2021/02/11-1 Richard W. Painter
https://twitter.com/RWPUSA/status/1359520872634212354
午前0:13 · 2021年2月11日
Harvard Law students and alums here speak out for the rule of law:
Rape is a war crime.
Girls, some as young as 14, did not enter into "voluntary" contracts to have sex with dozens of soldiers a day.
ハーバード・ロースクールの学生や卒業生が法の支配のためにここで発言しています。
レイプは戦争犯罪です。
14歳の少女たちは、1日に何十人もの兵士とセックスをする「自発的な」契約を結んだわけではありません。
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/2/10/choe-nam-comfort-women/#.YCP3TCs1d7o.twitter
Ramseyer's Role in Japan’s Silencing of Comfort Women
By Courtesy of Joseph L. Choe
By Joseph L. Choe and Mindy G. Nam, Contributing Opinion Writers
Joseph L. Choe ’17 is a third-year law student at Harvard Law School and Mindy G. Nam is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
February 10, 2021
Joseph L. Choe と Mindy G. Nam, Contributing Opinion Writers.
Joseph L. Choe '17 はハーバード・ロー・スクールの法学部3年生、Mindy G. Nam はハーバード・ロー・スクールの卒業生です。
2021年2月10日
In 2015, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a speech at the Harvard Institute of Politics where he was confronted during a Q&A session about his stance on the “comfort women” issue. The term euphemistically describes women and girls who were forcibly recruited as sex slaves by Japan’s government and military before and during World War II. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Abe gave a hollow reply that avoided direct responsibility for the suffering of up to hundreds of thousands of comfort women, sparking international outrage. Six years later, Harvard again finds itself in the middle of a controversy over attempts to distort history.
2015年、安倍晋三首相（当時）は、ハーバード大学政治研究所で講演を行い、その際に「慰安婦」問題に対する姿勢について質疑応答で問われました。慰安婦」とは、戦前・戦中に日本政府や軍によって強制的に性奴隷にされた女性や少女を婉曲的に表現した言葉です。慰安婦問題は、戦前・戦中に日本政府や軍によって強制的に性奴隷にされた女性や少女を指す。それから6年後、ハーバード大学は再び歴史歪曲問題の渦中に身を置くことになりました。
As The Crimson recently reported, J. Mark Ramseyer, a Harvard Law School Japanese legal studies professor, wrote in a forthcoming publication titled “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War” that comfort women were voluntary prostitutes engaged in contractual bargaining for their own financial gain. Ramseyer’s assertion that victims were merely willing prostitutes unjustly denies the suffering of up to hundreds of thousands of women who were coerced into sexual slavery. The Japanese government and military conscripted these victims from Korea, China, the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia among other countries and territories under Japanese occupation at the time. Ramseyer’s paper provoked an immediate rebuke from scholars and students alike for its gaps in reasoning and eschewal of key sources.
クリムゾン紙が先日報じたように、ハーバード・ロースクール日本法学部のJ・マーク・ラムゼイヤー教授は、近日中に出版予定の「Contracting for sex in the Pacific War」というタイトルの本の中で、慰安婦は自発的な売春婦であり、自らの経済的利益のために契約交渉を行っていたと書いている。ラムゼア氏の主張は、被害者が単に自発的な売春婦であったというだけで、強制的に性奴隷にされた数十万人もの女性の苦しみを不当に否定するものです。日本政府と軍は、韓国、中国、フィリピン、シンガポール、インドネシアなど、当時日本が占領していた国や地域から被害者を徴用したのです。ラムゼア氏の論文は、その根拠の欠如と重要な資料の省略により、学者や学生から即座に非難されました。
The publishing of Ramseyer’s paper is not a standalone incident, but rather one that fits into continuing, large-scale efforts to rewrite history and silence these victims of sexual slavery. The Japanese government itself acknowledged in its 1993 Kono Statement that “the then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of comfort stations.”
