The Epstein Matter: Enough Abuse® on the Record
The Epstein matter continues to dominate news cycles as the public feasts on the juicy story of the powerful and rich hobnobbing with a mega rich sex offender and a potential coverup. One might have hoped that the public’s and the media’s main focus would be on the estimated 1,000 victims of these crimes, but it has not been. Or that we as a country are finally reckoning with institutional child sexual abuse. But we’re not. Not even close.
Political factions are trading outrage over redacted documents, missing video footage, and who knew what, when. Of course, transparency matters. The public has a right to know which of the elite may have enabled abuse, who committed crimes, who turned a blind eye. Yet, this is not about a dead man’s case or his accomplice, it’s about the sexual abuse of teen girls, once referred to euphemistically as women “on the younger side” but children, nonetheless.
The real crisis isn’t buried in a black book, a flight log, or some list. It’s in plain sight. The deeper, more pressing emergency is one we’ve been refusing to face for decades: the widespread, systemic and growing epidemic of child sexual abuse in America.
This latest story is not about a single predator or an outlier institution. What the Epstein case represents is a pattern - a culture of institutional complicity that values reputation, money and power over the protection of children. The Catholic Church shielded abusive priests, moving them to unsuspecting communities. The Boy Scouts buried allegations for decades in their “perversion files.” Penn State ignored years of complaints about coaches abusing with impunity. USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee turned a blind eye to Larry Nassar's abuse. And now in the Epstein matter, it appears that even banks and the criminal justice system may have chosen to protect pedophiles rather than children.
Despite this staggering pattern of institutional failure, most politicians have remained slow to proactively advance systemic legal reform or critically needed prevention strategies. Meanwhile, children remain in danger and survivors are forced to wait. They wait while lobbyists whisper in lawmakers’ ears about insurance liabilities. They wait while their abusers retire comfortably. They wait while lawsuits are delayed, dismissed, or denied. They wait while bad acting institutions sprint to the bankruptcy courts for cover.
Unless we implement a set of aggressive prevention and bipartisan legislative strategies, we can expect CDC’s dire prediction - that an estimated one in four girls and one in thirteen boys will experience sexual abuse before they turn 18. That’s not a trivial statistic. That’s an epidemic.
Here are five legislative actions we can take now if we are serious about protecting children.
1. Mandate training on child sexual abuse prevention for all schools and youth-serving organizations; adopt comprehensive codes of conduct that detail prohibited boundary-violating behaviors of staff in these institutions; strengthen screening of new hires; and close age of consent loopholes that protect abusers from prosecution.
2. Pass bipartisan federal and state laws to stop the out-of-control and ever expanding online sexual exploitation of our children on social media, messaging apps and gaming platforms.
3. End civil and criminal statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse in every state so survivors can seek justice, hold abusers accountable and prevent the abuse of more children.
4. Ban non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in child sexual abuse cases that continue to protect abusers. Truth should not be sealed for a settlement.
5. Reform Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code so institutions can't use bankruptcy to dodge responsibility and conceal predators.
These are not radical proposals. They are overdue, necessary, and long demanded by survivors, experts and advocates. Let’s stop pretending that child sexual abuse is someone else’s crisis. It is all of ours. It is not limited to private islands and billionaires. It happens in classrooms, locker rooms, church basements, and youth retreats. It happens in rich communities and poor ones, in white families and families of color, in red states and blue. It is everywhere - everywhere our children are. And unless we collectively - the public, the media and elected officials, treat it like the national emergency it is, we are complicit in the harm to our children and in the dangerous silence that follows.
