The Jeffrey Epstein scandal is a chilling exposé of how even in a country like the USA, the self-appointed, self-proclaimed champion of democracy, ‘rule of law’ and human rights, a ‘fair deal for everyone’ remains a bloody farce. The ugly truth is that a clever exploitation of systemic weaknesses of various democratic institutions goes on to shield heinous crimes and criminals as long as they are rich and the powerful. Indians can draw some solace from it; we are not alone in living with such naked, such shameless plutocracy masqueraded as electoral democracy. We can also be happy about the fact that the fabulous American society most Indians yearn for, is as full of creeps and perverts as is ours.
I was prompted to write this article after watching a two-year video of Sarah Ransome that was posted again today on X (formerly Twitter) in which she was speaking of the Epstein scandal. In this video, she, herself a survivor, is telling reporters that as a 10-year old she was raped repeatedly; at times up to three times a day. Though the video was made when Maxwell, a woman accused as collaborator in the crime was convicted for 20 years in jail, the matter and the controversy have been revived again now because of a very shameful act of the current FBI chief Kash Patel and the Department of Justice.
Sarah is also the author of the book ‘Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back’ on this sordid saga. She clarifies that she was not the only girl on that island; there was a constant stream of girls taken there to be raped over and over again. The rapist ‘clients’ included a veritable battery of celebrities including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the richest of the rich and the powerful cutting across political ideologies—and they are the people, whom this guy Kash Patel is shamelessly protecting. Earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi, had suggested the list of his clients was on his desk; now Patel and the Department of Justice say there is no such list. Elon Musk shared a meme of a clown applying makeup, saying first ‘We will release the Epstein list’; then ‘We just need more time’; then, ‘The Epstein list is on my desk’; and finally, ‘There is no Epstein list’. He has also hinted a hush-up, referring to the mysterious death of the accused Epstein.
Since public awareness in India about this shameful episode is very poor, I thought I must bust some of the myths, which Indians very fondly harbour about their cherished American society which remains their ultimate wet dream. No, sir, the American society is as decadent as you could possibly imagine. If you have been thinking that the US is a fair and just society where the police and the criminal justice system are so honest that they exist only to deliver justice to the wronged people, your fond myths will be dashed to the ground after reading this article.
Who was Jeffrey Epstein?
Epstein was a New Yorker. He had no college degree. Yet, he ostensibly worked as a financier and hedge fund manager—curiously, his actual client base remained mysterious. Nobody knows how he made his billions. Leslie Wexner, billionaire retail magnate (Victoria’s Secret) was his known associate. Epstein operated behind the scenes in elite social and financial circles, despite having no college degree and opaque financial dealings. His assets included a $77 million townhouse in Manhattan; a private island (“Little St. James”) in the U.S. Virgin Islands; properties in Palm Beach, Paris, and New Mexico; and a private jet (nicknamed Lolita Express). He had free access to the wealthy, powerful, and politically connected across both sides of the Atlantic.
Epstein ran a highly organized child sex trafficking operation, enabled by: a rotating cast of female recruiters and assistants; a network of absolutely secluded properties wired with surveillance; a pyramid scheme of abuse: victims were paid to bring more girls; and connections with politicians, celebrities, scientists, and royalty. His criminal pattern included: recruiting girls (some as young as 10) under the pretext of offering massage; coercing them into sex acts, often repeatedly; paying them $200–$1,000 per “session”; grooming them for elite clients and for international travel; documenting the abuse, possibly for blackmail leverage. The main recruiter Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of disgraced UK media mogul Robert Maxwell. Another accomplice Jean-Luc Brunel (French modeling agent) was arrested in France, and died by suicide in prison in 2022. Photos, journals, hidden surveillance systems, and victim testimony confirmed all this. Several girls were trafficked across state and national borders, making it a federal crime.
How Courageous Survivors and a Female Journalist Exposed the Scandal
Survivors like Sarah Ransome, Virginia Giuffre, and Courtney Wild were instrumental in exposing Epstein’s crimes. Their accounts disclosed acts that go far beyond mere “prostitution” and speak of a deeper, highly pervert pathology of abuse.