ラムゼア氏の論文の発表は、単独の事件ではなく、歴史を書き換え、性奴隷の犠牲者を黙らせようとする継続的で大規模な取り組みの一環として行われたものです。日本政府は1993年の河野談話で、「当時の日本軍が直接的または間接的に慰安所の設置や管理に関与していた」ことを認めています。
However, Abe’s reelection in 2012 marked a definitive shift in the Japanese government’s attitude towards this dark chapter of their history. Gone was its formerly “apologetic” attitude towards Japan’s World War II adversaries and victims. Under Abe, Japan’s empowered and emboldened nationalist right-wing party engaged in historical revisionism that would restore “national pride.”
しかし、2012年に安倍首相が再選されたことで、日本の歴史の暗部に対する日本政府の態度は決定的に変化した。第二次世界大戦の敵対国や犠牲者に対して、以前のような「謝罪」の姿勢はなくなったのです。安倍首相の下で、日本の国粋主義者である右翼政党は、「国の誇り」を取り戻すための歴史修正主義に取り組んだのである。
After Abe’s reelection, the Japanese government pushed a series of brazen revisionist efforts aimed at erasing and denying the comfort women issue. For example, in 2014, Japan’s second-largest newspaper was pressured by public criticism to retract articles from the 1980s and early 1990s that had exposed the truth about comfort women. In 2015, Abe’s government attempted in vain to persuade the United Nations to revise its 1996 human rights report that detailed the atrocities endured by “women victims of military sexual slavery during wartime” and how “the Japanese were able to procure more women for the increasing demands of the army by using violence and outright coercion.” That same year, representatives of the Japanese government unsuccessfully demanded McGraw-Hill Education, a major U.S. publishing company, change passages detailing the history of comfort women issue in a history textbook.
安倍首相の再選後、日本政府は慰安婦問題を消し去り、否定することを目的とした一連の大胆な修正主義的取り組みを推し進めました。たとえば、2014年、日本で2番目に大きな新聞社は、国民の批判に押されて、慰安婦の真実を暴いた1980年代から1990年代前半の記事を撤回しました。2015年、安倍政権は国連に対して、「戦時中に軍の性的奴隷にされた女性の犠牲者」が耐え忍んだ残虐行為と、「日本軍は暴力と明白な強制を用いて、軍の増大する要求に応じてより多くの女性を調達することができた」ことを詳述した1996年の人権報告書を改訂するよう説得しようとしましたが、無駄に終わりました。同年、日本政府の代表は、米国の大手出版社マグロウヒル・エデュケーション社に対し、歴史教科書の慰安婦問題に関する記述を変更するよう要求しましたが、不調に終わりました。
Ramseyer’s writings arrive in the midst of some relevant developments in Korean courts. In 2013, 12 former comfort women who were subjected to sexual slavery filed a lawsuit against Japan in the Seoul Central District Court, demanding reparations. In January 2021, the Seoul Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Japan to pay $91,800 to each plaintiff. This ruling followed a similar one in 2018 by South Korea’s Supreme Court that ordered Mitsubishi Industries of Japan to compensate women whom they had subjected to forced labor during World War II.
ラムゼールの著作は、韓国の法廷でいくつかの関連する動きの中で到着しました。2013年、性的奴隷にされた元慰安婦12人が、日本に対して賠償を求める訴訟をソウル中央地裁に起こしました。2021年1月、ソウル裁判所は原告を支持する判決を下し、日本に原告1人当たり9万1800ドルの支払いを命じました。この判決は、2018年に韓国の最高裁が日本の三菱自動車工業に対して、第二次世界大戦中に強制労働をさせられた女性への賠償を命じた同様の判決に続くものです。
One week after the January 2021 Seoul Court ruling, Ramseyer penned an article titled “Recovering the Truth about the Comfort Women.” This article claims that the reports of comfort women were “pure fiction” and was published in Japan Forward, the English language website of Sankei Shimbun, a nationalist newspaper known for its revisionism efforts. The same website announced the upcoming publication of “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War” in a press release at the end of January.
