The proposition seems absurd. Most of us live in conventional American households. No deluxe private clubs or secluded island destinations. And the Epstein story has now become a political football garnering coverage not unlike we witness each year as the Superbowl emerges from the NFL season. This is how elite people live.
But as I listened to one of the lesser known victims of the Epstein world, it occurred to me that I had seen this movie before, just on a far smaller scale. The interviewee was another young woman who had accepted invitations to join the rich and famous with whom Jeffery Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell consorted. To be fair Maria Farmer was in her mid-20s when those invitations were proffered. We have been focused on Virginia Giuffre, a woman who was 17 when her father got her a job at Mar-A-Lago as a spa attendant. Giuffre was allegedly recruited by Maxwell to become a masseuse for Epstein. Giuffre had been trafficked and lived on the streets long before her father introduced her to work at Mar-A-Lago. In an interview with the BBC years later she recalled that she actually felt safe and secure when she took the Epstein job. She felt secure enough to tell her Maxwell and Epstein of her past, not realizing that they might take advantage of that.
How does this relate to our everyday experience? Almost all of us aspire to live “better” both in an economic and social sense. And when opportunities occur to be part of that better world, we often drop our emotional guards. Moreover, psychologists inform us that even into our early twenties, the part of our brains that senses danger is not fully developped. Military historian Gwynne Dyer wrote in his 1985 study of modern war that we like young recruits to join the army not just because they are physically fit but because they don’t really grasp that an order to ascend the trench and go “over the top” involves a high likelihood of death or devastating injury. Years ago, I was involved in a case where a young person with athletic skill wanted special training in her sport. Her parents were tickled that they found a trainer who was famous as a former Olympic medalist in that sport. Over time, that trainer’s interests in his student grew far beyond the sport itself. The student knew the relationship was now off the rails but she was frightened to tell either of her parents. To have done so would have ruined her athletic career and who knows how her parents would respond to discovery that she was in a sexual relationship with an adult as old as her own parents. Not to mention that within the sporting community this trainer was “famous.”
This is similar to the scandals that periodically emerge involving church leaders. These are “trusted” and “respected” members of our community. A church is a community within a geographic community. We seek to belong and to become a trusted part of that community. We also understand that there are consequences to betraying that community even in a setting where that “community” is exploiting us. Then there are the direct benefits often tied to exploitation. People in the world of Epstein or Sean Combs don’t fly commercial and don’t drink from the bottom shelf. You, humble you, are now part of their world. And you are now esteemed by friends and family because you travel in that world. Recall what we saw in the recent Combs trial. We watched video of a talented, 30 year old woman being kicked and beaten in a hotel. But Cassie Ventura stayed in the relationship with Combs.
The point is that cults are all around us. When we think of the term, we like to define it by reference to Branch Davidians, the People’s Temple at Jonestown, Charles Manson or the Symbionese Liberation Army. Those are the easy ones in the sense that they involved separation from regular society and extreme anti-social behavior. But anyone who has become deeply enmeshed in something as innocent as a church, a particular sport, or even a country club has encountered topics or behaviors that just aren’t discussed out of fear that one might be ostracized. Consider the idea that Virginia Giuffre’s father probably thought he had done her a service by helping her get a job where she would have daily interaction with members of one of America’s exclusive clubs. His well meaning efforts prompted her to take her life earlier this year at age 41.
The lesson for parents is eternal vigilance that includes people we otherwise think of as the best and brightest of our society. Those folks have “baggage” too but the stars in our eyes often cause us to ignore reality.
Addition: No sooner published than the Philadelphia Inquirer for August 11 , lead with a story about allegations that a local entrepreneur who has long operated a school to teach rock music is closing the school amidst allegations that he was abusive to the students in the school.