She didn't have to be here. (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell has divided feminists. I don’t know any who would suggest she is innocent. But there are those who would argue she was nothing but a handmaiden, coerced and abused by Jeffrey Epstein into luring those poor girls to be raped and prostituted. Others say she is both victim and perpetrator, and that her behaviour was a direct result of being sexually abused by her father, the late Robert Maxwell.
My take is pretty straightforward. Yes, there is evidence to suggest she was abused by her father, and it is clear that Epstein had a certain level of power and control over her. But Maxwell is a woman with immense privilege and power of her own. She was not convicted for associating with Epstein, she was convicted for procuring young women into prostitution. There is nothing of the victim about Maxwell.
She was corrupted by her own power. She wasn’t just a “daddy pleaser” who transferred her subservience to Epstein as a replacement for her father. She was an agent in her own downfall; she used her wealth and class superiority to outsource abuse. Maxwell had scant respect for her victims: during the trial, we heard how she would refer to the poor, barely educated, vulnerable young women as “scum”. It’s all grimly reminiscent of what happened during the grooming gang cases in England, where the girls were viewed as “troublesome slags” who had “chosen” a lifestyle of prostitution.
Just as in Rochdale and Rotherham, the girls served up to Epstein and his friends were mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds. Seen as “disposable”, the perpetrators knew that if the victims spoke out, it was likely they wouldn’t be believed.
Prostitution, regardless of who is procuring, drags everyone down to the same level. Epstein and Maxwells’s victims have become complicit in the abuse of other women, just as happened with the grooming gangs in the UK. Victims are encouraged to bring along other girls, which they do because they are terrified. I have interviewed so many desperate women who escaped prostitution only by recruiting others to take their places. The prostituted victim becomes the pimp. The guilt they then feel when they finally escape the sex trade is almost as traumatic as the nightmare of prostitution itself.
The truly distressing thing about all these cases, though, is how the victims are belittled, ignored and erased. All those young women who were raped are barely mentioned in press coverage nor even during the trial. And we know very little about the sheer numbers of lives Epstein and Maxwell conspired to ruin.
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Subscribe“We are all…”
I have become a tad tired with this use of the “we” to claim collective guilt. I am responsible for the sins that I commit as you are responsible for those that you commit.
Your most notable sin is your constant resort to hyperbole,and the promotion of unproven claims to the status of (almost) established fact, as in “…which could account for over 30,000 instances of rape and sexual exploitation.” Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not.This tactic is counter-productive, as it leads me to view every claim that you make with scepticism
Well, I am all for a broad church approach, but Maxwell and Epstein are accused of serious crimes that should be treated in a sober manner and not used as an opportunity to engage in grandstanding.
Don’t quote me on this, but I sometimes wonder just how many of the crimes attributed to Jimmy Saville did he actually commit. Some of them, yes, but all of them? Stories grow in the retelling.
Quite.
Conveniently Epstein – like Savile – died and took the evidence with him.
So the mob is able to imagine anything
How many commenters on here have raised a daughter through their teens in the social media age ?
How many of those, think their daughter did not watch porn ?
How many think their daughter had not performed sex by the age of 17 ?
If you cannot bring yourself to reply here, then at least think the answer to yourself.
I have no children, but I am not naive. As for the porn thing, I find it incomprensible. Porn was for the too young and the too old. As a young man I had no interest in it whatsover.
My teenage years were the 1970’s. Pretty well everybody I know of my generation (of both sexes) had had more than one sexual partner by 17.
I’m told the youth today have less sex than any previous generation. So does social media and ubiquitous porn, counter intuitively lead to less sex?
Maybe the assumption that young women, fully aware of their sexual power, become playthings without agency when they see an opportunity to partake in a jet set lifestyle, but at all other times are the ass kicking future, is giving rise to some confusion?
Thanks.
