MeToo, Epstein — A Bitter Obituary
Jeffrey Epstein, 27, in a personal ad published in the July 1980 issue of Cosmo magazine. Photo by Stephen Ogilvy.
The case of the late New York financier, Jeffrey Epstein, has permeated American consciousness for well over a decade. Epstein stands accused of orchestrating a sex-trafficking ring targeting minor girls out of his Palm Beach mansion.
He has thwarted proper punitive measures twice: first, in 2008, with a plea bargain that would in February 2019 be ruled as unconstitutional for violating the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, and this year with his death. Epstein's death was ruled a suicide by a New York city medical examiner.
FBI and court records opened in mid-2019 also detail suspicions of other illicit activities. Chief among these allegations is the trafficking of minor girls from overseas to his other estates in the States and the Caribbean for sex parties. Accounts from more than one accuser implicate female co-conspirators as scouts of underage victims for Epstein.
The case against Epstein dovetails neatly into the timeline of the MeToo movement. It is no surprise that the suit settled in 2008 resurfaced in 2016, only a year prior to the meteoric rise in journalistic discourse of sexual harassment and abuse set into motion by the "Weinstein story." New York Times editor Jodi Kantor, one of two women reporters who broke the story that catapulted MeToo to national attention, commented on the similarities between the cases of Weinstein and Epstein.
“[Both cases bring] up the same questions,” she states in an interview with Vanity Fair. “How could this have gone unaddressed, or inadequately addressed, for so long? How could so many people have been complicit? What is behind this seemingly prestigious world that is clearly masking something much darker?”
It seems that both men embody the asymmetrical nature of the distribution of power across gender lines in the U.S. — a problem so deeply embedded into our cultural fabric that it has taken an avalanche of outcry to, if not displace, at least expose.
Public awareness for cases of sexual assault skyrocketed to never before seen heights during the MeToo movement. A decade ago, the case against Epstein was just another celebrity scandal swept under the rug. Epstein served roughly a year of his 18-month sentence in a Florida state prison. According to the Washington Post, Epstein’s incarceration was marked by leniency.
He was reportedly allowed to receive visitors, his cell door was left unlocked, and he was once even awarded unsupervised travel in Palm Beach. Perhaps most revealing about Epstein’s case and the cultural climate of its time is not just the mishandling of court procedures by the justice system but also Epstein's concerted efforts to rehabilitate his public image through philanthropic efforts.
One such recipient was the MIT Media Lab, which, according to Anna North, Vox Senior Report, stands as "a reminder that many powerful men accused of sexual abuse or other misconduct were also surrounded by people who looked the other way — or who helped them build and rebuild their empires in full knowledge of the allegations against them."
The MeToo movement helped make new charges against Epstein possible. His death thwarted finality and due process — following his death, the dismissal of the indictment against Epstein was not only inevitable, it was the law. After all, its mark had perished.
What has become of the suit of the scores of women seeking justice? Are they only to be relegated to a post-trial tribute to the abuses that they, and countless other women, faced and will face? Perhaps hope still exists. For now, MeToo continues to blaze a trail, according to a Sept. 13 editorial by the Guardian, ushering a tidal wave of literature on gender equality. We can only hope for the embers to ebb into an era of greater equality.