I'm caught somewhere in the middle on this. From the start I've said the media had tried to limit the story to these women and were using "paedophille" and "sex-trafficking" as emotive descriptions to make people angry without really thinking. Technically, at least as far as we know, there was no paedophillia involved (although I'd bet that there probably is some that hasn't come out yet). The "sex-trafficking" is lawyered language based on the old Mann Act and Florida's high age of consent (taking a "minor" across state lines for immoral purposes). So whenever one of these women who was under 21 went out of Florida with Epstein this was technically sex-trafficking.

None of that excuses them raping 14, 15, 16 year-olds and I would like to see all the perpetrators buried under the prison but there was definitely some overstatement when it came to V.G. and some of the other high profile, Gloria Allred superstars. They were being given modelling contracts, art shows, money, etc. and M.T. is (mostly) correct about them not being held against their will (there was one case which didn't get to court where she was taken to some ranch in Arizona or something like that and held in a room for three days. The rapist was some high-level politician, an ex-state governor iirc). I realise there are lots of other ways to coerce people than force but a lot of the women who were asked to go to his Florida mansion could have just refused the next time it came up. The usual rebuttal to that is he was rich and powerful, we didn't know what he could do to us, which is very true for the under-eighteens but for the street-wise adults after the first time you

Having said all that, and not feeling good about it, Tracey takes it way too far the other way. He really does seem to have some sort of hangup about accusations of sexual abuse and his constant framing of them all as making everything up is nuts.

I'm conflicted about a lot of it; part of me thinks V.G. should have been charged seeing as she was one of the main recruiters in Florida and she knew what she was getting them into.

I'm probably falling into any number of chauvinist traps here but there some truth to what MT says but he's way over on the other extreme and definitely gives me the ick.

Of course we always have to bear in mind, these releases are what we're seeing after it's been curated for god knows how long. They've obviously planted some stuff that's clearly not true as poison fruit than can be used to try and discredit everything if anyone ever tries to use it and the really damaging stuff has probably been destroyed a long time ago.