2021年1月のソウル裁判所判決の1週間後、ラムゼールは "Recovering the Truth of the Comfort Women "と題した記事を執筆した。この記事は、慰安婦報道が「純粋なフィクション」であると主張しており、修正主義で知られる国粋主義紙「産経新聞」の英語版サイト「Japan Forward」に掲載された。同サイトは、1月末のプレスリリースで『太平洋戦争における性の契約』の出版予定を発表している。
Ramseyer, as a law professor at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, can lend immense credibility to these efforts to whitewash history. Numerous former comfort women have testified to their plights, and failing to acknowledge and respect them equates to silencing their voices. Ramseyer’s paper also comes at a dire and painful moment in history: In South Korea, fewer than 20 former comfort women are alive today. There will soon come a time when these women will no longer be able to relay their experience and share their perspectives, making it even more difficult to protect and preserve the truth.
ラムゼール氏は、世界有数の名門大学の法学部教授として、歴史を白紙に戻そうとする努力に絶大な信頼を寄せています。数多くの元慰安婦がその苦境を証言しており、それを認めず、尊重しないことは、彼女たちの声を封じ込めることに等しい。ラムゼール氏の論文は、歴史的に見ても悲惨で苦しい時期に発表されています。韓国では、生存している元慰安婦は20人にも満たない。韓国では現在、生存する元慰安婦は20人に満たない。彼女たちが自らの体験を伝え、見解を共有することができなくなり、真実を守り、保存することがより困難になる時がすぐにやってくるだろう。
Joseph L. Choe ’17 is a third-year law student at Harvard Law School and Mindy G. Nam is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Joseph L. Choe '17は、ハーバード・ロースクールの法学部3年生で、Mindy G. Namは、ハーバード・ロースクールの卒業生です。
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The Crimson Editorial Boardへのご意見、ご質問、ご感想をお聞かせください。ここをクリックしてください。
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最新のニュースを知りたいですか？メールマガジンをご購読ください。
午前0:19 · 2021年2月11日
Child rape is a heinous crime.
The man on the left should have been banned from campus as soon as the allegations came to light. Harvard's investigation of why he wasn't leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
子供のレイプは凶悪な犯罪です。
疑惑が明らかになった時点で、左の男性はキャンパスから追放されるべきでした。ハーバード大学の調査では、なぜ彼が追放されなかったのか、多くの疑問が残されています。
The life and death of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, explained
性犯罪者ジェフリー・エプスタインの生と死を解説
The money manager was found dead in jail in August, but investigations into his case continue.
マネーマネージャーは8月に刑務所内で死亡しているのが発見されましたが、彼の事件については調査が続けられています。
By Jane Coaston, Anna North, and Andrew Prokop Updated Jan 16, 2020, 10:56am EST
性犯罪者として有罪判決を受けたジェフリー・エプスタインと、後にエプスタインの弁護団を務めることになるハーバード大学のアラン・ダーショイッツ教授（当時）との対談（2004年撮影）。Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on August 10, 2019, in a Manhattan jail where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. New York City’s medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide.
ジェフリー・エプスタインは2019年8月10日、性売買容疑で裁判を待っていたマンハッタンの刑務所で遺体で発見されました。ニューヨーク市の検死官は彼の死を自殺と断定しています。
The money manager was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, bringing them to his home for massages during which he masturbated or had intercourse with them. He was indicted in 2007, but as Julie K. Brown reported at the Miami Herald, he ultimately got just 13 months in a county jail, because of a deal signed by US attorney Alexander Acosta, who would later become secretary of labor under President Trump.
このマネーマネージャーは、何十人もの未成年の少女を自宅に連れてきてマッサージをし、その間に自慰行為や性交をして性的虐待を行ったとして告発されました。2007年に起訴されましたが、マイアミ・ヘラルド紙のジュリー・K・ブラウンの記事によると、後にトランプ大統領の下で労働長官となるアレクサンダー・アコスタ米国弁護士が結んだ取引により、最終的には郡刑務所に13ヶ月だけ収監されました。
In July, however, Epstein was arrested in New Jersey and charged with sex trafficking, in connection with allegations that he recruited young girls for abuse at his homes in New York and Palm Beach. If convicted, he could have faced 45 years in prison.