The above conversation illustrates starkly what is wrong with America. No sense of propriety, and no morality. The sooner America ceases to be a part of our lives, the better,
Exactly .The situation of these girls seems to have been nothing like Rotherham . Their limits were respected and they largely seem to have been engaged in massage , though I’m sure some had sexual intercourse ,which they consented to .
No drugs were involved , no violence, no group sex .
I wonder how many of the poor girls exploited in this situation, by the grooming gangs and elsewhere were raised without fathers in the home and/or without mothers at home. I’m a classic liberal turned soft conservative so am not proposing locking women into household drudgery but it seems self evident that the breakdown of the traditional family alongside the breakdown of community and the (post)modern emphasis on liberty, rights and self fulfilment as opposed to responsibility and duty have brought us here (I hold neo-liberal capitalism responsible primarily). I suppose I’m asking is it time for feminism to give some ground on the central claims of marriage and family, namely that these institutions were not formed to oppress women but to protect women and children. At the same time as we ask conservatives to fully recognise that that women had and have a shit go.
In the name of common ground for alliance building.
We are also guilty of what we don’t say or do about horrific situations, as in the sin of omission.
Are you a (Russian) bot?
Feminists, like their fellow Marxist like groups, like to talk of exploitation in terms of gender. Useful, as it allows upper class women with easy arts degrees and BBC jobs to pretend they are “victims”
Which has downsides, for instance groups overlap. All men are horrible rapists and violent abusers, but if you talk about black, aboriginal or “Asian” men who have far worse than average crime rates or cultural attitudes against women, you are a racist.
But the biggest issue is that it ignores the most critical factor: class.
The lower class girls at Rochdale, victims of FGM or the girls targeted by Epstein are typically powerless and targeted because of their class, not their gender.
And the upper class victimhood feminists who dominate feminism have nothing but contempt for them, and they have more of an affinity for a ghastly creature like Ghislaine.
You made some very good points, but I disagree that the girls in these cases were not targeted because of their gender. Is there any evidence to show that men of equal backgrounds have been targeted too?
No, they have not.
Young girls in these cases were not targeted because of their gender, just like poor men being worked to death in factories or mines were not targeted because they were men.
The mechanism of exploitation would work differently for men and women surely, because their strengths and weaknesses are different. But that doesn’t mean it’s their gender that’s the cause, it’s down to poverty and class.
This is completely wrong, sorry. Working class Muslim girls were not targeted by the grooming gangs, but Sikh and Hindu girls were. They were targeted for their religion. The western left obsesses about race and class, but hardcore Muslims see the world in a different binary.
I’m confused, Samir! My understanding is that one of the foundations of Marxist thought is that society is seen in terms of capitalists, bourgeoisie and working class.
In your first line you criticise the gender-analysis of the cultural-Marxist-feminists, but then go on to propose a class-based analysis which is mainstream Marxist.
Marxism was about class – until they lost that war because it turned out by the 1980s that capitalism did better at uplifting the lower classes.
That’s roughly the time when they switched victims – gender or race instead of class, but the same approach.
So we end up with a situation where the modern Marxists now sneer at or even detest working class white males, who used to be their main constituency 30 years back.
Both Bolsheviks and Trotskyists despised the working class. Deeply despised… same as progressives today
Excellent.
Foundational to Marx is the oppressor/oppressed division. When the class based experiment failed so dramatically in the 20th century, Marxist academia morphed the oppressed classes into minority and gender groups.
The basic principles are the same – all the structures of society are arranged to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie and must be dismantled in their entirety, starting with organised religion and the nuclear family.
Samir is correct to identify contemporary feminism (as opposed to it’s earlier forms) as a Marxist philosophy.
That the rich and powerful exploit the poor and powerless is part of the human condition. Resisting it is based on Christian teachings, not Marxism.
It is undeniably true that tolerance of prostitution does enable this kind of exploitation. There would be no grey zone to exploit if consensually selling sex for money was equally illegal and condemned. That does not necessarily mean you have to agree with JBs prostitution policy; after all you do not criminalise live-in house servants because some of them are exploited as slaves. But it should be counted among the costs.
