The Epstein Files Are Not the Scandal You Think They Are

The real surprise is how normal all of this actually is.

By Guest Writer: Caitlin Heine

Author’s Note: If you are a man or a woman reading this and your first reaction is defensiveness, anger, or the urge to explain why you, or the men you know, are different, then I am talking about you.

That reaction is part of the problem. It helps maintain the systems that harm women and children. Good men do not need this explained to them. They already know I am not talking about them.

The Epstein files didn’t merely reveal crimes; they cracked open a lie so central to the structure of our society that reality itself feels unstable. And yet, on some instinctual level, we might be finally recognizing something we have always known, but spent our lives pretending wasn’t real.

• When thousands of priests were exposed, we told ourselves it was a few bad churches.

• When investigators found tens of thousands of men in online groups sharing instructions on how to drug and rape women, we told ourselves it was a dark corner of the internet.

• When a husband in France was accused of drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her over years, we treated it like a random, unfathomable horror.

• When reporting documented hundreds of abuse allegations tied to organizations built around children, we framed it as a handful of bad actors.

Every time, we insisted it was an exception instead of admitting what it was: a pattern.

Women have been managing men’s behaviour our entire lives. We do it constantly.

• We share names.

• We exchange looks across rooms.

• We text each other after dates.

• We walk friends to their cars.

• We plan how to leave before we decide how to arrive.

• We choose what to wear, what to say, how much to smile, and when to stay silent based on how a man might react.

We learn how to say no in ways that will not get us hurt. We teach our daughters early too, whether we want to or not. We spend our lives trying to protect our children from what we already know, from what happened to us, from what we watched happen to other women, while pretending everything is fine because admitting the truth would mean admitting how unsafe this world actually is.

Because deep down, we knew. We all knew.

We especially knew when it came to children.

That is why you do not leave your children alone with other men: not the neighbour, not a teenager, not the coach, not the teacher, and especially not the priest. We have always known.

We need to stop pretending this is about rare monsters. It’s not.

Every four minutes, somewhere in the world, a child is killed by an act of violence. In the USA, every 10 SECONDS, a report of child abuse is made.

At least 650 million girls and women, one in four alive today, were/are subjected to sexual violence as children. At least 550 million children are growing up in homes where their mothers are victims of intimate partner violence.

Fathers.

Husbands.

Coaches.

Priests.

Teachers.

Doctors.

Bosses.

Billionaires.

Brothers.

Uncles.

Grandfathers.

The men who tuck us in at night. The men who walk us down aisles. The men who mean well.

Every woman knows at least one man who crossed a line. Most know many. Some know so many that separating the memories feels impossible.

The only difference between the men in the Epstein files and the men in your life is money.

That is it.

Abuse is not confined to the top or to a handful of powerful men. It exists at every level of society because it is maintained and protected at every level. Across every socioeconomic class, men protect one another and the systems that shield them. This happens inside families, in schools, in workplaces, in courts, in hospitals, in churches, in government, and in our homes.

The scale may change, but the behaviour never does.

They do not protect each other out of loyalty or brotherhood. They do it out of self-interest. Every man understands, consciously or not, that the system protecting other men is the same system that could one day protect him.

They are not horrified by the abuse. Some are jealous because they lack the wealth and access to take their desires that far. This is the hardest part for most women to accept.

It doesn’t make sense because even on your worst day, your most broken, angry, resentful day, you would not fathom anything like this. You could not do this to another person. You would never trade someone else’s body, mind, safety, or childhood for pleasure, status, or power.

That gap in understanding is not confusion. It is basic humanity.

What you are feeling right now is grief. Grief for the version of the world you tried to believe in. Grief for the hope that decency was the rule instead of the exception. Grief for the slow realization that there is no version of reality where men collectively decide to change, because this world works for them exactly as it is, and they want their turn.

They are not going to protect us. They are not going to protect the children.

So the only question left is: What are we going to do about it?

© Caitlin Heine