Epsteingate and the dirty old men preying on young girls — how language helps them get away with abuse

Daily Maverick

27-07-2025

'It was known generally that those incidents happened on the island, and nothing was done about it,' she said. 'It was shoved under the carpet. What good would it have done for me if I had reported it? I knew nothing would have been done about it, because of previous experience on the island. It was an act that everybody on the island knew was happening, and nobody wanted to talk about it and say it was wrong and deal with it.' (New Zealand Herald, 5 October 2004)
At the first reading, the above quote might appear to be related to notorious child abuser and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's secrets from the grave about the doings of powerful old men and their penchant for underage girls.
But the 2004 New Zealand publication date reveals it is about another sensational case of child rape by older, powerful men on the tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific Ocean.
Culture as excuse
In 1790, mutineers on the HMS Bounty found themselves on the island among the Polynesian inhabitants. Over the years a community developed, shaped by the control and power of men over women.
Blending their own law with some Polynesian cultural beliefs, the men began to justify and normalise rape and domination over women. But the original cultural mores concerned relationships between adolescents, not exploitation by adult men.
A 1999 investigation by Gail Cox, a UK police official (the island is a 'British Overseas Territory'), exposed endemic, intergenerational child abuse and rape by the men of the community.
Cox interviewed women about sexual abuse involving children as young as five. This led to criminal charges, and in 2004 a British court, sitting on Pitcairn, found six men guilty of sexual offences against underage girls that occurred between 1964 and 1999.
The defendants had all argued that the island's culture was influenced by its part-Polynesian roots and that girls had matured earlier and therefore had 'tempted' the men.
Predators everywhere
Epstein, US President Donald Trump's good friend of more than 15 years, had his private island playboy paradise, Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands.
His jet, known as the Lolita Express by those in the know, transported many of the world's richest and most powerful men to the island, some innocently, but others to have sex with underage girls. This went on for years.
These girls were procured by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's apparent 'girlfriend' and daughter of newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell. When the girls and women first spoke out, they were threatened, silenced, humiliated and marginalised.
Prince Andrew eventually settled a case with Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of abusing her at Epstein's New York apartment. Bringing Buckingham Palace into disrepute, Randy Andy was stripped of his stripes and medals.
It took a Miami Herald journalist, Julie K Brown, a woman, to give voice to Giuffre (who died by suicide earlier this year), Michelle Licata, Courtney Wild and Jena-Lisa Jones – all survivors of Epstein's abuse.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to one charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18 and signed a plea deal. He was arrested again on sex trafficking charges in 2019, but was found dead in his cell soon afterwards.
Language is a weapon
Men like these believe they can get away with the abuse of children and women because the language we use to describe the crime, even in court matters, feeds into old and dangerous stereotypes.
Keith Tuffin and Melanie Simons of Massey University in New Zealand examined the language used in the Pitcairn case and how this contributed to a lack of accountability.
'Language used in sexual assault trial judgments commonly works to reduce the level of responsibility of the perpetrator; for example, describing him as being under the influence of alcohol or portraying sexual assault as erotic, rather than violent,' noted the authors.
A 2005 study of judicial sentencing in child abuse cases found similar results. Another study analysed the narratives of a convicted rapist and found 'a discourse of ambiguity about the nonconsensual nature of his crimes', which 'suggested the victim was partly to blame, having not been sufficiently clear in her rejection of sex'.
All around us, this instinct to look away when old-men rape plays out. There are millions of women around the world who report cases and are not believed, or are threatened because they have reported the crimes.
As US author Sandra Newman has written, in the early 20th century researchers like Havelock Ellis believed that all male sexuality was violent and predatory, and so it was to be expected that they would behave accordingly.
This suggests preposterously that men are mere victims of their hormones and atavistic impulses, and external factors are always to blame for amoral behaviour. Personal accountability is seldom taken.
How to stop this? Expose the paedophile rings.
Jeffrey Epstein might be dead, but his secrets are not. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.