しかし、7月にエプスタインはニュージャージー州で逮捕され、ニューヨークとパームビーチの自宅で少女たちを集めて虐待したという疑惑に関連して、性的人身売買の罪で起訴されました。有罪判決を受けた場合、45年の懲役刑が科せられる可能性があります。
Epstein said that any encounters he had with his accusers were consensual, and that he believed they were 18 at the time. He pleaded not guilty to the trafficking charges.
エプスタインは、告発者との出会いは合意の上であり、当時、彼らは18歳だったと信じていたと述べています。エプスタインは、人身売買の罪について無罪を主張しました。
But disturbing allegations have continued to come out since Epstein’s death. In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, for example, the attorney general of the Virgin Islands said that the money manager had run a sex trafficking operation from his private islands, bringing in girls as young as 11 to be abused. And recipients of donations by Epstein are facing scrutiny — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, received $850,000 from Epstein, including gifts made after his jail sentence, a January report revealed.
しかし、エプスタインの死後も、不穏な疑惑が次々と明らかになっています。例えば、ヴァージン諸島の検事総長は、水曜日に提出した訴訟の中で、この資金管理者は、自分の私有地である島々から11歳の少女を連れてきて虐待するという、性的人身売買を行っていたと述べています。また、エプスタインからの寄付を受けた人たちも監視の目にさらされています。例えば、マサチューセッツ工科大学はエプスタインから85万ドルを受け取っており、その中にはエプスタインの実刑判決後に贈られたものも含まれていることが1月の報告書で明らかになりました。
Epstein’s story is a master class in the power dynamics that have been exposed by the Me Too movement but have yet to truly change.
エプスタインの話は、Me Too運動によって明らかになったものの、いまだに真の意味で変化していない権力の力学のマスタークラスです。
When authorities began investigating Epstein, he assembled a team of private investigators to dig up dirt on the girls who accused him and the police and prosecutors working the case. Then he and his team of powerful lawyers, including Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr, were able to convince prosecutors to go easy on him despite disturbing allegations by a growing number of women and girls.
当局がエプスタインを調査し始めると、彼は私立探偵チームを編成し、告発した少女たちや事件を担当する警察・検察の情報を洗い出しました。そして、アラン・ダーショウィッツやケネス・スターなどの強力な弁護士チームとともに、増え続ける女性や少女の不穏な主張にもかかわらず、エプスタインを簡単に裁くよう検察官を説得することができました。
Epstein was proud of his “collection” of famous friends, which included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and there’s long been speculation that some of these friends may have participated in his abuses. But because he was able to minimize publicity around the details of his case for so long, he was also able to keep details about anyone else who may have been involved out of the public eye.
エプスタインは、ビル・クリントンやドナルド・トランプを含む有名な友人たちの「コレクション」を誇りに思っており、これらの友人たちの一部が彼の虐待に参加していたのではないかという憶測が長い間流れていました。しかし、エプスタインは長い間、自分の事件の詳細についての公表を最小限に抑えることができたため、他の誰かが関与していた可能性についても詳細を公にしないでおくことができたのです。
The fact that Epstein avoided serious punishment for years is a reminder that the American justice system has long been all too willing to ignore the words of girls and women, especially when they accuse a wealthy and influential man. Now that Epstein is dead, the women who say he harmed them will not get to face him in court. But the investigation into his crimes is ongoing, and a number of women are pursuing civil claims against his estate. As the results of those legal actions become public, the web of power and influence that protected Epstein and those close to him from scrutiny is finally beginning to unravel.
エプスタインが長年にわたって重大な処罰を免れてきたことは、アメリカの司法制度が、特に裕福で影響力のある男性を告発する場合には、少女や女性の言葉を無視することをいとわないことを示しています。エプスタインが死んだ今、彼から被害を受けたと言う女性たちは、法廷で彼と向き合うことはできない。しかし、エプスタインの犯罪に関する調査は継続中であり、多くの女性がエプスタインの遺産に対して民事上の請求を行っています。これらの訴訟の結果が公表されるにつれ、エプスタインと彼に近い人々を監視から守っていた権力と影響力の網が、ついに解明され始めている。
Epstein was known for his wealth and his predilection for young girls. Everything else was something of a mystery.
