accommodation is not unknown to history. Indeed, there is a specific term, “gold digger”, for women who seek out rich men in the hope of being provided with these things.
I suppose what’s bugging me is the cloud of bad ideas currently floating in the cultural atmosphere regarding women who consent to such an arrangement. One of them is that there can be no true consent when there is an imbalance of power. Another is that there can be no true consent when the man concerned is bad. As Kat Rosenfield wrote regarding the case of Neil Gaiman, that would in practice mean that women can scarcely consent to anything.
You may have made that remark in jest but there’s a serious point here: if the voting age is reduced to 16, where does that leave other starting points around consent and agency (sexual relationships, serving in the military, employment, loans and other financial agreements, jury service, cross-border documents, power of attorney, other)?
I understand that Epstein was a sleazy guy. But at the moment he is being touted as the world’s worst paedophile, which I find bizarre.
In my book, paedophiles are attracted to pre-pubescent children, and deserve to be boiled alive. Epstein seems to have been attracted to “jailbait”, ie girls who, although post puberty, were below the inevitably arbitrary age of consent in the jurisdiction in which he resided.
I believe in many American states, the age of consent is 18, which I find quite amusing given the sexualization of American teens. In the UK it is 16, but in many European countries it varies from 14 to 16. I don’t think it ever dips below 14, but I am not sure Epstein did either.
The bottom line is he should have moved to Spain, France or the Netherlands. He was not a nice man, but he wasn’t Jack the Ripper.
Like Harvey Weinstein, J. Epstein was part of a decadent moral (immoral) culture – then, suddenly the wind changed and their sexual behaviour was denounced.
In the case of Mr Weinstein even affectionate letters written to him by his victims (i.e. the women who traded sexual favours for parts in films and television shows) AFTER the alleged abuse was said to have taken place, were ignored at his trial – people at the trial reported how the journalists present (the media act as a pack) even put down their electronic devices whenever the defense council rose to speak – the public, and the jury, were left with the clear indication (including from the judge) that they were to ignore any defense. Weinstein was evil – and to not denounce his evil would make the members of the jury evil as well, that was the clear impression they were given.
I have no love for either Weinstein or Epstein – both were life long Democrats (pushing every fashionable cause in their time) and sexual degenerates – but one minute the culture was celebrating them, and the next it was tearing them to pieces – for the same behaviour (fashions changed – the wind changed).
Epstein was a degenerate sex pest – for example he had the dubious distinction of being the only person ever banned from the Mar a Lago club in Palm Beach (a club owned by Donald Trump – now his home, Mr Epstein lived about a mile away, so it was his local club – till he was banned) – and Epstein was banned for sexually harassing the waitresses (yes Epstein was that squalid) – but he is now being presented as if he was a leading Devil from Hell – which is absurd.
As for the age issue – here these is a difference, Epstein went after females that were underage by Florida law – and that the authorities were informed about that.
It is said that the person who tipped off the authorities about this matter was the owner of the club from which Mr Epstein was banned – a certain Mr Donald J. Trump, but I do not know if that is true.
Natalie Solent wrote:
“They claim to have been coerced.”
which is true, if you accept the new and evolved meaning of the term ‘coerced”. Used-to-was, coercion meant physical force or the credible threat thereof. S’right there in Merriam-Webster. But now, ‘coerced’ means something quite different, to wit, persuaded into freely agreeing to doing things in the past in return for gifts, favours or advantages, but now, while I gleefully took the benefits offered at the time, I regret that I kept my end of the bargain. This seems to accurately describe many, many of Epstein’s “victims”, from the reporting I have read. There has not (SFAIK) been a single allegation of violence or threats, or any suggestion that any of these ladies were ever unable to walk away at any time. There’s also a distinct whiff of the concept that many of these ladies are only assuming the mantle of ‘victim’ now that their involvement with Epstein is coming to public notice, and it’s clear now that they willingly agreed to and did things then which do not reflect very well upon them now. Being a ‘victim’ allows them to absolve themselves of their agency and complicity in activities which now expose them to public scorn and disfavour.
