The clamor for Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, unfortunately, is drowning out the underlying problem: Man is capable of unspeakable evil. It’s a sad fact of life.
The question we should be asking is not who, but how. How could any man force an obviously underage girl to have sex with him? How can anyone get pleasure out of buying a human being, raping and brutalizing her just to briefly satisfy his libido?
The question haunts those fighting to protect women and girls from sex-trafficking, prostitution, and worse. How does one ignore any sense of morality, decency, or respect for other human beings, treat them like garbage, and abuse them in such a vile way?
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” says the prophet Jeremiah in Scripture describing the depths of evil.
Epstein’s crimes against humanity are well documented — a systematic buying and selling of human persons and, most disgustingly, young girls to the highest and most powerful bidder.
President Trump is right to be puzzled that we are still talking about this “creep.” While everyone is obsessing the heinous crimes of one dead man, women around the world are being victimized every day.
One of Trump’s most important accomplishments that hasn’t received the attention it deserves was stopping the senseless and brutal killings and perverse sexual crimes taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump and his deft secretary of state, Marco Rubio, negotiated an important cessation to the war in which Rwandan rebels brutally attacked innocent DRC civilians, including raping women in front of their children and husbands. According to Human Rights Watch, numerous gang rapes have been reported.
A 46-year-old mother of six ... with her 75-year-old mother ran into a group of ten M23 rebels, who took their money. “They wanted to rape us,” she said. “My mother said no, so they shot a bullet into her chest, and she died on the spot. Then four of them raped me. As they were raping me, one said: “We’ve come from Rwanda to destroy you.”
The agreement between Rwanda and the DRC was signed over the weekend.
Sex-based crimes during war are supposedly against international law, but seldom are they prosecuted. It simply boggles the mind to understand how men think brutalizing, torturing, and mutilating women will win a war.
“Clear patterns emerged including victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied ... evidence of gang rapes followed by execution, and genital mutilation,” according to a newly released report by the Dinah Project, a group studying conflict-related sexual violence. The genital mutilation perpetrated by vile Hamas terrorists on Israeli women on October 7, 2023 included cutting off breasts, shooting women in the groin, and leaving them naked, in shame, to die. “Incidents of rape and gang rape occurred at several locations, notably the Nova music festival,” the report concludes.
What kind of sick mind could perpetuate such brutality on innocent women or girls? This activity happened in more than six areas in the attacks, which shows a premeditated plan to torture women, oftentimes in front of their children and husbands.
Can we expect anything better from terrorists? How does any man walk around the next day remembering the look of horror in the eyes of his female victim?
I confess, I don’t get it.
Then there’s the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission found that Russian authorities have committed crimes against humanity of torture and enforced disappearances, including in sexual violence, by Russian soldiers on women as old as 80 and girls as young as 4 years old.
A report of the commission on the Russia-Ukraine conflict stated,
Sexual violence has affected victims of all ages. Victims, including children, were sometimes forced to witness the crimes. Children have become the victims of the full spectrum of violations investigated by the Commission, including indiscriminate attacks, torture and rape, and have suffered the predictable psychological consequences.
Ukrainian ministers in Parliament stated that most elderly women in Russian-occupied cities “were executed after being raped or took their own lives.”
No doubt Epstein took his own life. How could anyone live with himself abusing women and girls? How does any man justify such evil?
Diana L. Banister is a political and communications strategist, a former Trump administration official, and an executive consultant with Sovereign Global Solutions.
Image via PickPik.