PHOTO COURTESY OF MIAMIHERALD.COM

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein raise their hands behind Attorney General Pam Bondi during a House Judiciary Committee meeting.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Jeffrey Epstein was a real jerk. Millions of pages of legal documents, eye witness testimony and photographic evidence all point to one fact: Epstein, and Epstein alone, was a monster. 

At least, this seems to be the official position of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the President of the United States. 

Thousands of alleged victims and millions of pages of collected evidence that seem to reveal a network of the most powerful men in the world who spent decades abusing children and the only person currently in jail for it is a woman, Ghislaine Maxwell. 

A deplorable and downright evil woman, to be sure, but the irony of it all is enough to make you laugh. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad. 

And it feels like we are already moving on from it. A couple of weeks of headlines and hearings and still no arrests, no investigations, and fewer and fewer mentions in the news and on social media. 

Most people do not seem to really care all that much, chalking it up to the “system” and “things always being this way” and, once again, crimes against girls and women are not given the attention and justice that they deserve. 

You cannot claim to care about women if you do not care about the Epstein files. You cannot be both a feminist and indifferent to situations like this. 

It does not matter what your thoughts are on politics or how you feel about the people that were named in the files, this comes down to humanity because this happened to real people, real girls who had to go through unimaginable things and have waited decades for justice. 

No one helped them, and they are still waiting for justice to be served. 

Even if massive investigations and major arrests and prosecutions come in the future, Virginia Louise Giuffre and God knows how many other victims just like her will not be able to see it. The system has already failed them. The system that ignores women’s suffering and shrugs at their trauma and says that there is nothing to be done. 

The Epstein files and the subsequent reaction, or lack thereof, have made crystal clear what women have always known: that the patriarchy is alive and well and despite our best efforts, there are still those who will never view us as equal or worthy of defending. 

A system that focuses so much attention on defending and protecting men, even those with the most skeletons in their closets imaginable, winds up with women, victims, who slip through the cracks and end up forgotten, overlooked and ignored. 

The Epstein files are not a fad or a trending topic. They are the end result of what we have allowed our world to become and if this was not enough to make you understand just how immensely broken our society is, then it probably never will be. 

You are not angry enough about the Epstein files. We are not angry enough about the Epstein files. Because the same system that enabled their contents is the same one that now protects its perpetrators. 

I guess all we can do is laugh. Because if we don’t, we may never stop crying.

Categories: Opinion