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Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard a

Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above. Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be more of a secret affair.

juliendorra 7y ago
Because he had already been convicted before and was (as Swenson learned previously, as you can read in the op cited new-yorker article on the issue) banned from being a MIT donor for this reason. Context matters.
floatingatoll 7y ago
Yes, he would, especially if he thought he had enough leverage to protect himself from the consequences.
empath75 7y ago
It’s not a theoretical question as to whether he was trafficking women. He had already been convicted of it! And was charged with it again.
- nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
  Why was he running around free then? Had he already passed his time in jail?
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    > Why was he running around free then? Because Bush-appointed US Attorney Alex Acosta (until recently Trump’s Secretary of Labor) made an illegal plea agreement to let Epstein off the hook and cover up the details of his criminality. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577419.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577... Some extremely rich and powerful men were among Epstein’s child-rapist co-conspirators, so there are strong pressures on law enforcement officials to sweep the whole thing under the rug.
    - sooheon 7y ago
      Is this man being taken to trial? Or is resignation the only repercussion he'll face?
  - cjbprime 7y ago
    Because of corruption. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-resigns-trump-jeffrey-epstein-plea-deal-latest-news https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-...
  - pasquinelli 7y ago
    He mostly served his sentence outside of jail actually
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
liability 7y ago
I can't figure out why anybody would think Epstein's previous criminal conviction was irrelevant to the matter of Epstein's reputation. I'm trying to assume good faith, but it's not easy.
- nexuist 7y ago
  Not everyone works from the same knowledge base. OP could have heard about Epstein in passing, per se, and not known about his extensive criminal history or previous arrest/trial. I only know about these things from Reddit posters and not much else. There is probably a whole host of information you and I do not know about him; it's important to be aware of your blind spots but also the blind spots of others.
  - liability 7y ago
    Well in assuming good faith I assume he read the article, which should have cleared up any such misunderstandings...
    - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
      I've read about the first half, which didn't mention that Epstein was already convicted for sex trafficking by the time he arrived at MIT in that story. It didn't occur to me that he would be walking around freely doing deals if he had already been convicted. I didn't have the information that he was let off the hook and there was also no indication I should google for something like that. What search term should I have used?
      - liability 7y ago
        You read the first half of what exactly? From the subtitle of the article you responded to: > New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted. What did you think "Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender" meant? Are you earnestly confused, or are you trying to get a rise out of me?
hjksadfkhjasdf 7y ago
> Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be more of a secret affair. After everything Epstein has did and got away with, I don't think it's a stretch that he would have been brash about it. Look at how brash Trump is about some of his personal sexual exploits. I'm not sure the point is these women were trafficked for sure, but Ito was obviously unwilling to overlook a pretty questionable situation for his personal financial gain. Regardless, he isn't being thrown in jail, he's just losing his position of power because he obviously isn't capable of avoiding conflict of interest.
tptacek 7y ago
That Epstein was problematic --- something that in essentially no doubt at this point after his indictment, imprisonment, and subsequent suicide --- was so well-understood to the Media Lab team at the time that they were considering intervening to help Epstein's escorts, on the off chance that they had been trafficked. That is not a position most people's bosses ever put them in, but it's what Ito did to staff at the Lab. If your point is "they probably weren't trafficked at least in the lurid sense we mean when we talk about trafficking", sure, but that's not the point. The point is that Ito's collaboration with Epstein was not incidental, but rather deliberate, overt, and actually disruptive to the operations of the Lab.
- eloisius 7y ago
  Might be some doubt about his suicide, but you’re right.
  - DSingularity 7y ago
    Doubt? Care to elaborate and substantiate?
    - tptacek 7y ago
      How about we not, since it has nothing to do with this thread?
      - wolco 7y ago
        It has a lot to do with the timing of this thread. If he left a year ago I would agree but questions around his death put this story in the spotlight.
      - tomp 7y ago
        Your unhelpful reply makes just as much noise as a helpful reply answering the question by ALittleLight
    - xtian 7y ago
CydeWeys 7y ago
"Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes?" The simple answer to this question is: Yes. He did. And it was precisely the people who didn't take it at face value that allowed him to get away with it for so long.
- nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
  I haven't looked into his case. What was his method - what did he do, so that the girls couldn't call for help? I think classically they are made to be illegal (no passport, have perhaps committed crime of prostitution, so they think they can not go to the police). Is that also what Epstein did?
