Listen To This Story

Here is an ugly truth: Practically every man, woman, and child in this country has either been a victim of sexual abuse or knows someone who has suffered abuse. 

That’s one big reason the Epstein story has such staying power. Everyone senses how prevalent the sexual abuse of children is and, this time, a story has come along that promises to expose that fact by tying the abuse to prominent men in politics, business, and academia.

It is truly hard to contemplate how widespread the incidence of sexual abuse is. We got a glimpse during the “me too” movement, when women were encouraged to raise their hands and say that it happened to them and to name those who were guilty. But it was only a glimpse.

Shocked by All the Dots

I remember when I first became aware of how many sex criminals are out there. It was in the early 2000s. We had just moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills above Sunset and Vine when the state of California passed a law making maps available that showed where people who were registered sex offenders lived.

This was a new phenomenon — that those convicted of sex crimes could not only be sentenced to prison, but then be required to register with the state as a sex offender once out of prison, a label that we were assured would stick with them for life.

You could log onto a website run by the state, type in your zip code, and a map would appear of your area showing the street address of every sex offender in the zip code. You could zoom in to show your specific neighborhood, which I immediately did. We lived just above Franklin Avenue to the west of Beechwood Canyon. There were lots of apartment buildings along Franklin and on the streets leading up into the hills.

The map of sex offenders in our neighborhood was dense with red dots, not only at addresses that were apartment buildings, but further up in the Hollywood Hills, where I knew that the apartment buildings thinned out to be replaced by single-family homes. 

I sat there and counted the red dots. There were hundreds in the specific area where I had walked my daughter when she was in a stroller and where I took my son on walks with his scooter. Hundreds. In buildings I had passed and still passed with my kids every day.

I was shocked. There were a dozen or more convicted sex offenders within 200 yards of our house, and within a quarter mile there were several hundred more. 

Who knew? I certainly didn’t. I’m sure court records were available that showed every conviction of a sex criminal in Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles. But you’d have to go down to the courthouse and search through file cabinets containing paper files of the cases. And the addresses shown would likely be those of the criminals at the time of their conviction, not their addresses after they had served their sentences and were out on parole. And especially not after they had served their time on parole and were free, effectively speaking, of the court system and law enforcement supervision.

I was shocked. There were a dozen or more convicted sex offenders within 200 yards of our house, and within a quarter mile there were several hundred more. 

The maps did not specify who the offender had committed a crime against, whether it was an adult male or female or a child. But there it was, up there on the internet, all the evidence anyone needed that sex crime was so prevalent that when plotted on a map, and you zoomed out, it turned whole neighborhoods bright red.

Numbers and Memories

The National Institutes of Health have reported that between 15 and 38 percent of adults were sexually abused as children, with women being more likely than men to have suffered abuse. One in four women were abused as children; one in five men suffered childhood abuse. 

Those are official statistics that come from cases either self-reported or logged by doctors and hospitals. We know, because we are human and we understand other human beings, that people don’t like to admit that they were abused, so the real statistics are very likely higher than those officially reported. 

In my own experience, half the women I have known well enough to talk about such things have told me they were sexually abused by their father, a family member, or an adult official at a school, summer camp, day care or other such facility.

Half.

This is the shameful secret behind life in these United States. We are a nation that has tolerated child sexual abuse for the entirety of our history. 

A Long History of Institutional Tolerance

We have learned that abuse of children has gone on in the Catholic Church for decades, if not centuries. We have learned recently that the same sort of sexual abuse of children, both boys and girls, has been tolerated by organized Protestant churches for what has likely been the same amount of time. 

Catholic dioceses across the country — and at least one national organization, the Boy Scouts — have had to declare bankruptcy to deal with the massive number of judgments for tolerating and covering up abuse over the years. The Boy Scouts is still in court fighting the release of files that would expose abuse during years not covered by settlements in cases against the organization. 

One case against the Boy Scouts revealed the existence of a “perversion file” of names of volunteers banned from service by the organization. The same lawsuit forced the release of 20,000 pages of files on more than 1,200 cases of child sexual abuse that covered just one 20-year period, 1965 to 1985. The Catholic Church keeps rolling out announcements of new settlements with victims.

