The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has been much in the news again lately, and quite frankly I've been surprised how many years have passed before it became a hot topic. I did a search on my blog to see exactly when I first wrote about it. Turns out that it was 2018 when I read James Patterson's detailed account of what Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were up to. I mentioned it here in my end-of-year summary of audiobooks read in 2018.
The full title of Patterson's book is Filthy Rich: A powerful billionaire, the sex scandal that undid him, and all the justice that money can buy : the shocking true story of Jeffrey Epstein.
I was never a James Patterson fan. I picked up this volume because it was non-fiction. I'd picked up an earlier novel of his at one time just to see why he was so "popular." The first chapter was as far as I got. I do not find books or films about sicko violence to women to be entertaining.
In the case of Filthy Rich, I was drawn in by the wealthy clients and "friends" in Epstein's circle. If these thing were true, as Patterson presented them, why was the media so silent? Bill Clinton was allegedly very much "in the club," purportedly making numerous trips* on Epstein's Lolita Express. [For those unfamiliar, Vladimir Nabokov's 1939 novel Lolita is about a middle-aged lit professor with a pedophilic obsession, who becomes infatuated with a 12-year-old, manipulating her into a sexual relationship and more.]
So which is it? Life imitating art or vice versa?
To my knowledge, none of Epstein's clients have been indicted for their actions. (By way of contrast, Roman Polanski fled the country to avoid prosecution for similar behavior, but none of the the Epstein entourage has been indicted as far as I know.
But as I noted at the beginning, why was there so little media coverage of these events until recently.
As Dylan wrote in his ballad of Hurricane Carter:
"Ain't it a shame to live in a land where justice is a game?"
* I do not recall exact names and numbers at this point.
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