Epstein isn’t the scandal. We are.
Ghislaine Maxwell and her father, Robert Maxwell
We clamor for the release of Epstein’s emails, but we already know what they’ll show: powerful men sexually abuse girls. What we’re avoiding is this: the U.S. government trafficked children as an intelligence operation, and we—the electorate—have spent two decades protecting everyone who made that possible.
Jeffrey Epstein was a fired prep school teacher with no college degree who briefly worked at Bear Stearns, where he remained undistinguished and replaceable. Up to 1991, he was nobody.
That changed when Robert Maxwell died.
Robert was not simply a media mogul. He moved through the highest levels of political, financial, and intelligence circles across multiple countries. When he died, he received an Israeli state funeral attended by the Prime Minister, the President, and multiple current and former heads of intelligence—an extraordinary honor for a man officially described as a publisher.
Ghislaine Maxwell was the youngest of his nine children. Her mother devoted herself to recreating the family Robert lost in the Holocaust. She was Robert’s partner running The Pergamon Press until 1961, when Ghislaine was born. Two days later, Ghislaine’s teenage brother was in a car accident that left him in a coma for seven years.
From that point forward, Ghislaine was raised almost exclusively within her father’s orbit. She was his favorite. Court documents and her mother’s autobiography document that Ghislaine was anorexic even as a toddler, a condition widely associated with control, deprivation, and sexual trauma. Robert named his yacht after her. She was not permitted to be seen publicly with boyfriends until after college—only with him. After graduation, they were inseparable.
Shortly before his death, Robert introduced Ghislaine to Jeffrey Epstein.
Viewed socially or professionally, this introduction makes no sense. Robert traveled among heads of state. Epstein had no credentials, no connections, no power. The introduction only makes sense if Robert was being replaced.
A successor to an intelligence asset would need familiarity with finance but no institutional backing, no independent power base, and a demonstrated willingness to commit serious crimes. Epstein met those criteria. His sexual abuse of underage girls was not a liability. It was leverage.
In 1991, Ghislaine transferred her loyalty to Epstein and, with it, access to Robert’s network. Within a year, billionaire Les Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney over his finances. No one has ever explained why.
From this point forward, everyone benefited except the victims. State actors preserved their assets and connections. Epstein got money, protection, and access to girls; Ghislaine got a father replacement. The cost was borne entirely by trafficked children.
In 2008, despite testimony from at least 36 underage victims, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta dropped all but two minor charges against Epstein. Acosta later acknowledged the non-prosecution agreement was unprecedented. He also stated he was instructed to do so by someone whose authority he could not override.
Who outranks a U.S. Attorney?
The identity of that person has never been disclosed. No law was broken. No accountability followed. We protect the answer to that question.
We re-elected officials who classified the trafficking as “national security.” We confirmed judges who ruled those classifications unreviewable. We voted for both parties while both parties protected this person’s identity. We have not even made these actions illegal.
What did we think “intelligence operations” meant?
Public obsession with Epstein’s files is misdirected. We are not going to discover that powerful men behave badly—we already know that. We are not going to be shocked by any name in those documents. The behavior was visible long before the paperwork.
Epstein was not a rogue genius. He was a sociopath willing to do anything for sex and money. Ghislaine Maxwell was not a mastermind. She was a victim of childhood sexual abuse who replicated that abuse as an adult.
The mastermind was our government.
As voters, we claim national security justifies any crime if the victims are invisible. We let “classified” mean “unaccountable.” We tell ourselves this is too distant to confront.
But it isn’t distant. And the most disturbing part of the Epstein scandal is not what happened—it is that we make it legal.
Democracy requires identifying with the victims of unchecked power. We refuse to do that here. So instead, we wait for more documents, more names, more spectacle—anything that lets us avoid responsibility for building the system that made those emails inevitable.
This explains a lot. Thanks
This was an highly insightful & pertinent to me as middle child that clearly the family scapegoat & nemesis with learning disabilities, etc.