But if ‘naming is important’, as indeed it is, JB should go easy not just on ‘paedophile’, but on ‘child rape’. The vast majority of the victims, including the then Virginia Roberts, seem to have been fully grown and over legal age. ‘Child rape’ – deliberately – distorts what is going on.
She is deliberately infantilising all prostitutes because she wants to take away their right to do that kind of work .Obviously if men are criminalised for paying for sex it will be hard for prostitutes to get work .
Child pornography and sex with children is illegal. People of a conservative stance like me are against it, no ifs or buts. It’s Julie’s former friends that have been trying to whitewash this ghastly practise in their “everything goes” strategy as a way to undermine western values.
Prostitution is illegal in most western countries. In countries like Sweden and the US, clients can and are arrested. There are tv shows that shame the perpetrators. It’s not us, conservatives that call the victims “sex workers”. Again, it’s Julie’s “compagnons de route” that in their attempt to destroy our values and society have been busy making prostitution acceptable. I remember a few years ago reading in a British Newspaper about the murder of a British woman in Japan at the hands of her violent boyfriend, she was described as a “hostess”, a euphemism for a prostitute.
So, dear Julie, I’m not responsible for the crimes of omission of your tribe. Take it up with your friends. In this case, as in at least half of your articles, you should have remembered Chesterton’s advice about putting down walls.
Prostitution is illegal in New York? There used to be a magazine choc full of adverts for hookers ?
Surely it isn’t just a simple question of tolerating prostitution? The love of money has been tolerated, and the behaviour of a rich , powerful man has also been tolerated. Many people, such as house staff, acquaintances on the fringe must have known what was going on here, yet none took the decision to call time. Why? All tarred with the same brush, or enjoying the money so much that they turned a blind eye?
My thoughts exactly. No-one blew the whistle before so all must have been complicit.
Epstein had the entire police dept of Palm Beach in his pocket. Along with politicians, business people, and anyone with influence. Maxwell was responsible for the connections. She had them, he didn’t.
he was already fabulously wealthy when he met Maxwell and no-one knows how, so the argument that she was responsible for his connections doesn’t stack up, though she certainly augmented them and was a useful, very well connected and socially acceptable “partner” – in terms of the latter; much more so than he was.
That’s what’s utterly mind boggling about such cases, or say Saville, or the grooming gangs.
So many people who could have stood up, but none did.
“Reports say” and “it is also known” are guaranteed to make me nervous. Without for one moment wishing to defend either Epstein or Maxwell, or to make light of the suffering of girls and women who got caught up in this grisly story, I cannot figure out how any man could commit three rapes a day, with no break, for 30 years. Daft claims like this undermine whatever case is being made.
He had to orgasm 3 times a day. He didn’t rape anyone 3 times a day.
This article is a bit like the curate’s egg, good in parts. However, there is one question that as far as I can tell has never been asked and it is this. If Ghislaine Maxwell was a full partner in crime with Epstein, why was she not arrested at the same time as Epstein was, on both occasions? Following on from that, why was she only arrested AFTER he died? To me, that makes no sense at all and it makes it look suspiciously as though she is paying, in part at least, for Epstein’s crimes. A strange form of justice.
Epstein came unstuck (fatally, the second time) by engaging with underage “sex workers” in public places, rather than in one of his discreet haunts.
Maxwell made no such mistake, therefore was only fingered by the police after the death of her partner-in-crime.
Scapegoat she isn’t, to the slightest extent.
To me, that would seem to indicate that, although Maxwell was a recruiter, she did not herself have direct knowledge of exactly who the girls were being trafficked to, and consequently could not give evidence fingering specific individuals. From the point of view of the most powerful vested interests, arresting her after Epstein’s death, therefore, would have the benefit of throwing someone — admittedly a guilty someone — to the mob, but someone who could not implicate them.
