I am done pretending the case of Jeffrey Epstein is some grotesque outlier. A dark, isolated scandal.
Epstein operated for decades because systems repeatedly and predictably failed in ways powerful men have relied on for generations. And this is not a story about one predator. It is a story about silence and the quiet calculations institutions make when accountability becomes inconvenient.
United Nations human rights experts say the crimes connected to Epstein may meet the legal definition of crimes against humanity. That should stop us cold. Those words are reserved for systematic, organized atrocities. For abuse so widespread and calculated that it rises beyond individual criminality into something structural.
Millions of files. More than 1,200 identified victims. Allegations of a global criminal enterprise rooted in misogyny, corruption, racism, and the commodification of women and children.
When I was in college, one of my closest friends confided in me about a professor who crossed lines. It began with comments about her appearance. Then invitations to “private academic discussions.” She was 19. He was tenured, respected, and powerful. She never reported him.
Not because it wasn’t serious. But because she understood the system. She would be asked what she wore. Why she stayed after class? Why didn’t she object more forcefully? She would be told she misunderstood. That he was “just friendly.” That she was threatening a family man, a distinguished career over a “miscommunication.”
The UN experts used the phrase “institutional gaslighting.” It is a pattern many women recognize.
Now multiply that dynamic by unimaginable wealth and political connections combined with the billionaire class, business leaders, and royalty. Multiply it across countries and decades. That is what the Epstein files describe.
The experts are demanding independent, thorough investigations. Not only into the crimes themselves, but into how they were allowed to continue for so long. Because abuse on that scale does not survive without protection. Systems shield it, influence buries it, and wealth normalizes it.
Even now, there are concerns about compliance failures and botched redactions exposing sensitive victim information. After years of exploitation, survivors still cannot rely on institutions to protect them.
Even after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting an underage girl, documents reveal his ties to politics, finance, academia, and business. He was convicted. And he was welcomed back into elite circles.
His death in a jail cell in 2019 closed one chapter. It did not close the story. The story is about an ecosystem that enabled him – the silence, complicity, and reputational calculus that weighed young girls’ lives against social convenience.
I think about my friend. I think about how small she made herself to stay safe. I think about how many young women are still doing that math every day. Now scale that up to more than 1,200 identified victims.
If these crimes meet the threshold of crimes against humanity, then our response must reflect that gravity. That means transparency, investigations, and prosecutions that do not stop at the edges of power. Accountability regardless of wealth, title, or political standing. It means believing survivors without forcing them to destroy themselves to prove what happened.
I have lived long enough to watch cycles of outrage rise and fade, campus scandals, corporate reckonings, and #MeToo headlines. Statements are issued. Careers quietly reset. The public moves on.
My friend deserved protection when she was 19. The children in those files deserved protection. The unnamed victims we may never hear about deserved protection. Instead, too many of them received silence.
Pamela Bondi, acting Attorney General for the United States of America, was given the opportunity to not only apologize but acknowledge the survivors in the House chamber when she was called in to testify about the Epstein files. She refused.
As an attorney, I took an oath to protect the most vulnerable amongst us. That oath does not expire when the accused are wealthy. It does not bend when they are politically connected. It does not disappear when accountability becomes inconvenient. No one is above the law.
Aisha Farooqi is running for Congress in Michigan’s 11th District in Oakland County.