It is a singular name that seems incapable of escaping a news cycle. And like another name, Watergate, it also threatens to stain, or potentially worse, dismantle a presidency.
The name, Epstein, belongs to the late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sexual offender and sexual predator who, over multiple decades, victimized scores of young girls and women at his Florida mansion and other properties. Epstein died in 2019, a victim of suicide.
But his notoriety lives on, not just because of his predatory life but because of his association with President Donald Trump, a man he regularly traveled with, entertained at his mansion and someone he once described as his “best friend.”
While Epstein’s bacchanalian and criminal life continues to shadow Trump and his presidency, it has also brought a sharp, new focus to the subject of sexual predation, a crime that occurs every day in every state in the country. “What we know about it,” says Professor Andrew Mrkvicka, “is that it thrives in darkness and secrecy.” Mrkvicka teaches social work at Metropolitan State University Denver and, in his private practice, has treated victims of this crime for thirty years.
Predators like Epstein and others like him, Mrkvicka said, all use the same approach with their victims. They look for young girls or women who are “fragile…and immature,” and at an age when “their brain is still developing.” It is also a time when their decisions are spontaneous, thoughtless, or at best, poorly considered.
Many of the now women who say they were Epstein’s victims once fit this profile. It is a thread not uncommon in young people, but certainly not all young people become victims of people like Epstein or untold numbers of others like him. Mrkvicka says
Predators and groomers ply their victims with money, gifts and promises, all tools in their physical and psychological quiver.
For a runaway, a perpetrator often begins with kindness and friendship. But soon enough, they’re replaced with the threat of physical or actual violence. Some victims are intimidated in other ways including the threat of returning to foster care or even death.
Over a lifetime, too many, said the MSU Denver professor, live in a world of “silent suffering.” Mrkvicka says “they never have the opportunity to talk about their trauma,” or heal from it. It can also become a generational curse. “Someone victimized as a child,” the academic/social worker says, “will have kids of their own.” Those children are often called ‘secondary victims.’” Even with the best parenting and desire to protect their child from the abuse they experienced, their early in life sexual exploitation can haunt.
Mrkvicka applauds the women who say they were Epstein’s victims for speaking out. “They knew coming forward they were going up against powerful, influential and dangerous people who could make their lives really hard.” But not coming forward, he believes, would be “protecting the perpetrators.” The story these women tell and that has been shared in a book by Virginia Giuffre, who took her own life earlier this year and is, perhaps, Epstein’s best-known victim, will take center stage this week in Congress.
Her book, “Nobody’s Girl,” chronicles Giuffre’s time in Epstein’s world. In it she tells of the sexual and mental abuse she endured at the hands of Epstein, his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, then-British royalty, Prince Andrew and others.
Last week’s swearing in of Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalvatook on greater importance in the Epstein matter. Grijalva’s first official act was signing the all-important discharge petition making it possible to release all files related to the Epstein case.
Grijalva’s swearing in was delayed for the entire length of the government shutdown. She now takes the seat long held by her father, Raul, who died earlier this year.
After taking her oath, she wasted no time addressing her delay and the politics behind it. “It’s about time for Congress to restore its role as a check and balance on this administration,” she said. “Justice cannot wait another day.”
This week, the same women who have demanded justice for the crimes committed against them by Epstein, will hold yet another news conference. They will be joined by at least one prominent Republican woman, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene was once one of the most vocal supporters of the President. (Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Bobert will also join Greene).
But as a result of Greene’s support of Epstein’s victims, she has found herself under attack by Trump. Over the weekend he flooded his Truth Social platform with epithets labeling Greene a “traitor” and “sellout.” Trump also pledged to support any legitimate candidate who opposes his former ally’s reelection to Congress.
The Epstein matter has become the biggest political anchor in Trump’s second term as president. But he may be his own worst enemy in this battle. Asked over the weekend if he would pardon Epstein’s old partner, Maxwell, Trump said he would not rule it out.
Adding to the weight of Trump’s political yoke were Epstein email released last week by Democrats. One, in particular, stood out. In it, Epstein wrote to convicted sexual offender Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s Florida home with one of his victims.
Trump has already caught flak for authorizing or looking the other way for Maxwell’s move from a federal prison in Florida where she was serving twenty years, to a minimum-security facility in Texas. Maxwell may be the first ever convicted sexual offender brought into the Texas facility.
At the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, it has been reported that Maxwell has been given her own special diet, access to after-hours exercise and allowed into a program training puppies as service dogs.
But despite his military bellicosity toward Venezuela and Nigeria or dealing with seemingly intractable wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Trump cannot seem to shake attention off the Epstein matter.
While it currently is a long way from morphing into the “third-rate burglary,” the term Nixon once labeled Watergate when it entered the lexicon, a number of papers and pundits have intimated that the Epstein story has real ‘legs.’
Watergate, once the simple name of an upscale housing and office complex in the nation’s capital, is today and forever an indelible stain on the American presidency. But it is now threatened to be subsumed and supplanted by another name.