In the case of one of the rich, powerful men involved – Prince Andrew – he himself has underlined the importance of his own personal relationship with Maxwell, describing Epstein as an “add-on”. I have no doubt that Maxwell had close personal relationships with many other of the rich, powerful men who were using the services which Epstein provided. So I’m sure she could name names. I’m also sure that she probably won’t because she’d like to go on living, even in an American prison.
“I’m also sure that she probably won’t because she’d like to go on living, even in an American prison.”
Even if she knows she will never get out? I’m not so sure about that. Could the US prison/justice system weather another high-profile, untimely death in one of their prisons? I’m not so sure about that either.
We’ll find out soon.
Epstein was arrested after returning to the US from a foreign trip. As soon as that happened Maxwell went into hiding. She was running her own company and shut it down immediately. The ‘relationship’ which was very one sided at best, had ended prior but the evidence from the victims against her had been mounting for years.
She wasn’t the only one procuring young women for Epstein – another was a certain Virginia Roberts. There were others too.
That was the Ponzi scheme. They weren’t doing it voluntarily. They were trapped. Good Lord, what is it you can’t see about this?
Why can’t you see that for many young women travelling the world and hanging out with ( maybe sleeping with ) the Queen of England’s second son in Jermyn St night clubs , and getting well paid for it , is quite a nice gig .
Look again at the photo. Does Virginia look unhappy . For some girls being trapped would equate with working at Walmart’s
She also had sex with Alan Dershowitz on a number of occasions. Do you think that was voluntary?
No idea . But I’d have wanted more money possibly . She was working as a hooker . To the extent she was above the age of consent and chose to have sex with various men why not voluntary ? She was being paid after all . Not every John is likely to be good looking , but for all we know the Dershowitz was sweet natured and a sensitive lover .
Anything’s possible !
Is it noteworthy that only one person (not American) has been thrown under the bus by Maxwell?
Short answer: penetrative sex. Details beyond that not supplied, but hardly necessary. Pimping is orchestrating sex-for-money exchanges – la Maxwell is convicted as an accessory or accomplice of multiple rape (some of the victims were as young as 14), which is not the same thing. As for the 65 year sentence, I have long thought that *all* US sentences are excessively long and punitive, in part as a strategy to blackmail defendants into pleading guilty in return for a reduced sentence. But within a system that uses such long sentences routinely, the 65 years is hardly an excessive punishment in this case.
As for Rotherham, la Maxwell was an integral and active part of a rape gang, which would make her pretty much equal to the Rotherham rapists, whether or not she got off on her role.
If you are actually interested, this link has enough ‘rape’, ‘sexual activity’ etc. (alongside lots of the more mealymouthed ‘sexual assault’) to answer your question.
You asked where or who said that penetrative sex was involved. Read through the whole (long) wikipedia article, and you will find enough citations (from prosecutors or victims) to answer your question. Meanwhile, what is your version? That Epstein and his girls stuck to mutual meditation? What would be your sources for that idea?
If you can’t be bothered to read the link Rasmus posted you could watch the Netflix documentary ‘Filthy Rich’. And Maxwell wasn’t part of a rape gang, she ran a Ponzi scheme where the currency was very young girls for ‘Jeffrey and his friends’.
Considering she is looking at 65 years behind bars she may spill the beans. That is the point of the six month wait for sentencing, she has nothing to lose.
“Maxwell wasn’t part of a rape gang!”. Depends a bit. She was not just a supplier, she was part of Epsteins social circle, intimately involved in the day-to-day work convincing the girls and keeping them compliant, plus she was Epsteins close friend and (ex)lover. And if that is not enough, it remains an open question how many thrills she may have got from the shared activities and shared power. You can enjoy being a sadomasochist without having actual sex.
I find it weird, in the extreme, after hearing the prosecution case, that anyone could be trying to question Maxwell’s guilt or somehow try to make Maxwell’s behaviour other than dreadful and criminal.
They are talking about ‘statutory rape’ of a girl below the age of consent .
The age of consent varies in the US from state to state .