  - liability 7y ago
    > I haven't looked into his case Why not? Your initial comment in this discussion was an hour and a half before this one, and was in response to somebody linking to an article containing many of the relevant details.
    - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
      Because my comment was about the cited paragraph, not about Epstein. I had no reason to assume Epstein was already known as a sex trafficker when he visited MIT. It would be a very weird assumption - why would the head of MIT Media Lab meet with a convicted sex trafficker?
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        Indeed, why would he? It seems incredulous, and yet he did. That's why he's been forced out of his position.
        nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
        I have no issues with him being forced out of his position. I have an issue, in this sub sub thread, with people mandating that I should have considered that head of Media Lab would openly meet a convicted sex trafficker.
coldtea 7y ago
>Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? In that it's extremely common. In the gritty real world, people know of such guys and what they do. Many have personality men such gentlemen and their entourages (of course most not at the level of Epstein, but frequent some circles in Eastern Europe, Russia, Paris, London, Italy, etc, and you'll meet such guys, no doubt in Asia and L. America too), and know what "assistants" who look like models and are from Eastern Europe sum up to... Of course it won't be as evident to someone in rural Iowa, or growing up in the boy scouts, they'd need to have things spelt out for them... >Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be more of a secret affair. At such meetings like at MIT usually no. But shady rich guys with political/drug/mafia/trafficking connections take their women (even underage or barely legal) all around, in restaurants, boats, nightclubs, business deals, parties, etc. And not just criminal/underworld types: this even includes world leaders, like Berlusconi, all kinds of royalty, rich moguls, etc... In some countries you can't throw a rock in a public event without hitting one such...
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  > "I live in the gritty real world. Now let me tell you about my international experiences with the ultra wealthy, you hick." How do you tell the difference between the sex-trafficked, forced-into-servitude eastern european model-assistants, and the eastern european models who see an opportunity to make a lot of money and a lot of connections, and take it?
  - mulmen 7y ago
    Critical thinking can extend beyond the ability to find the most efficient API to solve a problem.
    - oh_sigh 7y ago
      I have to assume you meant to reply to someone else in some other thread, because otherwise this is just a massive non-sequitur.
KibbutzDalia 7y ago
So because these young ladies were attractive they couldn’t have been there because they were interested in the MIT media lab.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ethank 7y ago
By the time he was in their office, he was a convicted felon for .... solicitation of minors.
anigbrowl 7y ago
If they didn't know he was sketchy why did they go to such lengths to obscure the origin of his donations? If you are rich and you really want to make an anonymous donation (perhaps out of humility, perhaps to avoid solicitations from other worthy causes) you hire a lawyer and direct them to submit the funds on your behalf.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tw04 7y ago
Because it's weird for a 60 year old dude to be traveling with unrelated women who are under the age of 18? Why are you so incredulous that people would assume the worst when the guy had a reputation and the girls looked way too young to be traveling the world with the sleazeball?
- nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
  Paragraph said nothing about the girls being under 18. It says "young women". Also didn't say anything about his reputation (at the time the story took place).
  - johnny22 7y ago
    that is a in fact a big problem with some of the earlier reporting around stories about Epstein. Lots of headlines ran with "young women", but deeper in it explcitly says "as young as 14"
  - tw04 7y ago
    So you made an account 8 days ago just to defend Epstein? Go do your pr somewhere else, that pedo is exactly where he should be.
    - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
      You could easily click my account to see it wasn't created for the Epstein discussion. I am not defending Epstein. It's crazy that you read that into my comments. I use throwaway accounts on HN because of people like you who seem to have zero reading comprehension.
point78 7y ago
A 60 year old American financier who's uglier than a frog has 2 teenage eastern european models as "assistants"....does that add up to you?
- hackinthebochs 7y ago
  It adds up when you add the fact that he was a billionaire, or at least in the vicinity.
- nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
