In the US, lynchings can come out of nowhere. As David Aaronovitch wrote in The Times this week, the film Sibyl caused a sudden increase in the diagnosis of multiple personality disorders in the United States from less than 100 to several thousand, which led to false narratives of abuse and innocent people in prison.
I also wonder why it seems that former U.S. Attorney General William Barr threw a personal revenge against Ghislaine.
The most obvious answer is that Barr was ashamed of his abject failure to keep Jeffrey Epstein alive while in federal custody. The verdict is that Epstein committed suicide, but some believe he was murdered, including his own brother Mark, and there is forensic support for this.
Although he died, the truth is that he could not be tried and the case had gained so much notoriety that there was a gap that he asked to fill. Barr got it by pointing Ghislaine with his finger, which led directly to the television press program after his arrest that found her guilty in the eyes of the world. It would never have happened in the UK.
I have been traveling in and out of the United States throughout my adult life. Fortunately, I’ve never tried her prison system, but Ghislaine’s experience has shown me that there’s only one word for it: disgusting.
This is a country that has 4% of the world’s population, but is home to 20% of the world’s prisoners. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joe Donald said, “We will have about 2.4 million in this country. We are closing more people than China or Russia.” Senator Bernie Sanders has said, “Today in the United States we have put more people in prison than any other country in the world.” China ranks second after the U.S., with 1.6 million prisoners, and Russia is third with 642,470, according to the Criminal Policy Research Institute.
Political observers have often referred to the cowboy culture that rots the soul of the American people. It causes mass executions as well as mass hysteria.
In 2021 there were 693 mass shootings in the United States, leaving 703 dead and 2,842 injured for a total of 3,545 casualties.
Massive hysteria is well documented: a 2020 survey by political scientists Joseph Uscinski and Adam Enders found that 35% of Americans think the number of children who are victims of sex trafficking each year is about 300,000 or so. more, while 24% think it is much higher. It is a perfect example of cart hysteria; There are kidnappings, but according to the FBI, the figure is around 100.
There is sex trafficking in the US, of course. In 2019, the U.S. human trafficking hotline recorded direct contacts with 14,597 likely victims of sex trafficking of all ages. The mean age of the victims when they were first treated (age of entry) was 17 years.
“In 1996,” The Atlantic explained, “the National Nonprofit Child Safety Council printed photographs of missing children on three billion cartons of milk.” The article went on to point out that “a person should be very careful to notice that all photographs were of the same 106 faces.”
These panics have a huge effect on vote-hungry American politicians who are being pushed by public opinion, no matter how crazy they are. The elected judiciary is practically in the same position. This is what has led to the charges against Ghislaine.
The panic of white slavery in the early 1900s led to the passage of the Mann Act, a law that criminalized transportation across state borders “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery.” It was used against black men traveling with white women and later against sex workers accused of treating themselves!
The hysteria of the 1980s on child sexual abuse preceded the Child Obscenity and Protection Enforcement Act, which made it illegal to share child sexual abuse material through a computer, but also went expand the list of crimes for which the government could obtain wiretaps.
Today, the difficult problem of child sexual abuse material on the Internet is offered as a justification for law enforcement to gain access to encrypted communication or for Congress to force social media companies to constantly monitor their users. , in publications and private messages. In other words, institutionalized state espionage.
I feel great sympathy for any girl or woman who has been really abused, but their abuse does not automatically entitle them to be believed when they make unfounded allegations, especially when those allegations are very well rewarded financially. This is what happened to my sister.
Prosecutors have made large sums of money. Lawyers for the Epstein case have been riding a golden sauce train and have earned at least $ 60 million living with an ethically failed administration that is afraid of #MeToo.
Ghislaine’s key accuser, at all times, has been a woman named Virginia Giuffre. He has paraded out of court as a serial victim and has repeated it in many interviews. But here’s the thing, she was never called as a witness for the indictment at my sister’s trial.
In a few months, however, Ms. Giuffre will not be able to prevent Alan Dershowitz, possibly the leading lawyer in the United States, from prosecuting her in court. He alleges that he lied about him and defamed him. Dershowitz has also stated that she believes she has committed perjury and, if this is correct, and is considered a criminal perjury, she herself could go to jail for years.
That won’t save my sister from being convicted next Tuesday, but we will make every effort to appeal her conviction.
I know Ghislaine is innocent and would never have been found guilty in any civilized country. We will never stop fighting for justice to achieve their freedom.