Jeffrey Epstein, who died at 66 years old, was known as an influential financier until his 2007 indictment for sex crimes — though there was a good deal of mystery about how, exactly, he made his money.
After working at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the early 1980s, he founded his own firm, J. Epstein and Co., in 1982, advertising his services for those with assets worth more than $1 billion — and was soon managing billions of dollars in client assets. By 1992, he owned the largest private residence in Manhattan. For tax purposes, he ran his business from the island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands since at least 1996, and near that island, he owned the island of Little St. James.
That island was also home to Epstein’s foundation, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation — best known for donating $6.5 million to Harvard University for the establishment of a mathematical biology and evolutionary dynamics program. In a 2003 Harvard Crimson article on Epstein and his gift to the university, he is described by Harvard luminaries — including Alan Dershowitz, who would later help represent him when Epstein was accused of sex crimes in 2007 — as “brilliant” and “one of the most pleasant philanthropists.”
In a 2002 New York magazine profile, Epstein was described by even those closest to him as “mysterious,” with many of the sources of his immense wealth remaining largely unknown and with one acquaintance even comparing him to the Wizard of Oz, implying that there might be less behind the curtain than appearances would otherwise suggest:
Epstein is said to run $15 billion for wealthy clients, yet aside from Limited founder Leslie Wexner, his client list is a closely held secret. A former Dalton math teacher, he maintains a peripatetic salon of brilliant scientists yet possesses no bachelor’s degree. For more than ten years, he’s been linked to Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously deceased media titan Robert Maxwell, yet he lives the life of a bachelor, logging 600 hours a year in his various planes as he scours the world for investment opportunities. He owns what is said to be Manhattan’s largest private house yet runs his business from a 100-acre private island in St. Thomas. ... Says another prominent Wall Streeter: “He is this mysterious, Gatsbyesque figure. He likes people to think that he is very rich, and he cultivates this air of aloofness. The whole thing is weird.”
Michael Stroll, who sued Epstein over a failed business deal in the 2000s, told New York magazine in 2007, “Everybody who’s his friend thinks he’s so darn brilliant because he’s so darn wealthy. I never saw any brilliance, I never saw him work. Anybody I know that is that wealthy works 26 hours a day. This guy plays 26 hours a day.”
Epstein was also an accumulator of famous friends — and his connections would later prove extremely important as he attempted to defend himself against allegations of sexual abuse. He gained some measure of fame in the early 2000s for flying President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, and comedian Chris Tucker to Africa to tour AIDS prevention and treatment project sites. Clinton would go on to fly multiple times on Epstein’s private plane in 2002 and 2003, according to flight logs obtained by Gawker in 2015. Gawker also obtained and published Epstein’s address book, which included politicians, actors, and celebrities.
In 2002, Epstein described his famous friends as a “collection” of sorts, saying, “I invest in people — be it politics or science. It’s what I do.” He was at one point spending $20 million per year to subsidize a group of scientists and their research on topics ranging from Tibetan monks to altruistic behavior. He was also good friends with Donald Trump, who described Epstein to New York magazine in 2002 as someone who “enjoys his social life.”
The money manager’s friends and acquaintances were apparently willing to continue socializing with him despite his tendency to have eccentric or even downright disturbing ideas. Several people say that he wanted to “use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies,” James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times reported in July. The idea was not a secret, they write; one scientist recalls Epstein discussing it during a dinner at his townhouse in 2001, while another Times source remembers hearing about it from Epstein and at least one other person.
The fact that Epstein was able to retain his famous “collection” of friends despite talking openly about using himself as the center of a eugenics experiment may be a testament to his influence, to his associates’ ability to look the other way, or both.
Epstein’s connections are crucial to understanding his story. They may have helped him get a lighter sentence in 2008, but they’re important for another reason too. His friendships with famous people have led to speculation that they, too — most notably Clinton and Trump — might have participated in his abuse of girls. But because Epstein was able to keep all the details of his prosecution quiet, it’s impossible for the public to know exactly who else was involved in his crimes. By protecting himself, Epstein may have been able to protect his famous friends as well.