  Even young East European models have to work somewhere (at least some of them). (Paragraph called them "young women", not "teens", btw). Should young women only be allowed to work for poor people, if they are attractive? Or maybe only for other young people? I don't think that would be a good rule. I don't think it would be enough for an accusation. Of course with the background that Epstein was already known as a sex trafficker, it is a very different matter.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    Why two beautiful young women though - that seems not to be likely due to chance and surely enough to make any rational person wonder what they hell is going on? The thing is to make everyone who you meet a bit complicit. Two young women at the meeting is not quite enough to make anyone at the meeting intervene, but it is enough that there is then a lever - "you were at the october meet, you met Siri and Alexa... you were there weren't you? You are smart, you knew what was going on then and you didn't do a thing. How will that play if that gets out?" It's not much of a lever, but my suspicion is that there is a slow enmeshment and escalation; a dance of probing and pulling - more intense for the more useful or more dangerous contacts. The aim is to have protection, cover and support. People who say things like "one of your assistant was sobbing in the loo, so I called mental health services" suddenly find that colleagues are talking about how socially inept they are, and how important that they are kept out of certain meetings. People who join in and show approval are regarded as "good" and "fun". Bit by bit it becomes normal. The transgressions shown to "outsiders" are safe - or at least there are explanations and the outsiders are carefully selected to be vulnerable pressure from people in the circle, but each time this happens that tar pit of complicity grows and deepens. Eventually powerful people are looking at personal ruin if the offenders are exposed.
graeme 7y ago
You have to consider that paragraph in the context that Epstein's activities were widely and publicly known at that point. As far as secrecy, Epstein apparently wasn't very secret at all. Many reports from Virgin Islands where he had a home.
docker_up 7y ago
I guess OP's point is that beautiful women couldn't possibly be anything more than sex trafficked women.
mirimir 7y ago
Epstein was clearly a pedophile. Even at the time in question, it was already quite clear that he was a pedophile. So that's what's so damning. Trafficking of young women from the former Soviet Union is a complicated issue. During the collapse, and well into the 90s and mid 00s, many people were desperate. Literally starving, with ~no public services. And many criminals took advantage of that, recruiting young women for work as models, nannies and prostitutes. Plus of course all of the websites for Russian etc brides. And that's still happening, because many areas are still very poor and chaotic. And Epstein clearly took advantage of that. Along with many other Americans, mostly in less abusive ways. Generally, people who recruited destitute young women in legitimate ways would have no reason to hide that. Wives, nannies, servants, models, etc. So I guess that Epstein was just trying to maintain a pretense of legitimacy. Edit: Here's a personal example. Indirectly through family, I knew a young woman who made it to the US in the late 80s. She'd been trained as a restoration artist, and the demand for that collapsed along with the Soviet Union. But once here, she worked for some years as an exotic dancer.
- taneq 7y ago
  > So I guess that Epstein was just trying to maintain a pretense of legitimacy. Or just felt untouchable.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Right. Maybe not surprising, given who some of his friends were. Except that he ended up being not as untouchable as some of his friends.
- Merad 7y ago
  > Epstein was clearly a pedophile. Even at the time in question, it was already quite clear that he was a pedophile. He wasn't a pedophile, at least from what I've read. Pedophilia specifically refers to an attraction to prepubescent children - Epstein was interested in adolescent girls, which would make him a hebephile. If Epstein was going around with an entourage of 10 year old girls it would've been extremely obvious, and he would've been arrested in about 5 minutes. OTOH it can be legitimately hard to tell the difference between a 14 year old and an 18 year old. People may have heard rumors or had their own suspicions, but they probably weren't sure and that uncertainty made it easy to take the safe route and stay silent...
rhizome 7y ago
I thought it would be more of a secret affair. The world isn't TV, you might be surprised what people can get away with in plain sight. When you're supplying these girls to British royalty, politicians at every level, certainly law enforcement of various flavors, and plenty of generic rich people (VC/finance, old money, Donald Trump, etc.), yeah, you might kinda get the idea that you're operating with impunity. Because you are, especially when you have blackmail material on all of them.
- nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
  "you might be surprised what people can get away with in plain sight." Like what? Other examples, apart from Epstein? Not sure if Epstein ever actually showed enslaved people in plain sight?
mayankkaizen 7y ago
If you are walking around with 2 girls who look like models and are from eastern europe (there must be some impression about being model from eastern europe which I'm unaware of), what do you think people gonna think? You are reading stuffs. People have seen this. If they were uneasy at this sight, they must have felt/observed something more than that, so much so that they thought that these girls might not have been there by choice. People do get suspicious of fishy people and if you ask them why they are suspicious of some people, they would say, "he was behaving a bit different, something was off about him". And people like you will dismiss it. Even in real life, I see people walking around with girls. Most of the times I feel or suspect nothing but sometimes I do feel something is off or fishy about it but yet I can't describe it fully. Now you know a lot more about Epstein, what do you think why he brought "2 models (possibly quite young, given the reputation of Epstein) who are possibly from eastern europe" in MIT lab? Now we know a lot more about Epstein, people must have felt something much more about those 2 girls which you can't imagine. Personally, I feel like you are arguing for the sake of arguing. I was shocked at your line of thinking.
anjc 7y ago
I'm with you. Posters here seem to be making several logical leaps due to hindsight bias. His previous convictions do not imply that he's a human trafficker, and if he was, he almost certainly would not be advertising it in this manner.