In November 2018, the Miami Herald’s “Perversion of Justice” series, led by Julie K. Brown, shattered the silence around Epstein’s crimes. Brown’s year-long investigation identified nearly 80 victims (though estimates go up to 200), many of whom had never spoken publicly, and exposed a 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA) that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to minor state charges, serve 13 months with work-release privileges, and evade federal prosecution. The series, built on survivor interviews, police records, and court documents, revealed how Epstein’s wealth and legal team manipulated and screwed the criminal justice system.
The Herald’s reporting sparked public outrage, leading to Epstein’s 2019 re-arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, the resignation of U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta as Labour Secretary, and a federal ruling that the NPA violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by excluding victims. In 2019, over 12 women spoke in federal court.
The Herald’s courage and tremendous journalistic effort reminds us of the Boston Globe’s 2002 ‘Spotlight’ investigation, in which they had brilliantly exposed systemic child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the Church’s dogged attempts at cover-up. More than a 1000 children were abused by 237 priests. The aftermath of the Boston scandal included criminal prosecutions and convictions, the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, defrocking of a number of priests, large ($35–$50 million) financial settlements, a sharp decline in public trust in the Church, and a wave of similar revelations worldwide.
How the System Bent Backwards to Shield the Guilty
Epstein’s social orbit included former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Britain’s Prince Andrew, billionaire Les Wexner, Apollo CEO Leon Black, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and celebrities like David Copperfield. The names of Ehud Barak, Bill Gates, Larry Summers, Leon Black, Glenn Dubin, George Mitchell, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Naomi Campbell, and even Stephen Hawking appear in documents, flight logs, or guest lists. His “black book” listed hundreds of contacts, but only Ghislaine Maxwell, his chief enabler, faced criminal charges, convicted in 2021 for sex trafficking.
In 2005, Palm Beach police, led by Chief Michael Reiter, had uncovered evidence of Epstein’s abuse of at least 36 girls, supported by victim testimonies and physical evidence. Yet, State Attorney Barry Krischer pursued only a single prostitution charge. Frustrated, police referred the case to the FBI, which identified up to 40 victims. U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s 2008 NPA allowed Epstein to plead guilty to minor charges, serve a lenient sentence, and avoid federal prosecution. The deal, concealed from victims, also immunized co-conspirators. According to The Daily Beast, Acosta even said that he thought Epstein was a secret intelligence operative!
In a sad commentary on the American criminal justice system, no other associate was charged even though their number was about 170, as evident from court documents, including those unsealed from Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Maxwell. Many documents still remain redacted, limiting prosecutable evidence. Epstein’s team discredited victims and pressured prosecutors, creating a chilling effect. Moreover, the 2008 NPA granted blanket immunity to “any potential co-conspirators,” halting FBI probes.
Killed in Jail to Shut his Mouth Forever?
On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. Officially, it was ruled a suicide by hanging. The suspicious circumstances, however, screamed foul play. Two guards, one not a regular officer, were asleep or distracted, falsifying records of cell checks. Video footage from the cell tier was unavailable due to technical issues. Independent forensic pathologist Michael Baden noted a fractured hyoid bone in the throat, found generally in homicidal strangulation than suicide. The Department of Justice, however, is bent upon peddling the suicide theory. The simple fact is that, given that he could spill the beans on some of the most powerful people in USA, those who silenced him must have taken full precautions to cover up their tracks of his murder.
The Epstein Files
The “Epstein files” encompass court documents, depositions, photographs, and videos from decades of investigations. Over 2,000 pages have been unsealed, though many files remain sealed or redacted, citing victim privacy, on-going investigations, or third-party harm—a classic illustration of how the system can be manipulated to shield the powerful. This was not just about individual corruption, but about a system that is structurally biased in favour of white, wealthy, heterosexual men. Epstein’s wealth and connections bought him leniency, as prosecutors actively colluded with his defence to minimize charges and shield co-conspirators. The legal system often treated the girls as “child prostitutes” rather than victims of rape, shifting blame and erasing the pathology of the perpetrators.