Clearly consensual sex is not rape
I would say pimping is as ghastly as the actual act
And yes, Rotherham was worse not just due to being much bigger in scale but also precisely because it involved that other stuff – pimping, grooming, passing around young girls like objects, threatening them etc.
Under-age sex (16 in UK) and trafficking should be stamped upon and prosecuted, but there are those who sell their brains (like the author of this article) so why shouldn’t those with different God-given assets have the right to sell their bodies, if they so wish.
I see there needs to be an age of consent but all the women I have asked claim to have been having sex before the age of 16 ( not with me ) .
You’ll have a hard time stamping out what seems to be the normal state of affairs .
Have you followed this story? Watched the documentaries about Epstein? It is documented how she participated in the sexual abuse of these girls. How she instructed them in oral sex – exactly how Jeffrey liked it. How he had to have 3 orgasms a day. The box of dildos under the massage table that had to be cleaned daily by the handyman on the property. Anything else?
The rapists of Rotherham were amateurs compared to Maxwell.
Does anyone know what the evidence is that suggests Maxwell was sexually abused by her father?
That is the first I’ve heard of it too.
She probably thinks naming a yacht after her was akin to inscribing her name on his phallus . Very Freudian Julie?
Perhaps I am looking at this differently than most, but the thought of a grossly wealthy man, who manipulates people for a living, gains extraordinary power, hobnobs with the rich and famous, suffers from a gargantuan sexual appetite and procures young women and girls to satisfy that appetite, leads me to think that world hasn’t changed much in 5,000 years.
Julie Bindel seems to be unaware of how trials work. The prosecution makes specific charges that are supported by evidence – in this case by the testimony of the victims and other witnesses. There was no point in claiming the existence of other victims, however numerous, if those victims were not prepared to testify or if their identity was not even known.
Epstein’s conviction in 2008 was for prostitution of a minor – hardly evidence that the law tolerates prostitution.
Even those women who did testify in court – with one exception – preferred to maintain their anonymity. Their names are not known because they don’t their names to be known.
More rubbish from JB. A bit all over the place on this one, the collective guilt of the men, feminists are divided (not about the collective guilt of men–that’s a given)…. Is this about Lady Ghislaine, or is it about sex work, which should be legal by the way, but not for children?
Lady Ghislaine might have been a bit more successful if she had followed the Elizabeth Holmes playbook, multiplied by 2. EH said “The bad man made me do it….boo hoo hoo…..” Lady Ghislaine could have said “The bad men made me do it (her father and Epstein).
A bad choice not to testify–what did she have to lose? OK, she might have perjured herself–as EH did–or had a massive lapse in memory–as EH did, but could the result have been any worse? Perjury trial to come soon anyway.
This tosh is so ill-observed, so poorly written. Typical for JB. Could UnHerd have commissioned a better writer than JB for this important story?
“Could UnHerd have commissioned a better writer than JB for this important story?”
UnHerd is degenerating into a platform for Ms Bindel’s daily and poorly written misandrist musings.
Which I will no longer help to finance.
Superb article. Employing this woman is a great coup for UnHerd. Just a couple of quibbles.
“It’s all grimly reminiscent of what happened during the grooming gang cases in England, where the girls were viewed as “troublesome slags” who had “chosen” a lifestyle of prostitution.”
These grooming gangs are overwhelmingly Muslim. There is no doubt that Islam is one of the influences which causes the problem.
Epstein, Maxwell and Weinstein are Jewish. Surely this angle is worth investigating, though it’s even more difficult than raising the Islam connection. “Shiksa” is the relevant concept.
On Bindel’s main argument, that it’s to do with prostitution, that’s what the South Yorkshire police believed. No, it’s child rape.
The rights and wrongs of prostitution is a completely separate issue.
