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A reader reached out last week asking whether I was planning to say anything about the Epstein files.
I’ve been sitting with that question—and with the feelings that arise as I read, watch, and listen.
I am a mother of three young women, living in a world where a global sex-trafficking operation involving minors went on for decades and was kept silent.
I am also someone who, as a girl, was on the receiving end of countless inappropriate and violating behaviors from men—without knowing that what I experienced was abuse. Sexual abuse, as well as sexual fawning, has been normalized in our society for generations.
When a teenager I knew climbed on top of seven-year-old me, kissed me by force, and told me not to tell anyone, something in me revolted—and went silent. I still carry that stifled disgust in my body.
Years later, when a professor singled me out and invited me for a drink, I felt flattered. I didn’t recognize it as inappropriate. I thought it was a compliment.
As I sit with what is now capturing public attention, I see something else being exposed.
As depraved and horrific as Epstein was as the mastermind of a pedophile ring, he was not alone. He was surrounded by people who knew, who witnessed the truth, and who participated.
I see the Epstein files as the tip of the iceberg.
We are being shown what has been happening for a long time. Maybe always.
The examples are many.
In 2024, the Pelicot rape trial shook France and reverberated across the world. Dominique Pelicot, a retired 71-year-old was convicted of drugging his wife, Gisèle, raping her, and inviting more than fifty men he recruited online to rape her while she was unconscious. This was going on over a period of nine years. Pelicot was filming the assaults.
Epstein and his collaborators are not unique in their depravity.
Child sexual abuse is perpetrated everywhere—across cultures and across borders. These files reveal something deeply unsettling about our world and our relationships.
Power.
Silence.
Consumption.
Dehumanization.
Epstein and the men (and women) who participated, enabled, protected, or remained silent were all engaged in dehumanizing their victims.
It’s tempting to call them monsters.
But that would be too easy.
Calling them monsters allows us to believe they are not like us.
And that is where the real danger lies.
These men who rape children are someone’s sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, partners, husbands.
Our daughters, sisters, wives, mothers are violated by our sons, brothers, husbands, fathers.
They are presidents, bankers, doctors, lawyers, artists, musicians, spiritual leaders, members of royal families.
They are not lurking in the shadows.
They are among us.
They are in our families.
They are in our communities.
And they are aided by women (and men) who know and do nothing. Some look away. Some organize. Some offer access. Some use their own children as currency to gain proximity to power.
We are failing our most vulnerable—again and again.
The data confirms what survivors have always known: around 90 percent of child sexual abuse victims know their abuser, and a significant number are abused by family members or trusted adults.
Abuse survives through silence, denial, and prioritizing the stability of status quo over truth.
This has been happening in our families and communities for generations—in silence and secrecy, and often with the knowledge of other adults.
In 2024, Andrea Skinner, the youngest daughter of Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro, publicly shared that she was sexually abused in childhood by her stepfather—Munro’s husband. When she told her famous mother, Munro and the rest of the family sided with the abuser.
Eve Ensler, the famous writer of “The Vagina Monologues,” has written openly about enduring sexual abuse by her father beginning in early childhood.
Trauma research shows that child abuse (especially sexual abuse) often follows intergenerational patterns—not because survivors inevitably harm others, but because trauma shapes nervous systems, attachment, boundaries, and perception of danger.
Transmission happens through silence.
Through denial.
Through choosing attachment over truth.
Again and again, children are not believed. Adults protect the status quo. Families prioritize appearance over humanity.
So when I look at the Epstein files, I see that we are finally being forced to face what has been happening for a long time.
The scale of complicity mirrors what happens in secrecy everywhere—in the house next door, in the next room, in the structures we trust.
As Christabel Mintah-Galloway writes:
“If you cannot practice grace and honesty in your small, messy relationships, you will never see it at the state level.”
We cannot repair our world while insisting we are “not like them.”
The Epstein files expose distortions in our relating—distortions that live not only “out there” but in our everyday lives.
The hardest—and ultimately most healing—question is this: Where do I participate in these patterns?
>> Where do I place myself above—or beneath—others?
>> Where do I reduce human beings to objects for my pleasure, validation, or status?
>> Where do I extract from others what I am unwilling to give myself?
>> Where do I normalize what should disturb me, like using violence as entertainment or justifying wars?
>> Where do I protect comfort, image, or belonging at the expense of someone’s humanity?
>> What truths do I silence to stay safe or be accepted?
>> Where do I numb my sensations so I do not have to feel or change?
>> Where could my anger become a force for change instead of stagnation?
The patterns showing up in the collective are invitations to look inward—not with shame, but with responsibility. Culture is formed from human behavior. To build something new, we start by bringing choice to our own behavior.
The question is what are we willing to see, name, and interrupt, starting with ourselves?
~
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