juliendorra 7y ago

Because he had already been convicted before and was (as Swenson learned previously, as you can read in the op cited new-yorker article on the issue) banned from being a MIT donor for this reason. Context matters.

floatingatoll 7y ago

Yes, he would, especially if he thought he had enough leverage to protect himself from the consequences.

empath75 7y ago

It’s not a theoretical question as to whether he was trafficking women. He had already been convicted of it! And was charged with it again.

nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
Why was he running around free then? Had he already passed his time in jail?
- jacobolus 7y ago
  > Why was he running around free then? Because Bush-appointed US Attorney Alex Acosta (until recently Trump’s Secretary of Labor) made an illegal plea agreement to let Epstein off the hook and cover up the details of his criminality. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577419.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577... Some extremely rich and powerful men were among Epstein’s child-rapist co-conspirators, so there are strong pressures on law enforcement officials to sweep the whole thing under the rug.
  - sooheon 7y ago
    Is this man being taken to trial? Or is resignation the only repercussion he'll face?
- cjbprime 7y ago
  Because of corruption. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-resigns-trump-jeffrey-epstein-plea-deal-latest-news https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-...
- pasquinelli 7y ago
  He mostly served his sentence outside of jail actually

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

liability 7y ago

I can't figure out why anybody would think Epstein's previous criminal conviction was irrelevant to the matter of Epstein's reputation. I'm trying to assume good faith, but it's not easy.

nexuist 7y ago
Not everyone works from the same knowledge base. OP could have heard about Epstein in passing, per se, and not known about his extensive criminal history or previous arrest/trial. I only know about these things from Reddit posters and not much else. There is probably a whole host of information you and I do not know about him; it's important to be aware of your blind spots but also the blind spots of others.
- liability 7y ago
  Well in assuming good faith I assume he read the article, which should have cleared up any such misunderstandings...
  - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
    I've read about the first half, which didn't mention that Epstein was already convicted for sex trafficking by the time he arrived at MIT in that story. It didn't occur to me that he would be walking around freely doing deals if he had already been convicted. I didn't have the information that he was let off the hook and there was also no indication I should google for something like that. What search term should I have used?
    - liability 7y ago
      You read the first half of what exactly? From the subtitle of the article you responded to: > New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted. What did you think "Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender" meant? Are you earnestly confused, or are you trying to get a rise out of me?

