We should’ve known. We should’ve remained vigilant from the moment Donald Trump said Jeffery Epstein had a liking for younger women. If you’ve been scrolling on the internet for the past few days, you must’ve noticed the name ‘Jeffery Epstein’ pop up on your timeline multiple times. The financier was an alleged repeated sex offender who committed suicide during his time in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.

But the more-than-a-decade-long series of lawsuits that involved him and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly running a high-profile sex-trafficking ring has had some recent developments.

Jeffery Epstein
Credit: Salon.com

Let’s delve into how all of this started; Epstein began his career as a math teacher at a school in New York City. Though, according to reports, he was a college dropout, therefore let us pause for a second, and think about how he ended up in an academic profession without a formal degree. A few years down the line, and because of a small investment job, he ended up working at the American bank, Bear Stearns. Where he slowly began managing money for billionaires and the affluent.

We’re guessing this is where and how Epstein began building a large elite network; some of whom were suspected of being a part of the sex trafficking ring that we’ve mentioned above.

Jeffery Epstein
Credit: Women’s Health

If we were to talk about the exact moment in time when he was officially held accountable as a sex offender, we’d have to go back to 2005. Back when a  14-year-old girl reported she was molested at his mansion. In 2006 Epstein was arrested and indicted for a single incident of soliciting prostitution.

The fact that he was given lenient treatment caught many people’s attention, which led to the FBI investigating him further. In 2008 Jeffery Epstein pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He was then sentenced to 18 months in jail. The imprisonment was under a work-release program, which meant that he could go to work and then return to prison at night time. As you can see, this sounds like an immensely unjust decision. How was a man who had pled guilty to soliciting prostitution allowed to have this arrangement?

Jeffery Epstein
Credit: Esquire

Finally, in 2009, multiple women came forward and decided to fight a legal battle against Epstein and ultimately, his partner Ghislaine Maxwell as well.

According to the information that was uncovered during Virginia Giuffre’s (one of Epstein’s victims) defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, other victims were lured into sexual encounters with Mr Epstein by Ms Maxwell, all under the guise of being hired to give Epstein massage sessions. And, the massage sessions became increasingly sexual in nature.

Jeffery Epstein
Credit: CNN

Virginia Giuffre, Sarah Ransome, Johanna Sjoberg and Maria Farmer are 3 of the 8 women who’d come forward to talk about either being abused by Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell or being pulled into their sex-trafficking circle. Apart from this, model Ruslana Korshunova died by suicide in 2008, and according to the court documents, she was on the passenger list of Jeffery Epstein’s plane flying to his private island. Unfortunately, according to Ghislaine’s and Jeffery’s depositions, most of the accusations were left largely unproven.

One thing that does stick out throughout this entire battle between Epstein, Maxwell and their victims is that the names of many powerful people had been redacted from the deposition files. Which seems like an unnecessary favour lent to the former duo. A lack of information on this meant that not everyone who could have been questioned was questioned. And since so many names had been edited out for the final release of the documents, there is a possibility that multiple, well-known people were involved with or at the very least, knew about the sex-trafficking ring and Epstein’s abusiveness.

Jeffery Epstein
Credit: NYPost (Virginia Giuffre, centre)

Years and years of back and forth, multiple depositions, and sadly the truth of the matter still hasn’t seen the light of day. This might just be one of the biggest examples of how dangerous, power, money and influence can end up being.

Jeffery Epstein
Credit: Film Daily

Multiple women have opened up about their experiences with Epstein, Maxwell and other affluent people, regarding this case, yet the silence of those with power and affluence somehow holds more weight than the words of people trying to speak up against injustice.