As Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on five of six charges last week/last year, that may sound an absurd question, especially as the State chose to call only four alleged victims to testify against her, which has led many people to claim there has been a massive cover-up to protect guilty men in high places. But there is an alternative and much more plausible explanation, both for that and for the ultra-lenient treatment the now deceased Jeffrey Epstein received when he was first arrested.
Although the allegations against him have mushroomed with the passage of time, he was accused initially only of soliciting underage girls to perform “sexual massages”.
The age of consent in Florida is, and was then, eighteen. The youngest girl Epstein recruited appears to have been fourteen. There have been claims that some were younger, but none of these claims has been substantiated. Had he engaged in such activity in the UK, he would have been treated more severely, but not much more severely. Odious as Epstein was, and even allowing for the scale of his procuring, it pales by comparison with some of the grooming gang cases we have seen here in which even younger girls were gang-raped time and time again.
Epstein’s victims were also well rewarded for their services, and after he was charged it was hardly surprising that many of them pursued him in the civil courts aided by unscrupulous lawyers working on a no-win/no-fee basis. Indeed, it is one of those lawyers who is largely responsible for the claim that Epstein pimped out some of these girls to extremely wealthy men and powerful politicians.
Donald Trump and Bill Clinton are the biggest political names, but sliming Trump has become a national obsession with the mainstream media, while conspiracy cranks have had a field day with Clinton. Two of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s most vocal accusers are Sarah Ransome and the former Virginia Roberts. Ransome claims to have been raped repeatedly by Epstein, and Roberts to have been “trafficked” to all manner of people. So why were they not called as prosecution witnesses? Because their claims would not stand up to cross-examination. We see this time and time and time again, to take just one example, a much touted claim of innocence rather than one of guilt, the Innocence Project has been waging a fierce campaign on behalf of Rodney Reed, who murdered Stacey Stites in 1996. Reed is also a serial rapist; because the case against him for the Stites murder was so strong, and because he was sentenced to death, the State elected not to try him for the kidnapping and attempted rape of Linda Schleuter or any of his other crimes. So why is Reed still behind bars? Because people can make any outrageous claim in public, and if it suits their agenda, the mass media will parrot it uncritically. In the court of public opinion, Reed is an innocent man; in the court of law, he is a convicted murderer and a sexual predator of the worse kind.
Conversely, in the media, Sarah Ransome is a rape victim when in reality she travelled freely with Epstein, the man who rented her New York apartment for her. She was well over the age of consent when she met him, yet we are asked to believe she allowed herself to be sexually violated by him for years.
In the media, the former Virginia Roberts is a sex trafficking victim, yet in reality and by her own, filmed admission, she was herself a child sex trafficker, yet the media glosses over this as though she had no agency. She was paid to have sex with Prince Andrew after a night out in a high class nightclub, yet years later she is a victim.
Both Ransome and certainly Roberts could have been indicted along with Epstein, especially the latter, yet now they are victims of Ghislaine Maxwell rather than co-conspirators.
What then of the claim that Epstein worked with intelligence agencies to entrap powerful politicians and others on camera? This is of course possible, but it is more plausible that he was also an extreme voyeur and liked to spy on his house guests. If the names of wealthy men and powerful politicians were kept out of the Maxwell trial it is most likely that this was to protect their reputations from outrageously false allegations. Any male politician, business person or celebrity can be falsely accused at any time, indeed it happens all the time. The list of falsely accused celebrities includes – in no particular order – the magician David Copperfield, Mike Tyson, German weatherman Jörg Kachelmann, TV presenters Tucker Carlson and Greg Kelly, musicians Conor Oberst, Mick Hucknall, Paul Weller, and Justin Bieber.
After he was rightly convicted of rape, Mike Tyson became an easy target for false allegations, so did Epstein, and now that he is dead, he can be accused of absolutely anything.
Ghislaine Maxwell is facing an extremely heavy sentence for crimes which in Britain would have earned her six or seven years at the very most. Many pundits have suggested she will now be ready to sing in return for leniency, but as Alan Dershowitz once pointed out, in a situation like this a defendant or convicted felon may be tempted not only to sing but to compose. This should be borne in mind when evaluating anything she says prior to her being sentenced.