The Epstein Files Part 2
The Pied Piper of Pain
While I had high hopes to never write about the deviants Epstein and Maxwell, ever again, the situation is now worse for the survivors and warrants our attention. Epstein’s decades long child trafficking ring had international reach, far beyond what was first reported. The moral rot, sexual perversity and pain goes deeper than anyone knew and is far more extensive than anyone believed.
Julie Brown, the award winning investigative journalist at the Miami Herald, has spent years of her life investigating Epstein. Initially, it appeared there was an attempt to shelve, silence or bury her excellent reportage. Ms. Brown made a lot of powerful people nervous, but this did not deter her. Ms. Brown persisted and exposed Epstein and Maxwell in 2017. It was the beginning of the end of their crime ring. One woman kicked the door open to bring Epstein and Maxwell down. One voice.
The MAGA movement, whether you are part of it, hate it or have no opinion, spearheaded the current release of the Epstein files. (It may be the only issue that every person, regardless of political affiliation, agreed upon—eventually.) In the beginning, MAGA had a goal in mind—to bury their political enemies (once and for all) with revelations, immoral and illegal, found in the emails in the files. However, they found more in the files than they bargained for—they discovered it wasn’t a one-sided crime ring. Some of their own are implicated in the emails.
Money should be made of glue, because these guys stick together.
The survivors were victimized all over again as photographs and personal information were released while the powerful men who abused them remain hidden behind black lines. There is no loyalty like the loyalty of one rich, powerful man in protection of another. Money should be made of glue, because these guys stick together. And what exactly do powerful men want? Everything. These guys think they can do anything they want, and when they’re caught, they figure they can buy their way out of any punishment, and often they do. Who better than the powerful to exploit the innocent and the poor? What chance does a child have against their legal teams, publicists and rich friends? We are finding out.
Thank God for emails. It’s all there. Proof! All manner of grift is laid out like a Thanksgiving dinner buffet. For starters, here are three examples of Epstein’s colluders. Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn scam their kid’s admission into Bard College with the help of Epstein. Far worse, Pop guru Deepak Chopra orders up his favorite type of international child to violate in an email to Epstein. Chopra the coward has turned off all comments on social media and is posting about being “zen”, telling us to breathe deeply. He has the temerity to post (three days ago!) “Pain is a reflection of your inner dialogue.” Really Chopra? The survivors will tell you that pain is a reflection of the trauma of childhood rape. Nasty rumors have circulated about you for years, and now your own words in emails to Epstein will bury you.
Faux man of medicine, longevity “expert” Peter Attia (love you Canada, but you can keep him!), refers to female genitalia as “low carb” in an email to Epstein. It took time, but eventually, Attia resigned from CBS (maybe he was pushed), and on his way out complimented CBS brass for hiring him in the first place. Of course, Attia is grateful to CBS! They helped him fill his coffers after they gave him a prime time berth on the reliable 60 Minutes program peddling his crap—which works for him because he’s full of it. This smug, small man is sitting home doing one thing: trying to figure out how to get back on top. He hasn’t atoned, he’s tone deaf. Well, he can always mount his elliptical in his private gym when he needs to burn off his anger. There isn’t enough gym equipment on the planet to burn off my rage, and I assume, yours. Throwing Attia’s book into the recycling bin helped. A little.
Follow the money. These bastards are getting rich off of our misery, and when we support them (and not just these examples— there are many more in the files) we are financing their exploitation of us. They’re living large while we are seeking a meme on socials to shore up our weary souls and tips to work out our exhausted bodies. I’d like to see these men get in shape in a prison cell.
As the Greeks said, all great wealth begins with a crime. It looks like the Greeks got it right. What exactly does a billionaire dream to become? That’s right. A trillionaire. These men believe that money and power protect them from the law.
Too bad the accumulation of wealth doesn’t come with a set of moral standards. These guys think they are entitled to whatever they want, including our children. Epstein’s cronies sent emails with their perverse requests. How dumb are these guys? Did they think that redactions and ripped out pages from the Epstein files would not come to light eventually? We need to read every word of those files, including the omissions. And the truth will come to light—it always does. These tech bros (what a term), are idiots. Did anyone tell them there’s a cloud with everything in it? Didn’t they invent the cloud?
This week, there was a flurry of resignations (corporate boards, professorships, television hosting gigs, etc.) around the world by those men who were friends with Epstein. Titans of industry ran out from under rocks, resigned their positions on boards (to avoid cratering their stock prices) and ran back under their rocks again with no apologies to the children. The survivors are now grown women who were systematically abused and passed around by these men when they weren’t old enough to drive. The resignations of these fat cats is not enough, and it’s not true contrition.