Your comment;
“The kid who absorbed the family trauma so everyone else could flourish”
truly registered with me.
The lifelong dismal, least favorite status, serving as family scapegoat.
It didn’t lead to murders in my case but I get it. It took decades for me to recognize my own feelings which had been denied & buried.
Those that distain your perspective have not experienced this.
Thank you.
I hear you – I’m the least favorite as well.
Im based on the UK. I love your posts and found this particularly interesting.
Would you mind directing me to your source for saying that Robert Maxwell is the person who first introduced Ghislaine to Epstein?
I agree that this would not make sense in the context you describe. However, I was recently reading an interview with the British journalist, John Sweeney, whose investigative work I have followed on other topics and who did a podcast on Ghislaine Maxwell. He says that he could find no evidence that Robert Maxwell and Epstein ever met. Heres the excerpt:
The two people who say that Robert Maxwell and Jeffery Epstein knew each other were Ari Ben-Menashe, who was a proven fantasist, and Steven Hoffenberg, who was one of America’s greatest fraudsters. In November 1991, [just before his death] Robert Maxwell was facing financial ruin. It doesn’t make sense that he would have squirreled money away via Epstein. Also, there is no evidence of the two men ever meeting. None whatsoever.
Here’s the link to the interview:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/did-father-robert-maxwells-early-abuse-taint-ghislaine-long-before-she-met-epstein/amp/
I was just curious what source you have for the introduction?
Many thanks.
Hi Francesca. I think the issues might be that you are thinking of an in person introduction. I think Robert pulled the strings from afar. His association with Epstein goes far back. He made sure Ghislaine and Epstein met when she moved to NYC.
Also here’s a description of Epstein/Robert relationship.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-steven-hoffenberg-intelligence-agencies-spy-1197708/
Interesting. Thanks so much for the reply. Do you find yourself feeling sorry for Ghislaine?
Yes. Do you?
It’s so hard.
I think if the implication I get from your post here, and from some others I’ve read, that she was essentially no different from the girls she recruited, of that is indeed correct, (you clearly know more on this than I do! I feel desperately sorry for her.
Equally, it must feel a bit rich for the people who have suffered so much at her hands, for people to try and excuse her. They will have felt that manipulation and coercion directly.
It is the most bizarre and tragic story it seems.
I really didn’t expect you to reply – thanks!
I agree with you – of course she needs to be in prison. But her story is a good way to understand the long-term impact on society when we let one girl be abused.
Beyond frustrating. Seems to me it also doesn’t help that we live in an era of “sex work is real work” and have a million+ young American women working at places like Only Fans. Seems like this social acceptance just makes recruiting girls into traps like Epstein’s all too easy. But I guess I’m “whorephobic.”
Don’t worry Carrie, the term “phobia” comes from the 1970’s when gays were, as in the song about WWII soldiers “the long and short and tall,” with some being virgins, some as boring as Clark Kent, and so forth, having nothing in common but their orientation (for no scientifically discernible cause, even after generations of research).
From that era, I liked Woody Allan’s gloomy joke, “I wish I were bisexual, I’d have twice as much of a chance for a date Saturday night.”
The reality, as a young bi woman sadly told me in college, is “Twice as much chance for rejection.” So human.
To be afraid of them, as many folks were back then, with no sensible reason, (what if she makes a pass at me?) was to have “homophobia.” Times have changed, praise the Lord.
In contrast, if a group does indeed have things in common, the very definition of “group,” then one may have distaste or dislike, but not an irrational phobia.
Sean, your comments are so consistent in voice and perspective that I knew this was from you before I saw your name. I like that.
Thank you Penelope.
Hurray!
They say every writer wants to have a voice, and I guess on your blog I have done so.
Last year I told my continuing education teacher, “I just love my own writing,” and he said he wished more (hobby) writers would say that.