“There is no doubt,,,”. So Islam is guilty, and then there is the Jewish angle. And what else, Catholicism, and Lutherism? Hindus? Atheists? I think there is a lot of doubt, and sweeping statements do not help us understand anything
Cultural backgrounds influence behaviour and knowledge of these helps our understanding. I don’t know about Hindus, Lutherans and atheists, but the Muslim background of the grooming gangs certainly seems to be a relevant consideration, as is the widespread homosexual (not p a e d o) culture amongst the Catholic clergy. I wasn’t familiar with the concept of shiksa, but it certainly seems worth exploring in this instance. How many victims of Epstein, Maxwell and Weinstein were Jewish?
I don’t know. How many rapists are Jewish? I suspect you don’t know that either, but it is a very dangerous inference to make without facts to hand
I don’t know, and I agree that we’re in dangerous territory here. However to declare such debate as off limits is to leave the field free for the bigots.
In the case of Weinstein he was probably a rather unattractive young man (problems with girls ) who came to hold a position of huge power in the film industry .
While there is no doubt he exploited that position to the max ,and was a bit of a jerk , I don’t think he was shown to have raped anybody
Harassed Gwyneth Paltrow , great great granddaughter of a Rabbi , so may have been in trouble with the elders of Zion .
But she’s only Jewish descent on her father’s side , so perhaps not
It feels like rich Jews underpinning various evils has been fairly well explored throughout history.
Write to Jeremy. I’m sure he’s on the case.
There is so much wrong with this writer’s reasoning I hardly know where to begin.
Conflating the evil that is child rape and prostitution with legal prostitution is a deliberate deception.
“The guilt they then feel when they finally escape the sex trade is almost as traumatic as the nightmare of prostitution itself.”
There are a significant number of women engaged in legal prostitution and none of the ones I’ve seen interviewed appeared to view the trade as a nightmare.
“All those young women who were raped are barely mentioned in press coverage nor even during the trial.”
You’re deliberately ignoring their expressed preference for anonymity. It’s difficult to report people who don’t want to be reported.
“…it might even make some men think twice before they rent a child to rape as an after-dinner treat. And surely all feminists can agree that would be a good thing.”
To limit this to feminists is ludicrous. Almost everyone agrees that child rape is abominable.
There is never a shortage of morally upright citizens who want to prohibit other people’s vices. However the effect of Prohibition is always dire. Preventing the legal sale of alcohol in 1930s America gave a monopoly to organised crime who used the profits to corrupt politicians, lawyers and judges. The war on drugs has done similar in our time with more than half of all crime generated by drugs. There is no possibility that our inadequate police forces could eliminate prostitution. All that will happen is that a more vicious breed of villains will take over the trade using violence and bribery to continue in business. Society shouldn’t promote vice but it should regulate them.
You’re confusing the issue of under age prostitutes with prostitution generally .
You can’t seem to accept some prostitutes enjoy their work (at least sometimes ) and at any rate aren’t coerced .
Thanks to Julie Bindel for this excellent article. I have one small point, regarding arithmetic – it is stated that Epstein demanded sex three times a day. That would mean 1095, not 1,068, in a year. The figure given would be accurate if years were 356 rather than 365 days long….
Ghislaine, whatever she was, or continues to be, is only part of the story here. For instance, does anyone ask if she would be have been associated with this trade if it did not bring her close to people like Trump, Clinton, Gates, or Prince Andrew? How does this happen? Ultimately, this conversation is far too big for a comment, but if these “sex trafficking” organizations are legit, they should be more genuine about the problem, like who provides funding for these organizations?
According to a news report I saw, she was paid approximately $15 million during her “relationship” with Creepstein. Not sure about anyone else, but $15 million, in addition to whatever she inherited from her dad can certainly afford a fairly lavish lifestyle, which is the only goal she seemed to have in life.
She never inherited anything from her dad. He was a crook who lost the company pension scheme – hence his suicide. I can’t believe how ignorant a lot of commenters are that they don’t know the background to this story. Epstein paid Maxwell $30 million plus another $7 million to buy a helicopter.
Julie Thankyou for a clear well argued article.
Good article, thoughtful. Thanks, Julie