The Pathetic Nature of the Dominant Class in the West: Epstein’s Friends Are Cowards

As the United States government releases more of the emails and messages from and to Jeffery Epstein, increased evidence is available that proves correct the young girls who said that they had been raped by Epstein and his circle. It has also validated the dogged investigative journalism of Julie Brown (Miami Herald), whose ‘Perversion of Justice’ series in 2018 unveiled the deals that Epstein got from powerful men in Florida. Brown, who began her investigation in early 2017, spoke to eighty potential victims, some as young as thirteen. The stories she uncovered led her to Virginia Giuffre, who had moved to Australia; Giuffre became a public spokesperson for the young girls who had been exploited by the Epstein ring, which included Andrew Mountbatten (the former prince). Brown’s book, Perversions of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story (2021), and Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice (2025), are essential documents alongside the trove of emails and messages from and to Epstein. They tell us the stories of the young girls who faced the atrocities on the Epstein archipelago.

Sexual violence has a profound and long-lasting impact on young children, shaping not only their childhood but the course of their lives as they grow up. Many survivors must live with deep emotional wounds, including fear, shame, guilt, and a loss of trust in others, often compounded by silence or disbelief from people around them. As they age, these experiences can lead to serious mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and increased risk of self-harm or substance abuse. One survey found that a third of women who had been raped contemplated suicide, while it is certainly true that the rate of suicide amongst childhood victims of sexual violence is far higher than of those who have not been violated in this way. Virginia Giuffre, who killed herself at the age of 41, was no exception. The effects of sexual violence on children do not simply fade with time; without support and justice, most young children carry the trauma into adulthood.

The girls appear in the government documents as Jane Doe, anonymous to protect their identities. But they know who they are. They are like Virginia or Courtney Wild or Jennifer Araoz, faced with insurmountable odds to get their stories known and believed, and to feel that there has been some justice against the criminals that ruined their lives. Most of the time, few people listen to you, few believe you, and the justice system turns away when powerful men are involved.

Other children in other places face other Epsteins who have not yet been caught. There is never only one Jeffery Epstein. He is not a unique monster. Epstein was an ordinary bully, who learnt how to manipulate people for money and for power, and to allow him to provide them with a buffet of opportunities to violate the tenderness of young people. If we started to list the many people who have been convicted of similar crimes from around the world, the list would be longer than imaginable (including those in war zones who prey on young children for sport, and those such as Charles ‘Abbey’ Mwesigwa and Christiana ‘Christy Gold’ Uadiale who trafficked young women into the Gulf Arab states, and then the sex trafficking rings in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia). The young girls and boys who sit in metal containers or in decrepit hotels or in fancy Dubai homes to face things that they can never imagine and that they should never have to experience – we will never know their names or know about their Epsteins and their Andrews.

A Ruling Class of Cowards

Wherever she is, in whatever universe, Virginia must have beamed to see the rascal Andrew horrified that he – the first royal in 400 years – was being taken into custody (his distant ancestor, ten generations ago, Charles I was beheaded in 1649). His face in the car, his eye reddened by fear, is an image that gives every abused child vindication.

Andrew continues to deny any wrongdoing. So do all the other men who participated one way or another in Epstein’s world. The US Department of Justice refuses to redact the emails that might indicate the names of the guilty men, and most of the victims are far too afraid to testify clearly and consistently about the violence. Because the Miami officials shut down their investigation in 2008 due to the Epstein plea deal, no co-conspirators faced investigation. Epstein and Maxwell apparently paid in cash – no paper trail, no corroboration, no further investigation.

We know that young girls faced terrible crimes. That much is admitted by the facts. We know that important men committed these crimes or at least knew about these crimes (how could they have gone to Epstein’s New York home and not seen the evidence on the walls – as art?). We have read emails and messages where these men joked about the abuse of young girls (‘cute girls are real’, wrote Deepak Chopra, and Epstein wrote of Bill Gates and ‘Russian girls’). But none of these men, not one of them, admitted to having been part of the abuse of the young girls. Gates’ team said that the allegation is ‘absolutely absurd and completely false’, while Chopra said that he used ‘poor judgment in tone’ in his email. Andrew has been forced into the interrogation room largely because he slipped government secrets to Epstein, but perhaps – we will find later – that the investigators might ask him about the girls. No one else will face investigation because the evidence is hearsay, there is no victim alleging specific crimes, and there is no remaining corroborating evidence. Epstein is dead, and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is silent in prison.

Epstein, they say, committed suicide. This is an old tradition amongst ruling elites from the suicide of Seneca the Younger (in 65 CE) because he conspired against the emperor, to the suicide of Wei Zhongxian (in 1627) for corruption against the Ming Dynasty in China, to the suicide of Asano Naganori (in 1701), the daimyo of the Ako Domain who killed himself on the orders of the Tokugawa shogun, and to many, many more of their ilk. Perhaps Epstein’s death was more like that of the disgraced viziers of the Ottoman Court who were silently strangled with a silk cord and buried hurriedly in the dark of night (or he is in Israel, as some on the web suggest). But one way or the other, Epstein is gone.

The rest are gutless. They believe, as they ought to believe, that they will get away with it and be eventually rehabilitated. Bill Gates, the great humanitarian; Deepak Chopra, the great healer; Bill Clinton, the great charmer.

I want to rent a satellite. I want to put a giant speaker on it that can be heard all around the world. I want it to broadcast Patricia Lockwood’s 2013 poem, Rape Joke, or at least these stanzas from the end:

The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavour, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.

Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.

Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends — haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.

The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.

The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.

The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.

Admit it.

The admit it is asked of the listener, to admit that the Pet Sounds gift is funny. But there is another person to whom the phrase is addressed. To the ‘rape joke’. Admit what you did. Just say it. Say it once, not for yourself, but for the person who was raped by you. Have the guts to admit it. But you won’t because you come from a ruling class of cowards who admit to nothing.

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