hjksadfkhjasdf 7y ago

> Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be more of a secret affair. After everything Epstein has did and got away with, I don't think it's a stretch that he would have been brash about it. Look at how brash Trump is about some of his personal sexual exploits. I'm not sure the point is these women were trafficked for sure, but Ito was obviously unwilling to overlook a pretty questionable situation for his personal financial gain. Regardless, he isn't being thrown in jail, he's just losing his position of power because he obviously isn't capable of avoiding conflict of interest.

tptacek 7y ago

That Epstein was problematic --- something that in essentially no doubt at this point after his indictment, imprisonment, and subsequent suicide --- was so well-understood to the Media Lab team at the time that they were considering intervening to help Epstein's escorts, on the off chance that they had been trafficked. That is not a position most people's bosses ever put them in, but it's what Ito did to staff at the Lab. If your point is "they probably weren't trafficked at least in the lurid sense we mean when we talk about trafficking", sure, but that's not the point. The point is that Ito's collaboration with Epstein was not incidental, but rather deliberate, overt, and actually disruptive to the operations of the Lab.

eloisius 7y ago
Might be some doubt about his suicide, but you’re right.
- DSingularity 7y ago
  Doubt? Care to elaborate and substantiate?
  - tptacek 7y ago
    How about we not, since it has nothing to do with this thread?
    - wolco 7y ago
      It has a lot to do with the timing of this thread. If he left a year ago I would agree but questions around his death put this story in the spotlight.
    - tomp 7y ago
      Your unhelpful reply makes just as much noise as a helpful reply answering the question by ALittleLight
  - xtian 7y ago

CydeWeys 7y ago

"Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes?" The simple answer to this question is: Yes. He did. And it was precisely the people who didn't take it at face value that allowed him to get away with it for so long.

nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
I haven't looked into his case. What was his method - what did he do, so that the girls couldn't call for help? I think classically they are made to be illegal (no passport, have perhaps committed crime of prostitution, so they think they can not go to the police). Is that also what Epstein did?
- liability 7y ago
  > I haven't looked into his case Why not? Your initial comment in this discussion was an hour and a half before this one, and was in response to somebody linking to an article containing many of the relevant details.
  - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
    Because my comment was about the cited paragraph, not about Epstein. I had no reason to assume Epstein was already known as a sex trafficker when he visited MIT. It would be a very weird assumption - why would the head of MIT Media Lab meet with a convicted sex trafficker?
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      Indeed, why would he? It seems incredulous, and yet he did. That's why he's been forced out of his position.
      - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
        I have no issues with him being forced out of his position. I have an issue, in this sub sub thread, with people mandating that I should have considered that head of Media Lab would openly meet a convicted sex trafficker.

coldtea 7y ago

>Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? In that it's extremely common. In the gritty real world, people know of such guys and what they do. Many have personality men such gentlemen and their entourages (of course most not at the level of Epstein, but frequent some circles in Eastern Europe, Russia, Paris, London, Italy, etc, and you'll meet such guys, no doubt in Asia and L. America too), and know what "assistants" who look like models and are from Eastern Europe sum up to... Of course it won't be as evident to someone in rural Iowa, or growing up in the boy scouts, they'd need to have things spelt out for them... >Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be more of a secret affair. At such meetings like at MIT usually no. But shady rich guys with political/drug/mafia/trafficking connections take their women (even underage or barely legal) all around, in restaurants, boats, nightclubs, business deals, parties, etc. And not just criminal/underworld types: this even includes world leaders, like Berlusconi, all kinds of royalty, rich moguls, etc... In some countries you can't throw a rock in a public event without hitting one such...