A police investigation found that Epstein had sexually abused dozens of girls. He got a shockingly light sentence.
Much of Epstein’s “social life” involved very young women. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years,” Trump said in 2002. “Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
In the 2007 New York magazine article, Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff described flying on Epstein’s private plane in the 1990s, saying Epstein “was followed onto the plane by — how shall I say this? — by three teenage girls not his daughters” who were “18, 19, 20, who knows” and “model-like.”
“He has never been secretive about the girls,” Wolff said. “At one point, when his troubles began, he was talking to me and said, ‘What can I say, I like young girls.’ I said, ‘Maybe you should say, ‘I like young women.’ ”
Finally, in 2005, a woman reported to Florida police that a wealthy man had molested her stepdaughter, according to the Daily Beast. The tip led Palm Beach detectives to investigate, and they identified multiple girls who said Epstein had abused them. The case was eventually referred to the FBI, and in 2008, after years of investigation and legal wrangling, Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution in a deal with federal prosecutors.
According to court and police records reviewed by the Miami Herald’s Julie Brown, Epstein routinely had underage girls brought to his Palm Beach mansion, where he paid them to give him massages. During the massages, he often subjected the girls to sexual abuse — asking them to touch him while he masturbated, touching them himself, and sometimes having intercourse with them, Brown reports. Then, according to the Herald, he would offer them money to find him more girls — which some of them did, finding recruits at malls and house parties.
According to Joseph Recarey, the lead Palm Beach detective on the case, Epstein was essentially operating a “sexual pyramid scheme.” Brown identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein, and some accounts suggest the total number may be much higher.
“He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them,’’ Courtney Wild, who says she recruited 70 or 80 girls for Epstein, told Brown. “He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.’’
In response to lawsuits by some of the girls, Epstein has said that they consented to “the acts alleged” and that he believed they were 18, the Daily Beast reports.
In many cases, the effects on the girls were devastating.
”The women who went to Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion as girls tend to divide their lives into two parts,” Brown writes: “life before Jeffrey and life after Jeffrey.”
Wild was a 14-year-old middle school student and cheerleading captain when she met Epstein, Brown writes. She later became addicted to drugs and served three years in prison on drug charges.
One woman who said Epstein molested her was found dead of a heroin overdose in 2017, leaving behind a young son.
The FBI had prepared a 53-page sex crimes indictment for Epstein in 2007 that could have sent him to prison for life, according to the Herald. Instead, he cut a deal with Alexander Acosta, then the US attorney in Miami, which allowed him to serve just 13 months — not in federal or state prison, but in a private wing of a Palm Beach county jail.
He was granted work release to go to a “comfortable office” for 12 hours a day, six days a week, despite the fact that the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Department prohibited work release for sex offenders.
Epstein’s deal, called a “non-prosecution agreement,” granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators,” meaning that if any of Epstein’s powerful friends were involved in his crimes, they would face no consequences. And Acosta agreed that the deal would be kept secret from the victims, preventing them from showing up in court to try to challenge it.
New charges seemed like a new chance for prosecutors to hold Epstein accountable
In July 2019, though, Epstein was arrested at a New Jersey airport upon his return from a trip to France. He was charged with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy in federal court in New York. If convicted, he could have faced up to 45 years in prison, along with the forfeiture of his Manhattan townhouse, according to the New York Times.
Prosecutors weren’t worried about double jeopardy in this case, a source told the Washington Post, probably because the New York case includes new victims or new alleged crimes. Significantly, the indictment alleged that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein recruited girls as young as 14 not just to his Palm Beach residence, but also to his Manhattan house, where he sexually abused them.
The indictment also states that Epstein knew some of the girls were underage, because they “expressly told him their age.” And the document states that Epstein “worked and conspired with others, including employees and associates who facilitated his conduct by, among other things, contacting victims and scheduling their sexual encounters with Epstein.”
In addition to Epstein, the New York case seemed like it could potentially lead to charges against some of those “associates.”