As to the age of some of his paramours, I’d suggest it’s not exactly – unknown – for ladies of negotiable virtue to mis-state their age. Why, just yesterday, we had the Governor of California defending his relationship with a 19-year-old woman when he was 38 by alleging that she misled him about her age. Isn’t she just as much a ‘victim’ as Epsteins’s ladies were?
I think we can all agree that Epstein was a tawdry and unpleasant character who richly-deserved his conviction and the reputation that he took to his grave. But, given the evidence we have heard, it’s a little bit rich for this parade of ‘victims’ to now try and present themselves as somehow being innocent flowers of purity who were forcibly debauched by a depraved monster.
llater,
llamas
if the voting age is reduced to 16, where does that leave other starting points around consent and agency (sexual relationships, serving in the military, employment, loans and other financial agreements, jury service, cross-border documents, power of attorney, other)?
Voting, and jury service, concern your power to infringe the liberties of others. The other stuff* refers to what you are allowed to do for yourself, or are deemed capable of doing. Somewhat different sports. I’d be happy with 16 for the latter and, oh say, 32 for the former.
* I think serving in the military belongs in the “other stuff” category, because you only get to shoot other people under orders.
Used-to-was, coercion meant physical force or the credible threat thereof. S’right there in Merriam-Webster.
I’m not sure Merriam-Webster insists on the “thereof” – and I think it is correct in not insisting. A threat can still be coercion even if it is not a threat of force.
“sleep with me, or I’ll give your husband the photos of you carrying on with Mr McGillicuddy.”
“vote my way in the council meeting tonight, or the bribes you received from Jenkins will become public knowledge.”
“don’t go to the police about this – you really dont want a strike with your overdraft renewal coming up”
“well ackshually, it’s ephebophilia”
Way to go, lads.
ffs
My opinion of bobby b is too high to accept that he really thinks that a piece of paper might keep his daughter unsullied until she is 18yo.
OTOH i also note something that has gone remarkably unremarked here:
It is true that the age of consent, in some jurisdictions, is below 18; but it is also true that there is no jurisdiction (afaik) in which people are allowed to engage in sex work when under 18.
Snorri:
You may well be right. I read that Epstein used to pay teenagers $200 for a “massage”, with a happy ending for him. He was undoubtedly a very sleazy character. But I keep on hearing him called the world’s worst paedophile, and that just strikes me as stupid and wrong. There are probably worse than him living in every city block.
From what I can gather, he was a very intelligent and successful con man. Despite not finishing his maths degree, he conned his way into teaching at an exclusive private school. From there he conned his way onto Wall Street, and from there conned his way into managing the money of the billionaire who owned Victoria’s Secret. Somehow, $200 million of this man’s money ended up in Epstein’s pocket, and he was then free to enjoy his sleazy lifestyle.
I tend to think he was not a Mossad asset, rather he cultivated rich and famous men for the cover their acquaintanceship gave him. Someone like ex-Prince Andrew was too daft to see he was being played, and probably sincerely thought that teenage girls were attracted to him because he was just such a very sexy fellow.
Thanks! But if that “piece of paper” is my Permit To Carry, it can influence young suitors. (“Your dad is carrying a gun?!”)
JohnK – yes indeed Sir.
This.
(plus encouraging yer kids – daughters *or* sons – to be able to look after themselves, within whatever means you’re/them comfortable with.
I always get very, very queasy with the “actually it’s ephebophilia, it’s not paedophilia” crowd, because you know full well that they’d lower the age if they could. Utter nonces.
There’s no way in the world that a grown-arse man of 40 years old (etc, ymmv) should be looking at a 15, 16 or 18 year old girl and saying “welp, she’s old enough to know better” – that kind of bloke needs to battered into next week *cough* “freeman” lol.
(the “pick-me” girls can do one as well. Jeez!)