With a sex trafficking, flesh peddling empire of favours, logistics and the good time to be had by the powerful, the gigantic scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network continues to disturb.  The least savoury digital library on the planet, available through the offices of the US Justice Department as the Epstein Library, is being combed through with its 3.5 million items comprising 180,000 images, 2000 videos, email and text correspondence, not to mention an assortment of miscellaneous material.

The combing process has come to displace the sheer gravity of Epstein’s dehumanising enterprise.  Like a gold mine of ill-repute, slime and crime, researchers, journalists, political hacks and the purely voyeuristic are fossicking for material about the next public figure to be tainted.  Agendas abound.  The central agenda – ruined lives and the despoiled innocence of young women and girls, and their retraumatising with shoddily redacted files – has been eclipsed.  

On February 17, a panel of United Nations experts appointed by the Human Rights Council issued a sharp statement on the Epstein files urging a return to a focus on the victims.  The members include, among others, Reem Absalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, George Katrougalos, independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, and Ana Brian Nougrères, Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy.

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The documents revealed, according to the statement, “disturbing and credible evidence of systematic and large-scale sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation of women and girls”. 

The panel members took note of crimes “committed against the backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption, extreme misogyny, and the commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls from different parts of the world.” 

The panel members took note of crimes “committed against the backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption, extreme misogyny, and the commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls from different parts of the world.” 

A “global criminal enterprise” had “raised terrifying implications of the level of impunity in such crimes.”

The panel further proposed that the severe nature of the crimes required stern reclassification.  “So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity.”  Acts such as sexual slavery, rape, enforced prostitution, trafficking, persecution, torture or murder can fall within such a determination, and if so, would deserve prosecution in international and domestic courts. 

Unfortunately, the Department of Justice shows little interest in pursuing any of those named in the files, let alone conducting genuinely impartial investigations.  (Impartiality is not a strong suit of the Trump administration.)  Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche, in dismissive remarks made early this month, observed that, “There’s a lot of correspondence.  There’s a lot of emails.  There’s a lot of photographs.  But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.” Just because the victims wanted “to be made whole” did not “mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn’t there”.  

The bountiful nature of the Epstein files would suggest no evidence of any sort needs to be created, with the late financier and convicted paedophile most prolific in communicating with various associates on meetings, rendezvous and logistical matters.  And there is that troubling failure to disclose the remaining 3 million files or so that remain sealed.

The panel experts relevantly insist that the allegations were so “egregious in nature” as to require “independent, thorough, and impartial investigation, as well as inquiries to determine how such crimes could have taken place for so long.” 

The panel experts relevantly insist that the allegations were so “egregious in nature” as to require “independent, thorough, and impartial investigation, as well as inquiries to determine how such crimes could have taken place for so long.” 

States were under an obligation to prevent, investigate and punish instances of violence against women and girls, including inflicted by private perpetrators.

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Strong words were also reserved for the slipshod process of disclosure that left unredacted the identities and details of a multitude of victims while sparing the powerful, participating members of Club Epstein.  “The grave errors in the release process underscore the urgent need for victim-centered standard operating procedures for disclosure and redaction, so that no victim suffers further harm.”  That ship had sailed well before, given the utter lack of interest shown by the DOJ in involving victims in the process.  Six survivors in a September 2025 interview confirmed that fact.

In the view of the panel, failing “to safeguard [the victims’] privacy puts them at risk of retaliation and stigma.  The reluctance to fully disclose information or broaden investigations, has left many survivors feeling retraumatised and subjected to what they describe as ‘institutional gaslighting’.”

To date, promised investigations, such as those into former UK ambassador to Washington Lord Peter Mandelson, focus less on the victims than commercially and politically sensitive information he allegedly disclosed to Epstein when occupying public office.  The standard formula used by those trapped in the web has been the fool’s defence, the implausible bliss of ignorance.  There have been resignations aplenty, and cataracts of apology.

The UN panel had harsh words for such woeful responses, insisting on a few courses of action.  Lift the statute of limitations preventing the prosecution for grave crimes linked to the Epstein enterprise.  Provide full remedies and reparations for the victims.  Government failures to “effectively investigate, and prosecute those responsible for these crimes, including by complicity or acquiescence, where jurisdiction exists, risks undermining legal frameworks aimed at preventing and responding to violence against women and girls.”

The Trump era of crude, vulgar might as the sole indicator of worth does not augur well for human rights advocates demanding investigations and prosecutions into the victims of Epstein’s predation.  Even before President Donald Trump got the keys to the White House, there was impunity, complicity and permissiveness in the depravities of Club Epstein, a state of affairs tolerated, even encouraged by a ruling class bankrupted and soiled.  If you were not in it, as the reprehensible socialite Lady Victoria Hervey scorned, you were a “loser”.

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