oh_sigh 7y ago
> "I live in the gritty real world. Now let me tell you about my international experiences with the ultra wealthy, you hick." How do you tell the difference between the sex-trafficked, forced-into-servitude eastern european model-assistants, and the eastern european models who see an opportunity to make a lot of money and a lot of connections, and take it?
- mulmen 7y ago
  Critical thinking can extend beyond the ability to find the most efficient API to solve a problem.
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    I have to assume you meant to reply to someone else in some other thread, because otherwise this is just a massive non-sequitur.

KibbutzDalia 7y ago

So because these young ladies were attractive they couldn’t have been there because they were interested in the MIT media lab.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ethank 7y ago

By the time he was in their office, he was a convicted felon for .... solicitation of minors.

anigbrowl 7y ago

If they didn't know he was sketchy why did they go to such lengths to obscure the origin of his donations? If you are rich and you really want to make an anonymous donation (perhaps out of humility, perhaps to avoid solicitations from other worthy causes) you hire a lawyer and direct them to submit the funds on your behalf.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tw04 7y ago

Because it's weird for a 60 year old dude to be traveling with unrelated women who are under the age of 18? Why are you so incredulous that people would assume the worst when the guy had a reputation and the girls looked way too young to be traveling the world with the sleazeball?

nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
Paragraph said nothing about the girls being under 18. It says "young women". Also didn't say anything about his reputation (at the time the story took place).
- johnny22 7y ago
  that is a in fact a big problem with some of the earlier reporting around stories about Epstein. Lots of headlines ran with "young women", but deeper in it explcitly says "as young as 14"
- tw04 7y ago
  So you made an account 8 days ago just to defend Epstein? Go do your pr somewhere else, that pedo is exactly where he should be.
  - nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
    You could easily click my account to see it wasn't created for the Epstein discussion. I am not defending Epstein. It's crazy that you read that into my comments. I use throwaway accounts on HN because of people like you who seem to have zero reading comprehension.

point78 7y ago

A 60 year old American financier who's uglier than a frog has 2 teenage eastern european models as "assistants"....does that add up to you?

hackinthebochs 7y ago
It adds up when you add the fact that he was a billionaire, or at least in the vicinity.
nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
Even young East European models have to work somewhere (at least some of them). (Paragraph called them "young women", not "teens", btw). Should young women only be allowed to work for poor people, if they are attractive? Or maybe only for other young people? I don't think that would be a good rule. I don't think it would be enough for an accusation. Of course with the background that Epstein was already known as a sex trafficker, it is a very different matter.
- sgt101 7y ago
  Why two beautiful young women though - that seems not to be likely due to chance and surely enough to make any rational person wonder what they hell is going on? The thing is to make everyone who you meet a bit complicit. Two young women at the meeting is not quite enough to make anyone at the meeting intervene, but it is enough that there is then a lever - "you were at the october meet, you met Siri and Alexa... you were there weren't you? You are smart, you knew what was going on then and you didn't do a thing. How will that play if that gets out?" It's not much of a lever, but my suspicion is that there is a slow enmeshment and escalation; a dance of probing and pulling - more intense for the more useful or more dangerous contacts. The aim is to have protection, cover and support. People who say things like "one of your assistant was sobbing in the loo, so I called mental health services" suddenly find that colleagues are talking about how socially inept they are, and how important that they are kept out of certain meetings. People who join in and show approval are regarded as "good" and "fun". Bit by bit it becomes normal. The transgressions shown to "outsiders" are safe - or at least there are explanations and the outsiders are carefully selected to be vulnerable pressure from people in the circle, but each time this happens that tar pit of complicity grows and deepens. Eventually powerful people are looking at personal ruin if the offenders are exposed.