Lawrence Summers (a professor who became president of Harvard), after months, finally resigned from his position at the university, but he only did so under pressure. By the way, his resignation is official at the end of the school year. He isn’t man enough to own his sins and get out now. You can look up the names of intellectuals and professors at these institutions who also participated in the macabre Epstein operation. But Larry Summers? He was the president of one of the most renowned colleges in America! Families entrusted their children to this guy! This man is supposed to be a learned intellectual, a man among men. He ended up to be a putz among putzes.
American presidents adhered to economic policy in this country based upon Larry’s assumptions! I wouldn’t trust this guy with a yo-yo much less the economy of this nation and never our children. And please don’t insist that Larry was a good economist and we should give him credit for his brains. That’s like saying Harvey Weinstein was a successful movie producer and that his litany of crimes against women were okay because he produced movies. A criminal is a criminal is a criminal. Besides, in the end, it wasn’t great art, that which lifts the soul and alleviates the suffering of mankind, it was just another con engineered to feed an insatiable, evil beast who loathed women. Every day he rots in prison is a day that his survivors feel safe in the world again.
What is wrong exactly with seemingly good yet powerful men who had friendships with Epstein but perhaps did not participate in the pedophilia? How about their wives and girlfriends who attended his dinners? Let me speak directly to you. You couldn’t see the devil across the fancy tablecloth when he looked you in the eye? The first thing I learned in Appalachia: Read the room! Take Epstein’s photo down to Appalachia and ask folks what they think, and they would tell you that boy ain’t right. Why didn’t you see it? After Epstein was arrested and convicted in Florida on one count of sex trafficking of a minor in 2017, and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, did you say to yourself…well, it was only one child? I hope not. Did you think maybe the law got it wrong, and Epstein was innocent? Or did you decide not to think about it at all and continue to enjoy the perks of being friends with Epstein and Maxwell?
Folks continued to choose to go to dinner, take gifts, visit Epstein’s New York townhouse, fly to his creepy island, attend his “parties” where children were offered up for sexual favors, after the conviction! Good men and women should know better. But they too ran for the exits when the truth of the scope of the criminal operation was revealed. It took young people to blow the whistle at Harvard. Reporters for the school newspaper wanted Summers out. And Summers still doesn’t get it. He’s sitting home (if his family hasn’t thrown him out) scheming his last stand in his long, formerly glorious life. He’s plotting a comeback. Count on it. After all, he’s an older man and time is of the essence. Tick tock. You might ask, How do you know Summers is not contrite? Read his resignation. He’s angry he got caught. And, he’s still on the faculty of Harvard. I wonder what his pension looks like? Will he be rewarded for his service, or punished for his stupidity?
Nobody does a shame bust like the Brits.
The international community of justice is doing a far better job than the Americans on behalf of the Epstein survivors. The round up in Great Britain was like a parade, with cops knocking on doors and marching the pervs who live in the dark out into the daylight, holding them accountable at long last for their dealings with Epstein. Nobody does a shame bust like the Brits. Andrew, formerly the prince, has been sacked of his title, and punted from the line of ascension to the throne. Andy has nothing left, save his made-up British surname to hide his Germanic roots. Even the Germans don’t want him. But believe me, that guy will find a way to live without taking responsibility for his crimes. Some rich bonehead who thinks Grandy Andy is still royalty (because the sucker doesn’t read) will tuck that moron away in a villa somewhere and trot him out at cocktail parties. That’s what they do. And, there’s his ex-wife Fergie, the misguided, pathetic woman who was caught peddling influence to the royal family years ago, and evidently learned nothing from getting caught. Epstein had a suite at his townhouse for her. Fergie hasn’t atoned. Cue her nervous breakdown in a luxury spa. Fergie should spend the rest of her life in a rat trap learning how to balance a checkbook.
When I was a child, we read The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a narrative poem by Robert Browning (a reissued version). It was illustrated by Kate Greenway, a magnificent artist with a touch for the fantastical, which was au courant in the illustration of children’s books the 1970’s. Greenway, who died at the turn of the 20th century, brought the fictional town of Hamelin to life. In the story, a tall, strange man comes to town and is hired to get rid of the rats. Below is an excerpt from the poem when the Pied Piper meets the locals for the first time:
Come in! — the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in —
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire:
Quoth one: It’s as my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom’s tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!
The Pied Piper does his job. He plays a tune and marches the rats off a cliff to their deaths. The locals decide not to pay the weird piper, they got what they wanted and refuse to honor the debt. So, the piper seeks his revenge. He plays a tune that marches the children of Hamelin to their deaths. The poem terrified me. I couldn’t understand why the children had to pay for the debts of the adults with their lives.