“We hope that prosecutors will not stop with Mr. Epstein because there were many other people who participated with him and made the sex trafficking possible,” David Boies, a lawyer for some of Epstein’s accusers, told the Daily Beast.
It also appeared possible that Epstein could give up information on crimes by some of his powerful friends in exchange for a lighter sentence, though former New York prosecutor Mimi Rocah wrote in the Daily Beast that he “shouldn’t expect the ridiculous sweetheart deal he got the first time around.”
“There are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now,” the Miami Herald’s Brown said in a July MSNBC appearance. “We’ll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names.”
Meanwhile, in July, after repeated calls for his resignation, Acosta announced he was stepping down from his Labor Department post.
The new charges also led to a new public allegation. In July, 32-year-old Jennifer Araoz said in an interview with NBC’s Today that a young woman approached her outside her New York City high school in 2001, engaged her in conversation, and ended up introducing her to Epstein at his New York townhouse. At first, she said, they just talked, with her telling him about her father’s death from AIDS a few years before. But over the next year, Araoz said, Epstein manipulated her into giving him massages that ended with him masturbating. Then, in 2002, she said, “he raped me, forcefully raped me.”
Epstein’s case is an example of how wealthy and powerful men can get away with sexual abuse
For a time, Epstein was markedly forthcoming about some of the allegations against him. In one communication with Palm Beach police in 2005, his attorney said, “Mr. Epstein is very passionate about massages. … The massages are therapeutic and spiritually sound for him; that is why he has had many massages.” He even donated $100,000 to Ballet Florida purely so that dancers could also have massages.
Despite the severity of the crimes he was accused of, Epstein avoided major consequences thanks to his wealth and connections.
He was able to hire a team, including private investigators, Dershowitz, and Starr, famous for his investigation of Bill Clinton. His investigators and lawyers worked to discredit or intimidate the women and girls who came forward, and the authorities working on the case, according to the Herald.
After the case was referred to the FBI, Epstein’s team mounted a “year-long assault” on federal prosecutors, investigating them and their families looking for “personal peccadilloes” that might disqualify them from the case, according to a 2011 public statement by Acosta.
None of this would have been possible without Epstein’s substantial fortune. But his relationships with other powerful people may also have played a key role. Epstein’s plea agreement refers to unspecified information he supplied to federal investigators, according to Brown. It’s not clear what that information was, but Brown notes that Epstein was a key federal witness in the prosecution of two executives with Bear Stearns, the investment brokerage that failed as part of the 2008 financial crisis. Epstein had at one time been an investor in a hedge fund managed by those executives. So it’s possible that his knowledge about other wealthy men helped keep him out of prison. (The executives were eventually acquitted.)
Ultimately, Brown reports, Acosta caved under the pressure. He and his team not only allowed Epstein to avoid a long prison sentence but also worked with Epstein’s lawyers to make sure the case was kept as quiet as possible.
All told, Brown’s extensive reporting paints a picture that’s all too common: a rich and well-connected man manipulating the legal system to protect himself. The account recalls the case of producer Harvey Weinstein, who, according to the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow, hired an army of private investigators, including ex-Mossad agents, to track actresses and journalists in an effort to suppress sexual harassment and assault allegations against him.
Epstein’s deal with prosecutors did more than just protect him. By granting immunity to potential co-conspirators, it let any friends or associates of Epstein who might also have participated in his abuse avoid consequences as well.
Over the years, speculation has swirled about which of Epstein’s famous friends, if any, might have committed sex crimes on his properties. During the 2016 presidential race, then-Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus speculated that Bill Clinton might have been involved: “When you hang out with a guy who has a reputation like Jeffrey Epstein, multiple times, on private jets, on weekends, on trips, on places at least where it’s been reported not very good things happen, it would be good to know what our former president was doing,” he told Bloomberg. (Clinton, however, has not been accused of any specific Epstein-related wrongdoing.)
Also during the 2016 race, a woman going by the name Katie Johnson sued Trump, saying he had raped her at one of Epstein’s parties when she was 13, the Daily Beast reports. She later dropped the suit.