graeme 7y ago

You have to consider that paragraph in the context that Epstein's activities were widely and publicly known at that point. As far as secrecy, Epstein apparently wasn't very secret at all. Many reports from Virgin Islands where he had a home.

docker_up 7y ago

I guess OP's point is that beautiful women couldn't possibly be anything more than sex trafficked women.

mirimir 7y ago

Epstein was clearly a pedophile. Even at the time in question, it was already quite clear that he was a pedophile. So that's what's so damning. Trafficking of young women from the former Soviet Union is a complicated issue. During the collapse, and well into the 90s and mid 00s, many people were desperate. Literally starving, with ~no public services. And many criminals took advantage of that, recruiting young women for work as models, nannies and prostitutes. Plus of course all of the websites for Russian etc brides. And that's still happening, because many areas are still very poor and chaotic. And Epstein clearly took advantage of that. Along with many other Americans, mostly in less abusive ways. Generally, people who recruited destitute young women in legitimate ways would have no reason to hide that. Wives, nannies, servants, models, etc. So I guess that Epstein was just trying to maintain a pretense of legitimacy. Edit: Here's a personal example. Indirectly through family, I knew a young woman who made it to the US in the late 80s. She'd been trained as a restoration artist, and the demand for that collapsed along with the Soviet Union. But once here, she worked for some years as an exotic dancer.

taneq 7y ago
> So I guess that Epstein was just trying to maintain a pretense of legitimacy. Or just felt untouchable.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Right. Maybe not surprising, given who some of his friends were. Except that he ended up being not as untouchable as some of his friends.
Merad 7y ago
> Epstein was clearly a pedophile. Even at the time in question, it was already quite clear that he was a pedophile. He wasn't a pedophile, at least from what I've read. Pedophilia specifically refers to an attraction to prepubescent children - Epstein was interested in adolescent girls, which would make him a hebephile. If Epstein was going around with an entourage of 10 year old girls it would've been extremely obvious, and he would've been arrested in about 5 minutes. OTOH it can be legitimately hard to tell the difference between a 14 year old and an 18 year old. People may have heard rumors or had their own suspicions, but they probably weren't sure and that uncertainty made it easy to take the safe route and stay silent...

rhizome 7y ago

I thought it would be more of a secret affair. The world isn't TV, you might be surprised what people can get away with in plain sight. When you're supplying these girls to British royalty, politicians at every level, certainly law enforcement of various flavors, and plenty of generic rich people (VC/finance, old money, Donald Trump, etc.), yeah, you might kinda get the idea that you're operating with impunity. Because you are, especially when you have blackmail material on all of them.

nf8nnfufuu 7y ago
"you might be surprised what people can get away with in plain sight." Like what? Other examples, apart from Epstein? Not sure if Epstein ever actually showed enslaved people in plain sight?

mayankkaizen 7y ago

If you are walking around with 2 girls who look like models and are from eastern europe (there must be some impression about being model from eastern europe which I'm unaware of), what do you think people gonna think? You are reading stuffs. People have seen this. If they were uneasy at this sight, they must have felt/observed something more than that, so much so that they thought that these girls might not have been there by choice. People do get suspicious of fishy people and if you ask them why they are suspicious of some people, they would say, "he was behaving a bit different, something was off about him". And people like you will dismiss it. Even in real life, I see people walking around with girls. Most of the times I feel or suspect nothing but sometimes I do feel something is off or fishy about it but yet I can't describe it fully. Now you know a lot more about Epstein, what do you think why he brought "2 models (possibly quite young, given the reputation of Epstein) who are possibly from eastern europe" in MIT lab? Now we know a lot more about Epstein, people must have felt something much more about those 2 girls which you can't imagine. Personally, I feel like you are arguing for the sake of arguing. I was shocked at your line of thinking.

anjc 7y ago

I'm with you. Posters here seem to be making several logical leaps due to hindsight bias. His previous convictions do not imply that he's a human trafficker, and if he was, he almost certainly would not be advertising it in this manner.