Jennifer Weiner, writing for the New York Times, describes a glaring omission in the coverage of the Epstein files. Her point is that most of the coverage has little or nothing about the victims.
[…] we’ve heard endless details about the predators and the men in their social circle, we have heard far too little about — and from — the victims.
There’s another omission, however, that I haven’t seen anyone talk about, which is the economic inequality that leaves women vulnerable to becoming victims of sex trafficking. Why is no-one talking about that?
The young women who get roped into sex trafficking do so largely for prosaic reasons: usually money. The 17-year-old girl who had sex with Matt Gaetz did so for money to pay for orthodontic work. If we had an effective social safety net and universal health care, young women would not be nearly at the risk for falling victim to these kinds of nefarious schemes.
Make no mistake: the wealthy pursue the policies they do in part in order to have a large population of vulnerable people that can be exploited. It makes no sense to pursue justice against particular perpetrators without pursuing the larger goal of fixing the conditions that lead people to become victimized.
Unfortunately, that’s not a story that the media, which is mostly owned by the same wealthy people, is ever likely to report.
