The sublimation of the real story - the children and women who are the victims/survivors, AND the ones who didn’t make it. This is the story, refracted into a million parts by pretty words...
- Karen Sole
- Feb 24
- 5 min read
...analytical words, apologetic words, words of denial and buck passing -
'I wasn’t there' - we don’t believe you
'I didn’t go' - we don’t believe you
'I didn’t see' - we don’t believe you
'Nothing 'untoward' ever happened when I was there' - we don’t believe you.
We believe the children and the women. It is their story.
[Family Constellations is a highly effective therapeutic modality for working
with all kinds of abuse. All are welcome, and all parts are welcome.]
I first wrote about the Epstein situation when I published the following piece on Substack 10 February 2026:
The pedophilia-elite: the ugly criminal child of the incestuous lovers, Capitalism and Patriarchy/misogyny, endlessly anointed by entitled sycophantic wannabes in their jet-set lairs.
We know it's not the only stinking layer of humanity pedophilia thrives in, but this delude d strand thought they were untouchable. Their chief inveigler drew them in, used them, documented them, &...
Have I left anything out? Oh yes, many aspects, such as the whole situation is now described as one in which the children and women survivors were Epstein’s ‘honey-trap(s)’ for the mostly male hangers-on who couldn’t contain their excitement at the thought of raping trafficked children and young women. We are starting to hear the extent of this illness among people who have so much money or fame, or celebrity, or prowess or power or established notoriety that everything they can buy has been bought, and now, what? What irredeemable scrag end of humanity can they suck up to, and presto, there’s Epstein. They discovered children were on his rape menu, offered as freely as dinners around his numerous dinner tables. I refuse to call it sex. That level of depraved predation.
We’ve heard all the excuses that the so-far exposed former friends who now apologise for their friendship can offer, from Mandelson’s abject sludge to Valeria Chomsky’s eloquent insistence that she and Noam had no idea. We have to note though, that among the infamous emails is a line from her to Epstein that the #MeToo pushback had gone too far. Pushback is my word, not hers.
Epstein and his sycophants, enablers, moral-washing excusers are not the only perpetrators of these crimes. They are not the only manifestation of the abdication of the rule, the imperative that we look after and protect children: all children, not just our own or those within our spheres. But they are exemplary.
Imagine being so entitled that you deliberately choose to spend some of your life within the sphere of a convicted pedophile, that you are photographed in your underpants, or a fluffy white bath robe, or with a child you’ve never seen before on your lap in a pool or room or plane, thinking that no one will ever know you committed this heinous abuse. Epstein lured in famous and powerful people, and gravitated towards other paedophiles and misogynists and rapists. Larry Nasser, Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Imagine a world in which one man with a reputation for trafficking children and young women has such a hold on other men (how numerous we have yet to learn, how well known we have an inkling) and women (Ghislaine Maxwell, Fergie Mountbatten Windsor, Mrs Lutnick, to name a few) when the only and singular characteristic that distinguishes him from other rich criminals and grifters is his ability to supply - his literal and figurative island of children and young women - and that is what we’ve got.
Knowing as we do, that abuse, and particularly sexual abuse of children wrecks their lives, often irrevocably, often to the point of them taking their own lives when they are a little or a lot older than when the abuse occurred, there is no wonder that the world insists on full disclosure. Just apart from the sheer lunacy and horror of it. We have the suicide of Virginia Giuffre; there are implications of murder, abortion and infanticide within the ‘files’.
Behind us we have generations of children consigned to Catholic and other religious schools where the news of sexual, emotional and violent abuse by staff was out, or circulating underground years before their children were packed off to those hells. A special mention here for the quasi-genocidal examples of indigenous children stolen from their families and taken to hells where many of them died, and were stealthily buried. There are cults and communities and private homes where abuse of minors takes place.
Simply, children are thrown under the bus. It’s very difficult to get out from under a moving bus. Either way, you’re going to get mangled. On Netflix today there are several films documenting the phenomenon of gross, well known, emotional and sexual abuse of children in large communities where the adults in the piece variously turn a blind eye, consent to, or encourage the rape of children by adult men, and in some cases adult women grooming boys for the same purpose.
We have to say that cultures where child marriage is legal are not exceptional, or only for the numbers of situations where the rape of children is sanctioned. The moral outrage of the very same men who scratched Epstein’s back for access to children to rape speak scathingly of those cultures and countries. Four states in the United States have no minimum marriage age.
The outrage and disgust is hard to hold. Lucas Jones, who’s been eulogising Palestine and Gaza and lashing world leaders in his poetry has abandoned poetry in favour of desperate pleading in the face of the crimes and cover ups. Which reminds me, war is another arena in which children are among the most affected, nowhere moreso than in Gaza, where their murder is a much vaunted strategy declared by Israeli ‘leaders’ and military figures.
The victims and survivors of Epstein keep slipping into the background as discussions of espionage, of how Epstein really died, Maxwell promising to exonerate Trump, the Royal family ducks and dives, the UK government waddles about in confusion. Famous men representing many spheres issue their apologies for knowing Epstein, deny knowing him, regret ever having met him, say they used to be friends but…and Trump continues to suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere and to flood the zone.
The victims/survivors have the compelling story. They are the story. First things first. The rest is flailing that serves to obfuscate and shift the focus. The men - the enablers, sycophants, acolytes, fellow perpetrators, and pretenders that they did not see are another story.
I could not think of a poem that suits this piece, but as I grazed my shelves, I picked up The Story of Miss Moppet, by Beatrix Potter, [F.Warne & Co Ltd ISBN 0 7232 0612 0] , and page 35 taken out of the context of the book, seemed apt. So, here is page 35 of The Story of Miss Moppet, where ‘he’ is a mouse.
He has wriggled out and run away: and he is dancing a jig on the top of the cupboard!
Except for the quote from Beatrix Potter, copyright Karen Sole
[Family Constellations is a highly effective therapeutic modality for working
with all kinds of abuse. All are welcome, and all parts are welcome.]
Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate self-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions
manawa = heart breath emotion
karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a time that suits
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