The Hail Mary to stop accountability in the Epstein cases.

I don’t like talking about it; do my best not to think about it. Certainly, I try not to read about it. It is not my area of expertise; does not even resemble my own sexual assault and experience. Yet, every time there is a document dump, what follows is weeks of articles and interviews that lead to months of speculation that any day now, the hammer of justice is going to drop. I fall into a depression every time. Not because the tales of perverted sexual assault of girls and boys trigger PTSD or memories I cannot escape, but because I recognize the coverups.

The coverup is the same. It is just on a different level.

When I was young, the pattern and practice that protected sexual abusers was that we did not talk about our sexual assaults. Whether they occurred during our childhood from family members, from our faith leaders, our teachers, our partners in adulthood did not matter. We stayed quiet, absorbed the pain, never even sought justice. 

Yes, there were always the few victims who did not follow the pattern and practice of staying silent. They made noise, they complained, they demanded justice. So, in response, the rapists and their protectors created the systems that they claimed would supply justice to the victims. Rape kits administered by specially trained rape nurses, specially trained sexual assault investigators, media that would report the allegations, sexual offender registry lists, internal affairs investigations, zero tolerance policies in work environments, victims’ advocates, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigations into pattern and practice of agencies and companies, women’s health and reduction in violence programs…

It was mostly smoke and mirrors, meant to stall the complaints and eventually make them go away. 

Whether I am looking at the rape culture of federal agencies like the US Border Patrol or trying not to watch the Epstein saga, it is all pattern and practice to me. Rape kits are not processed, rape nurses often do poor jobs and do not complete all evidence tests because there are not enough funds. Media stays silent about most sexual assaults, certainly about the systemic ones. Many adjudicated offenders from law enforcement, of high status or wealth are not required to be on sex offender registries. Internal affairs divisions engage in constant coverups of their coworkers’ crimes and “zero tolerance policies” and “sensitivity training” are a joke. When charges are about to be levied, abusers are notified by their friends investigating so they can retire, collect their government pensions and the case dies. EEOC is essentially a hush money fund for federal sexual assault complaints. They are not interested in pattern and practice of sexual assault and harassment in federal agencies. They provide little statistics with which to draw conclusions. Everything is tucked away nicely out of sight because of privacy laws that exist for the offenders. Women’s health and reduction in violence programs have been thrown in the trash. 

I see in the Epstein case what I have always seen in the way the US Border Patrol and other federal agencies coverup the sexual assaults committed by their employees. Whether we are talking about Border Patrol agents or wealthy well-connected abusers, the pattern and practice when a victim complains about being assaulted by a member of the group is to pretend to care about the victims, then offer money to shut them up. 

What does pretending to care and want justice look like in practice? It looks like taking victims to the hospital for exams that go nowhere. It looks like an “official investigation” that spends more time investigating the victims. It is hours worth of recounting the assault to nurses, investigators, attorneys, courts, depositions which can last for years. It looks like being given permission to finally sue the government after years, sometimes a decade of investigation. In the end, it might look like winning some money. It looks like abusers continuing with their careers and lives as they are moved to another area of the agency or the country to abuse again. It is keeping the records of abuse secret because of privacy laws that protect sexual predators. 

In the rare instances where we get a glimpse into a rape culture like Epstein’s and the Border Patrol’s, we see the same pattern and practice of investigations that lead to the same outcomes. The investigators are the coverup. They are not independent, chosen instead for their loyalty to the system or the abuser. They consistently fail to identify and collect all of the evidence. They fail to interview witnesses, victims and the accused. When they do interview and do find the evidence, they keep it secret or redact the evidence that proves the crime. They simply refuse to release the evidence and prosecute.

For all the similarities though, the Epstein rape culture presents a new tactic. 

Although the same patterns and practices used by the EEOC and federal government are also present in the Epstein case and it s likely most of the Epstein victims stories will never be known, the difference is that enough investigators did gather and document enough evidence. The difference is that the prosecutors have given up on trying to hide it all and are instead flooding the public sphere with the evidence. Like waiting for the next season of a television drama, we all sit with anticipation for the next document dump. People who follow the case then take the following months to write and pontificate on the newly revealed evidence. 

But what does this new tactic of dumping evidence mean to the legal systems put in place meant to provide accountability and justice to victims?

What is missing from all of this talk is that the Department of Justice is actively engaging in witness and jury tampering, actively blowing up the system created for accountability. The document dumps contain much that is provable especially in the pictures and videos, but they also contain things that are questionable, things that even defy logic. Every time Attorney General Pam Bondi orders a new release of documents, I worry that some small part is not true. This is called contaminating the evidence. 

Border Patrol has engaged in this tactic as well. It is somewhat of a Hail Mary tactic used when the systems and all else fails to protect the predators. The goal is not to destroy the evidence as it is too overwhelming and they cannot destroy it because the victims will not shut their mouths. There are also too many victims to get rid off. When this happens, the best option is to then call into question the truthfulness of the complaints. 

Years ago, a human rights group began collecting data on physical assaults committed by agents on migrants. The organization was interviewing migrants after they were released from custody and tracking assaults. When they published their findings about how rampant assaults of all kinds were in CBP and Border Patrol custody, they were forced to end the program and throw the data away. Why? Because the Border Patrol knew they were collecting this data, and had submitted fake accounts of assault to the organization who took them as fact. This contaminated and called into question the veracity of all the data. 

While the dumping of a small portion of Epstein evidence documents may feel like a win, it is actually part of the continuing coverup. Dumping of evidence documents renders the ability to provide justice to the victims impossible within the existing framework of our justice system. Even if every single person who went to those parties was brought up on charges, there is no legal way for anyone of them to receive a fair trial because the Department of Justice has contaminated most prospective jurors with the slow drip of these documents. Any judge assigned to such a case would not be able to assure the defendant could get a fair trial. 

This is just another layer in the predators’ and their protectors’ fight to keep rape cultures hidden.

We used to just keep our sexual assaults to ourselves, and then we started to talk. This caused abusers and their protectors to create the systems like EEOC and rigged rape investigations to protect themselves. Once the victims started recognizing the systems were corrupted and designed to protect the abusers and re-traumatize the victims, #MeToo set out to set the record straight of how endemic sexual assault is in our culture. This led to Epstein’s victims organizing and making their voices louder. So loud, they could not be ignored anymore. The response by the Department of Justice is to refuse any charges or accountability. The victims demanded sunlight, and Congress passed a law requiring it. The abusers’ protectors, Bondi and the Department of Justice’s response is to contaminate the evidence, to slowly leak out some of the evidence with some questionable accounts so a trial is not even possible.

The protectors of pedophiles and rapists are laughing at us. 

The only just response must be to demand laws from Congress that create a separate and independent sexual assault and pedophilia organization or task force for the lack of a better words, outside of government. One with experts, data analysts and investigators separate from police and rigged government systems. More importantly, this organization must provide literal accountability against those who intentionally corrupt and contaminate these cases. We must not only prosecute and punish the abusers. We must prosecute and punish the protectors of sexual abusers too. We must design a better system. One that works for the victims.

Enough!