It sometimes seems that every day, another case of childhood sexual abuse by a church leader is exposed. This October, the leader of one of this country’s largest mega-churches — Gateway Church, in Texas — pleaded guilty to abusing a 12-year-old girl in Oklahoma in the 1980s. He was given a 10-year sentence, but required to serve only six months in jail. He was also required to pay $250,000 in “restitution,” and was required to register as a sex offender.

People are sick of “knowing what happens” when rules and norms and laws are bent in favor of powerful people, usually men, who have sexually abused children. 

The sick reality is that almost weekly, you can read of a slap-on-the-wrist sentence handed out to a man who has abused a child somewhere in America. Everyone who reads such a story knows what happened. The guy who was sentenced went to school with the judge or played golf with him at a country club they both belonged to, or served on the board of a local corporation together.

The key words here are “everyone knows what happened.”

People are sick of “knowing what happens” when rules and norms and laws are bent in favor of powerful people, usually men, who have sexually abused children. 

The same leniency has happened again and again and again. What has been the result? The statistics outlined above, showing that one in four women have been sexually abused as children. 

That statistic hasn’t changed in years. It remains the same, because the men who are the offenders have either gotten away with it or, when caught, have been treated so leniently that they keep offending.

Look at what the Catholic Church would do when a priest was reported to have abused a child. They’d move the offending priest to another parish in another state, or they’d send him for “rehabilitation” at some facility run by the church that was set up specifically to treat priests who sexually abused children.

It’s a closed loop, whether it is within the Catholic Church or the Baptist Church or the Boy Scouts. Make a list. Slap him — it’s just about always a “him” — on the wrist and cover it up.

And Then Came Epstein

The problem the system has had with the Epstein case is that he got away with it so long, and he involved so many prominent men, and they abused such a large number of underage girls, that they can’t cover it up anymore. 

Having got caught in Florida, he received an incredibly light punishment from the state and was allowed to go free in a deal with federal prosecutors. Then he got caught by the Southern District in New York, and he was charged and jailed, and he either committed suicide or he was murdered — far more likely given the history of child sexual abuse involving powerful men.

Because criminal investigations produce records of searches and interviews and monetary transactions and other forms of evidence, there is much that has been covered up, and much to be revealed, as the Department of Justice sorts through the files on Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes. It’s anyone’s guess how “selective” the DOJ will be, though the political pressures are both obvious and intense.

Because we have electronic communication such as text messages, email, and other kinds of information sharing, there is other evidence that is coming from the Epstein estate by congressional subpoena. 

Because there are victims of Epstein’s crimes who are still alive, there is much, much more information that may come out — because they are willing to talk, and there are news outlets willing to give them airtime and space for their voices to be heard.

The thing that is keeping Donald Trump and other powerful men awake at night is that, this time, the story is not going away. 

And the reason it’s not going away is that nearly everyone has enough knowledge of childhood sexual abuse, in their own lives and in the lives of family members and people they know, that practically the entire country, including MAGA people and members of Congress themselves, know that the stories surrounding Epstein and Trump and other powerful men are true.

That’s the danger to Trump and others. This story is too big and too familiar to cover up. The same thing has happened to too many people. 

When you see statistics revealing that 70 percent of Americans want the Epstein files to be released, you’re looking at a statistic that contains the significant percentage of Americans who have themselves suffered sexual abuse as children.

It was reported that the name, Donald Trump, appears more times than any other name in the emails and text messages that were released last week in the 23,000-page drop. He is afraid of the Epstein files because he knows that his name, and very likely his image, are — or were — in them just as frequently, if not more.

It is not known whether Trump will survive the release of the Epstein files when it happens. Much will depend, it is thought, on the outcome of what bodes to be an ongoing battle over what is in fact released, on what timetable, and how pristine or “edited” a form. But it is likely that taking a shower in his own lies will not wash the dirt off Trump, and his party, this time. 

It is not hyperbole to say that Donald Trump’s long friendship with and personal business connections to the known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein may turn into the crime of the century.

As a service to our readers, we curate noteworthy stories through partnerships with outside writers and thinkers. A graduate of West Point, Lucian K. Truscott IV has had a career spanning five decades as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. His columns appear in the Lucian Truscott Newsletter. This has been adapted with the author’s permission.