It would be an insult to common sense to think that a criminal like Epstein who went to such great lengths to provide perverse sexual pleasures to his rich friends would be so stupid as to not keep a record of their perverse activities—for blackmail or his own safety. Yet, the DOJ now says that there is no “client list” or blackmail evidence. The Miami Herald and survivors continue to litigate for full disclosure; however, the government’s stonewalling screams a cover-up.
Kash Patel, FBI Director had, earlier promised to release Epstein files. Now he has backed out and says there are no files. Attorney General Pam Bondi has accused the FBI of withholding thousands of pages. It needs no imagination to figure out Patel’s real motives. Investigations are officially closed, though for the poor public the case is very much open! What a shame! So much like us!
The Broader Issue of Paedophilia in American Society
The real problem is not that there was a ‘madam’ Maxwell and a de facto pimp (albeit fabulously rich) Epstein arranging young girls. The larger issue is that there was a clientele for them. Even though child abuse was there in the Boston case also, there is a fundamental difference between the two. The priests, officially being celibates, are, so to speak, deprived of a normal sex life. Hence, as compensation, it is not uncommon for the weak-willed amongst them to find sexual pleasure from kids under their charge, even if they are not confirmed homosexuals. It is like instances of male-on-male sexual assaults in army barracks or boys hostels etc. There are any numbers of historical instances. The clients of Epstein were, however, rich heterosexual men who had beautiful wives and who could pay for the best hookers, models, actresses, etc. in the country who would be sexually extremely attractive. Yet, if they proceeded to buy sex with young girls or rape them, it was not the result of sexual deprivation, it was outright sexual perversion. This is a pathology rooted in their sense of entitlement, invulnerability and the thrill of transgression, not in ‘sexual needs’. These men were not simply seeking sex—they were seeking dominance and the thrill of the ‘forbidden fruit’.
According to National Children’s Alliance, nearly 70% of reported sexual assaults target those under 17. Epstein scandal therefore merely exemplifies the strong streak of paedophilia in the American society, which, given the opportunity like Epstein’s secluded island, burst forth even in supposedly respectable people, and not just the criminals who crowd American jails.
We had an interesting parallel in England. A three-year long independent inquiry (2022) into child sexual exploitation, headed by Tom Crowther, Queen’s Counsel had established that over a thousand children in Telford were methodically sexually exploited by Muslim ‘grooming gangs’. Those girls were also from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. There also we had failure of the criminal justice system; a culture of silence and complicity enabled the abuse to go on for years.
Epstein’s operation targeted vulnerable girls, often from low-income families, with payments of $200–$2,000 per encounter. That the girls were paid so low despite the clients being so rich, underscores the exploitative nature of the operation. The girls were not just to be exploited, they had to be shown their place in the pecking order too—that they were not more than ‘use and throw’ sex dolls. Recruiters like Maxwell lured them with promises of money or modelling opportunities, pressurizing them to recruit others in a pyramid-like structure. Many victims came from poor, single-parent, or foster homes—environments where parental oversight was limited by economic necessity or family instability. In the Catholic Church’s child abuse scandal also, victims were dismissed as “troubled.” In any case, the poor or unstable family backgrounds of the families made them particularly vulnerable and easy to silence.
How It Exposed the Moral Rot and Decay in the American Society
More importantly, the Epstein scandal shows that in the USA too, despite all its pretensions to modernity and a 236 year old history of democratic systems, they too, quite like our ‘feudal-at-heart’ society, accord a respectable degree of tolerance if not outright social acceptability to the deviations and perversions of the powerful almost as a matter of right. The real scandal is not just the existence of sexual predators, but the existence of a market for their crimes—and the institutions that enable them.
The Epstein scandal holds a grotesque mirror reflecting the darkest, ugliest corners of American society, where wealth, power, and perversion colluded to sexually exploit vulnerable girls for so long. It is a stark indictment of a system that bends backwards to wealth and power. The survivors and Miami Herald, like the Boston Globe earlier in the Church case, could expose how the institutions of the country habitually gang up to shield the rich and the powerful. Justice for the poor girls, however, remains not just elusive but a pipedream; in fact, a festering wound on the collective conscience of a nation that misses no opportunity to ‘preach’ to the rest of the world from its moral high horse.
