This question is just based on my curiosity, and I hope it doesn’t suggest any “blame the victims, or their parents/guardians” motive. But I’m having a hard time understanding how Epstein was able to get so many young girls over to his island. I cannot think of a single parent I know that would allow their young daughter to fly away anywhere without at least a very solid understanding of the trip, and with trusted adults with them. Even girls from broken homes would have some adult guardian, or some government institution monitoring them, right?
Wrong. I mean pretty minimal to no actual oversight would not be uncommon and they had Maxwell (and whatever others) sorting through them to find quality targets for abuse.
Even when there are guardians that give a shit, obfuscation and out and out lies are fantastic tools for abusers. ‘It’s a great summer job where you can make a lot of quick cash working on a nice island resort’ is going to be a pretty persuasive inducement for a lot of poor teens and their parents. Just throw in a few ‘oh, they’ll have nice private quarters with free room and board’ and don’t worry - we’re always careful to look after the welfare of our workers’ and folks, maybe grudgingly or maybe enthusiastically, will sign off.
And of course some guardians suck and would cheerfully allow their teenage children to be prostituted. The world is full of shitty people.
Modeling careers, they start very young and are very competitive. Often with parental encouragement. My cousin was going away by herself for modeling shoots when she was 15 and quit before she was 17 because of all the weird shit she was exposed to. This was in the late 70s, and it was every bit as shady as it is now, maybe more.
I bet that Epstein and Maxwell coached these kids on what to tell their parents, and the parents rarely, if ever, checked them out. Epstein’s friends were rich and famous people, which gave him a certain amount of credibility. People trusted him for some reason, even though there was really no reason to. His private island was a scam, and parents don’t like to admit when they’ve been scammed, especially by someone that rich and that famous.
Don’t forget about runaways, either.
Epstein is the guy who was successful. For every Epstein, there are a hundred thousand guys who dreamed up a scam like this, but didn’t have the money or charm for anything but a dirty D&D version of it. A few thousand are your prison “special populations.”
It’s like acting. How many people become stars? how many people make a living at being “that guy!” but never get a star on the walk of fame? how many people go to New York or Hollywood for a few years, and take acting lessons, but end up in some other profession? with maybe 2 credits on IMDb?
It’s the Law of Very Large Numbers at work.
This was how Roman Polanski was able to get a 13-year-old girl into his hot tub. She’d also engaged in consensual anal sex (per her words; technically, it’s not consensual when you’re 13) and people just don’t do things like that at that age unless things were, to say the least, not good.
Don’t forget about the Michael Jackson thing, whatever that was.
MaruLoco seemed like a legitimate job. Owned by a rich guy, Florida and all…
That place was the Minnow Trap
The documents in question show how a law enforcement officer in 2020 told grand jurors about an interview with a woman who said she was abused by Epstein as a minor. She said her initial visits to Epstein’s home, during which she was not abused, were “strange”.
But, “Maxwell normalized it for her,” as the office put it. “She was like a cool, older sister and made comments like, ‘This is what grownups do.’” The woman said that she saw Maxwell topless by Epstein’s pool. “She was a little taken back, but Maxwell just acted normal,” the officer recounted.
When Epstein’s sexual abuse started, the woman had said, sometimes other women were present – including Maxwell. “They would generally start with one of the girls massaging Epstein … usually massaging his feet,” the agent said of this woman’s account. “Maxwell was kind of teasing the other girls. She’d grab the girl’s breasts, and she would direct the girls on what to do.”