Yea, until at least one non-ringleader Epstein party participant goes to jail, I'm not going to believe the US actually gives a shit about protecting children.
There’s no concrete evidence that anyone besides Epstein (and by extension Maxwell, who assisted Epstein) actually abused children. Besides the testimony of Virginia Giuffre, nobody else has claimed they were sexually assaulted as minors (Sjoberg was groped by Prince Andrew at Epstein’s home when she was in her early 20s). And neither the FBI nor the Palm Beach PD found physical evidence of such or communications between Epstein or others indicating this was going on.
Why would you expect anyone else to go to jail under those circumstances? Proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt seems very unlikely
Just in case someone might mistake this comment to imply there wasn't actually a large-scale CSA-as-a-service business happening on his island - FBI has officially declared the number of minor victims to be over a thousand: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1407001/dl
It was an industrial-scale racket. It is impossible for that kind of number of victims to be just for one person or group's recreation.
I think you linked to the wrong document, unless you're taking "Epstein had over ten thousand pornographic videos and images" as "there were over one thousand minor victims" which doesn't follow as a logical conclusion.
> The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors
> Consistent with prior disclosures, this review confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims. Each suffered unique trauma. Sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials.
The second quote doesn’t explicitly say “minor victims”, but the whole document is focused on that, mentioning that “One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims.”
I read the whole thing twice because I was fairly sure I missed something the first go around and still missed that second quote. My reading comprehension is atrocious. Thanks and sorry dartharva.
I'd at least expect there to be an investigation, based on the huge volume of information that already exists. Unless we believe that the files are just 3 million pages of casserole recipes and that the people who visited just went to play Settlers of Catan.
> Why would you expect anyone else to go to jail under those circumstances? Proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt seems very unlikely
It's actually pretty easy to prove guilt in the US. But it becomes a lot harder the longer the distance from the crime. In particular, witnesses die or leave. Heck, investigators die or leave which makes discovery for the perpetrator even harder on the FBI.
Further, the bar for civil litigation is lower than criminal. The FBI refusing to prosecute means that victims have a very hard time pursuing civil cases even if the FBI were to lose their case. The FBI has way more evidence that a victim can have.
The most non-nefarious but still shitty reason I can think of for why the FBI hasn't gone to trial is because they know each of these cases will be long and expensive because of the perpetrators. That's caused them to collect way more evidence than they would have if this were just a normal person.
Funny how the FBI is only careful and pensive when perpetrators are rich.
There is if someone would follow the money trail. Plenty of hard facts to reach a guilty outcome. And over half of the papers haven't been released. If someone motivated comes to power there is a good chance.