This past week, I really went down a rabbit hole. I read and watched oodles about Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy New York pedophile who was apparently directly responsible for the assault, rape, and molestation of hundreds of girls, some as young as 14, and for the trafficking of girls for the thrill and titillation of the world's wealthiest and most powerful "men."
Reading about this guy is like seeing a piece of crabgrass in your yard and pulling on it, only to find that it is connected to that other clump of crabgrass over there, and another one where you would never have thought to look, and it ribbons in that direction and this direction, connecting disparate parts of your yard in a web of invasive flora. Epstein's web is dark and hideous, and includes Bill Clinton (who flew on Epstein's "Lolita Express" private plane 26 times); Donald Trump; lawyer Alan Dershowitz; Prince Andrew; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, among many other cockroaches.
There's a lot to say about all this, and I may write about it more in coming weeks, as I digest further. Today, though, there's one point I'd like to make: Any girl today, and any of us who were formerly girls, with one something, maybe two somethings changed about our lives—an inherited detail, a decision we made, an unfortunate intersection of wrong place and wrong time—could have been one of the girls exploited by Epstein and his ilk.
Many of the girls Epstein abused are now women, and have come forward to share their stories. (Some shared those stories with the FBI over 20 years ago, but weren’t taken seriously at the time, so Epstein remained at large and many, many more young women were assaulted. Thanks, FBI.)
At this point, I've read or listened to interviews with a lot of these young women (on the Netflix docuseries Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich; on various news reports and exposés on YouTube; and in sundry articles). Some came from broken homes; some didn't. Some had previously been victims of physical and/or sexual abuse before meeting Epstein; some hadn't. What most of them seem to have had in common was that they were young, and enticed by the idea of making $200 to "massage" an old guy, which is one line they were fed by other young women who recruited for Epstein. Epstein's right-hand demon, Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who seems to have shanghaied many of his victims, frequently used another conscription narrative: Epstein was a kind-hearted benefactor who would generously fund a girl’s education.
Watching these interviews reminded me of an incident from my life. I was 19 years old, and taking my sophomore year off from college to do an internship at a magazine in Washington, DC. This was my first time alone in a big city, making my own way as an independent person.
It was my first weekend in the city, my internship would start the following week, and I was trying to find an affordable houseshare. I had decided to spend that weekend day acquainting myself with a couple of areas in the city, and was walking around the Adams Morgan neighborhood.
I was standing on a street corner, long before cell phones were a gleam in God's eye, with an unfolded map, trying to figure out exactly where I was, and signaling to the world not only that I was an out-of-towner, but a complete rube. A middle-aged man walked up to me, asked me whether I was new to town, and where I was trying to get to. I told him that I was exploring that day, trying to figure out where I wanted to live. He said he lived nearby in a nice building (that turned out to be bullshit), and would I like to come up and have a cup of tea? He had lived in the city for years, he said, and could help me narrow down the best neighborhoods for my purposes.
I definitely had a couple of immediate thoughts like, This is not a good idea and You don't know anything about this guy. But I overrode them, although I don’t remember the details about how. He was short and portly and I didn't think he posed a threat. Foolish? Naïve? Dopey? Totally.
So we walked to his nearby apartment building, which wasn't very nice, and went inside, and walked up to the second floor. We were chatting, I know that, but I don’t remember a word we said. I was already starting to feel uncomfortable. It was very different to be indoors, with no one else around, than it was to be outside on the bustling sidewalk with this guy.
He opened the door to his apartment, which was at the top of the flight of stairs, and I walked in first. He turned and locked the door behind us from the inside. The shades were drawn, which seemed odd to me, and there were stacks of magazines all over the place. I could see that some of them were Playboys. (With the kind of porn available today, Playboy seems almost quaint, but, at that time, it definitely telegraphed ”uh-oh” to me.)
My mind started racing, and I felt I had to get out of there, but I wanted to do so without causing a fuss if possible because what if he was a total nut? What if he had a weapon? What if he was stronger than me? Could I take him? He was oldish and fattish, but he was definitely bigger than me.
We sat down at a small table on the other side of the room, and he never made tea. He excused himself, and I should have run to the door and right out of that place, but I didn't because I was doing this constant calculus in my head. When should I split? When would it be okay? I didn't know how long he was going to be gone from the room and I didn't want to make him crazy if he heard me fiddling with the door locks. This spinning out of various horrific scenarios makes it difficult to think straight, let alone strategize about how to best exit a situation you wish you never got yourself into in the first place.
He came back wearing nothing but a Speedo, and invited me to get more comfortable by taking off my clothes. I tried to steady my voice and told him I felt comfortable as I was, but do I need to tell you I was totally freaking out? Conversation ensued, I remember he crossed his legs like he was at the Saratoga Race Track watching his horse round the bend, a misplaced aristocrat, oddly dressed for any occasion, but I remember nothing that was said because I was not present for the conversation. I was figuring out how to get gone.
Somehow I convinced him to walk me to the door and let me out. He stood on the landing of his building in his itty bitty briefs, bizarre and also frightening. He asked me to kiss him before I left, and I found the suggestion vile and repulsive, but I did, because it felt like the price I had to pay to regain my freedom, and then I bolted down those stairs like there was no tomorrow and I unlocked the door at the bottom of the stairs, still afraid that he might change his weird mind and block my exit somehow. I felt so grateful and relieved to stand outside in the sunshine again, with other people around.
Typing this, remembering the whole thing, my heart is racing. Forty years later. It could have ended very differently. Weird and disturbing as it was—and the whole experience has a potent half-life if I'm still feeling as jittery about it as I am right now—it clearly could have been much, much worse. I got lucky.
In no way am I suggesting an equivalency between this experience and being sex-trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. I am suggesting that experiences like mine may shed light on how one poorly considered decision can cascade into something completely unwelcome and unforeseen.
Listening to Epstein's victims—girls and young women, reflecting on having made decisions that were imperfect, that required them to quiet a voice inside their heads that said, Do you really think this is a good idea?—is excruciating and humbling.
One of the young women, who met Epstein when she was 22 years old, says at one point in Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, “I should have trusted my instincts…but I didn’t.”
Who among us doesn't recognize the universality of that?