When I was a girl, I thought the downfall of Hamelin and her people was about the music. I blamed the tune the Piper played. The music had some strange power over the rats, and then the children were under its spell. I became obsessed with the way the story played out. I would walk the story beats through my mind. The Pied Piper turned ugly when he didn’t get paid for getting rid of the rats. I thought it would all be okay if they just paid the piper. I blamed the dumb mayor who cheated the piper. I blamed the townspeople who went along with the dumb mayor. Pack of sheep! Do something! But the children? I cried for the children, who went unprotected and were marched to their deaths because of the hubris of the grown ups. The adults! The people who were supposed to protect them. When I was a girl, I wondered if I were in Hamelin, would I have followed the Pied Piper? I might have, and maybe you would have too. Children are vulnerable, and those looking to exploit them know it.Fear is a child’s kryptonite, and girls carry it into adulthood. Ask the survivors.
There are still people who believe the Epstein tragedy is a story about some perverse sexual need of adult men. While that is gross, it’s worse. There is hatred of girls, young women and grown women that we need to be honest about. Read the files! They hate us—and want to hurt children. When children are expendable, or not worth the time it takes to care for them, this is the rot. The neglect of children is the worst crime in all of this because it creates the opportunity for deviants like Epstein and Maxwell, and the sick men that rely on them, to swoop in, take advantage of children and use them for their own diabolical purposes. These are the chimes at midnight that often fall on deaf ears. Epstein and Maxwell made promises to the vulnerable to lure them in and keep them close but it was a set-up for the forsaken. The children walked into the trap.
The victims’ stories must guide us forward.
The victims’ stories must guide us forward. The victims’ stories are the truth. Powerful men will fall, it has already begun. We should not be surprised or delighted when they are rounded up. Instead, we will be in mourning for the survivors. Luckily, here and there, a strong person or an institution or a network or a publisher or a spouse or someone, anyone will insist on the truth and stand by the survivors. The most challenging aspect of dealing with the truth is the knowledge that so many knew and felt powerless to do something about it. Only they know why they did not speak up.
Good hearted people don’t fall into categories. They can be anything, from any walk of life, any profession or lineage. They might be poor or rich. Privileged or not, good people are raised with values, open hearts and empathy for others. They do the right thing because it’s in them, because it was modeled and taught to them. Or, they didn’t have role models or come from less than loving families but matured with a moral compass intact because of the influence of a teacher or a grandparent.
The survivors of the Epstein and Maxwell criminal operation are miracles of humanity. The circumstances, home lives and education of the victims when they were children are varied, but there is a common theme that has emerged. The children were looking for guidance, stability and love. Some were hungry, cold and living in poverty. They had dreams of education, travel and their own possibilities. They aspired, and counted on Epstein and Maxwell to help them in the pursuit of their dreams, but their lives, instead, were co-opted by evil. Promises were made to the children by Epstein and Maxwell, but they were not about to keep them. They needed the children to traffic to their wealthy friends. Epstein and Maxwell disposed of the children when they aged out.
Look, supposedly Epstein and Maxwell did philanthropic work, but it wasn’t to help those in need or make the world a better place. It was all a smokescreen to trap children. Surely, one of those smart professors in the Ivy League looking to raise money for their research department saw the true nature of those two. Surely Peggy Siegel, the movie flack, who offered to bring a baby home from Africa for Epstein, knew better than to offer something so diabolical to the devil himself. Siegel sent this offer in an email after Epstein was convicted! Siegel needed something from Epstein, and she’d give him whatever he wanted to get it. You’d have to ask her what she got out of it and if it was worth it. There is decrepitude and moral decay everywhere in this story. Mostly men, but yes, a few adult women emerge in the crime syndicate too. We know all of this now, but it doesn’t make life better for the victims.
Every person of stature and wealth is not the devil. And every wealthy person is not corrupted by power, influence and money. Every world leader is not in government to get rich. But, in this story, in the Epstein syndicate, the devils are everywhere and they happen to be powerful, rich and connected. Their conduct was less than human. In due course, they will pay the piper. It’s only a matter of time.
Adri, this is excellent. And now another distraction to take away from the filth of the Epstein files and an accounting. Devastating to the women, the victims, aka survivors.
When will Congress follow the lead of the Mother Country from whom our Constitution was derived. This is nothing less than the reign of terror on all levels by a morally corrupt regime.
Spot on Adri! This needs to be heard again and again! Thank you for using your voice and words to bring this despicable tragedy to the forefront of our conversations. Thus bringing hope that knowledge brings power to make changes.