It’s hard for the public to know how to evaluate these claims when so little about Epstein’s crimes has ever come to light, due to pressure from his lawyers and acquiescence from prosecutors. Epstein’s money and influence have protected not just Epstein but anyone who might be connected to him, a disturbing example of power perpetuating itself.
The girls and women who reported abuse by Epstein, meanwhile, were markedly powerless. Most of them “came from disadvantaged families, single-parent homes or foster care,” Brown reports. “Many of the girls were one step away from homelessness.”
Their youth and poverty may have made it easier for Epstein and his alleged recruiters to lure them in with promises of cash, easier for investigators to intimidate them, and easier for prosecutors to discount or disbelieve them when the time came.
Investigation into Epstein continues after his death
Despite Epstein’s death, investigation and legal action in his case have continued, leading to further revelations about his influence, as well as his ability to avoid consequences for the allegations against him.
For example, according to lawsuits filed after his death, Epstein coerced two women to have sex with him while he was on work release, Ali Watkins reports at the New York Times. He had previously recruited them in New York, and had them flown to Florida to have sex with him during his jail sentence, the suits allege.
Another lawsuit, filed by Denise N. George, the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, alleges that Epstein brought girls as young as 11 or 12 to his private island for sexual abuse, using a database to track their movements, the Times reports. In one case, a 15-year-old girl tried to swim off the island and escape after being forced to perform sex acts, the suit alleges, but she was captured and Epstein confiscated her passport.
Meanwhile, the new charges against Epstein, as well as his death, have led to increased attention to the way he used donations to academics and institutions as a way to launder his public image after his 2007 indictment. MIT, in particular, has been the focus of scrutiny, with the director of the university’s Media Lab, Joichi Ito, resigning in September after a report showed that he received donations from Epstein and worked to conceal their source. In January, an investigation by the university found that Epstein had made 10 donations between 2002 and 2017, and that top administrators had been aware of the gifts, the New York Times reported. (Epstein had been a registered sex offender since 2008.)
Though unique in many ways, Epstein’s case is also common in others: one of all too many instances in which victims of sexual misconduct are ignored or brushed aside when they come from marginalized groups. Women who have come forward to say that singer R. Kelly abused them have faced a similar kind of erasure. As Vox’s Constance Grady notes, Kelly has been “accused of creating an abusive ‘sex cult’ of very young women, whom he allegedly isolates, brainwashes, and abuses physically and emotionally.”
Girls and young women are routinely seen as unreliable narrators of their own experiences, including abuse, and it typically takes the testimony of many women for a powerful man to face any consequences. For example, young female athletes had been reporting abuse by Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics team doctor who was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison earlier this year for abusing more than 100 young athletes, since 1997. For more than a decade, officials at Michigan State University, where he worked, did nothing.
It took a groundbreaking investigation by the Indianapolis Star, the brave testimony of dozens of survivors, and, perhaps, the growing strength of the #MeToo movement, to finally bring Nassar to justice.
Meanwhile, for the women who say Epstein abused them, that justice has been elusive.
It seemed that might be about to change after Epstein’s July arrest. “Oh my God,” Michelle Licata, one of Epstein’s accusers, told the Miami Herald upon hearing about the new indictment. “Finally, finally, finally! Justice!”
But Epstein’s death ends his prosecution for the indictment filed in July. However, New York authorities are continuing to investigate Epstein’s case, and a number of women are filing suit against his estate.
“On behalf of the victims I represent, we would have preferred [Jeffrey Epstein] lived to face justice,” attorney Lisa Bloom said shortly after his death. But, she continued: “Our civil cases can still proceed against his estate. Victims deserve to be made whole for the lifelong damage he caused. We’re just getting started.”
午前0:23 · 2021年2月11日
There are lots of unanswered questions in this report. But this does boil down to the relationship between law and economics. Will Harvard admit that the Epstein affair was yet one more instance in which "economics" takes priority over the rule of law?
このレポートには答えのない質問がたくさんあります。 しかし、これは法と経済の関係に帰結します。 ハーバードは、エプスタイン事件が、法の支配よりも「経済」が優先された事例の一つであることを認めるのだろうか。
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