Abusers are Alike: The Abuse Crisis and the Epstein Files

I’m afraid we need to talk about the Epstein Files again.

As you no doubt know, President Trump has been teasing his personality cult with the release of the Epstein Files for as long as anybody can remember. That was one of the reasons he got into office.

Many of Trump’s followers are not actually conservatives, but conspiracists. They don’t care about the more run-of-the-mill Republican issues. They are staunch believers in elaborate conspiracy theories like Q Anon, which claim that a cabal of rich and powerful sexual abusers are trafficking children and only Trump can stop them. Jeffrey Epstein was a real life monstrous sexual abuser who died under suspicious circumstances in jail– the official account is that he died from suicide, but many claim he was murdered to shut him up because his testimony would incriminate so many powerful people. The MAGA base fervently believed Trump would keep his promise and show them all the evidence that Epstein had been allegedly killed to cover up, even though there was plenty of very public evidence that Trump had been Epstein’s pal. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of the FBI Kash Patel teased and announced that the files about Epstein’s crimes and his cause of death were were going to be released to the public any second now. Trump’s MAGA base were excited for him to release the Epstein Files, because they were just certain that they’d find all kinds of Democratic politicians implicated in atrocities.  Now, suddenly, just a couple of weeks ago, Trump’s Department of Justice announced that there are no Epstein Files and there’s no conspiracy here.

The MAGA movement was pissed. They felt cheated. They started clamoring to get a look at the Epstein Files. The Trump Administration, including Trump himself, got testier and testier about the Epstein Files and demanded their erstwhile supporters calm down. Many have, but a lot are still demanding the information. And then that commie pinko Liberal rag, Rupert Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal, released a damning story about Trump’s own relationship with Epstein, and Trump panicked and sued them– a potentially foolish move, because it means we just might get Discovery before long. And then the slowpoke New York Times got on the band wagon with their own story about Trump and Epstein’s dalliances with young women.   And just today, Trump’s perpetual Yes Man, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, shut down the House of Representatives and set everyone home until September, so that he wouldn’t have to do anything about the Epstein Files. Lord knows what will happen next.

Now, if you’re not very into conspiracy theories, you might be scratching your head about this mess. Everybody already knew Trump was a friend of Epstein’s, didn’t they? Didn’t everybody know that Trump was at minimum a severe womanizer, and almost certainly a sexual abuser? Didn’t they watch a certain defamation trial involving a rape last year? Why are they so surprised?

That’s easy. I can explain the whole phenomenon. I’m Catholic.

In fact, I’m a  cradle Catholic who lives in Steubenville. I’ve been watching people’s reaction to horrific sex abuse scandals involving leaders they hold dear and believe are trying to protect them, for a very long time now. It’s shameful, sordid, and disgusting, but I can tell you what’s going on. It always follows the same playbook:

1.  There exists a horrific crime, so awful you can hardly stand to think about it. Something nearly everyone agrees is wrong. The sexual abuse of children and teenagers, for example. That’s hideous. No one would come out and say that that atrocity is a good thing. Everyone knows it sometimes happens and everyone wishes it didn’t.

2. There exist abusers who are so sociopathic and awful that they’d commit that horrific crime if they got a chance.  Those dangerous antisocial people have always comprised a small percentage of the human population. Those abusers seek positions of power, because abusers always do: fish swim, birds fly, abusers seek power. In every community, be it a school, a political movement, a religious movement or anything else, abusive people are going to try to scramble to the top and be leaders because then they’ll be able to abuse with impunity. Not all leaders are abusive, but abusive people do seek to be leaders because that will help them abuse. The more powerful the position, the more convenient it is for the abuser. A Catholic priest, an Evangelical pastor, a CEO, a reality TV star, a president of the United States, these are all kinds of leader. All of them are desirable positions for an abuser to have.  So they try and have them. And, because they don’t have a functioning conscience, they’re better than average at clawing their way into leadership. And the rest of the human population, people who DO have consciences, have a hard time believing they’d be so evil, so they trust when they shouldn’t.

3. Some of those abusers are charismatic and talented enough, or sneaky and unscrupulous enough, or maybe just rich enough, that they do end up in the position of great power with nobody to keep them in check. Now that they’re in power, they can do the terrible things that they want to do as long as they don’t get caught. So they employ a standard con artist technique. The abusers turn to their audience and rail against the abusive thing that you can hardly stand to think about, that they themselves are doing. They pontificate about how evil abusers are. They assure you that they’re going to get to the bottom of the abuse and stop the abusers. They’re not like other powerful people. They’re your man on the inside. They’re on a mission from God. God spared them for just such a moment. God has anointed them to stop the abusers. The abusers, conveniently enough, are always somebody the group being led just happens to hate. The leader is an Evangelical pastor, who claims the abusers are those non-Bible believin’ Catholics or those Jews or those secular people. The leader is a Catholic priest, who claims the abusers are those good-for-nothin’ LGB and especially T people. The leader heads a white middle class parish, so the abusers are Black people, Mexicans and Arabs. The leader is a Republican, so the abuser is the sketchy pant-suited Democrat lady and her friend the Black gentleman with the funny name.

4. The congregation, I mean any kind of congregation of followers, run with that story because it entices them with the prospect of stopping abuse, while also hurting someone they want to hurt. They fill in the blanks themselves. The leader just has to smile and egg them on. We get conspiracy theories. Protestants tell stories about gullible Catholic girls joining convents of nuns where they’re trafficked to the wicked popish priests and abused in orgies. Catholic commentators claim that the Godless Communist Russians infiltrated the Catholic Church by sending gay men to Catholic seminaries all of the world just before the Second Vatican Council. White ladies get on Tiktok and rant about the sketchy Mexican they just saw sneaking around the Walmart parking lot with a windowless van. Traditionalists blame those goofy Charismatic Catholics. Charismatics blame rock music and Dungeons and Dragons. Republicans claim that Hillary Clinton is drinking the blood of children in a pizzeria.

5. Evidence comes out that the leader him or herself has been an abuser all along. And the responses tend to be chaotic and diverse. Some people believe it right away, their whole worldview shatters, and they stop buying into the conspiracy theories and become rational. Those are pretty rare, though. Many others decide that their worldview was correct, and work this new betrayal into the narrative of the conspiracy: I’ll never forget when a local priest was indicted for abusing women, and a commentator insisted it was because he was “another homosexual priest.” Some are just angry and confused and insist there’s some mistake. And still others double down. They claim it’s all a new conspiracy to frame the Dear Leader, so that the Catholics or the Jews or the immigrants or the Democrats can get away with it. Or, of course, they’ll claim there’s nothing to see here. How dare you spread calumny and detraction about a priest of God? It didn’t happen and anyway she asked for it. He committed an “indiscretion” and needs to go to confession, but only an alarmist would call it a rape. Actually, it’s called ephebophilia and we need to lower the age of consent.

We’re on Step Five right now.

What’s Step Six?

I don’t know. It’s a mixed bag.

Sometimes, in the case of the Catholic Church, the abuser ends up going to jail or at least getting laicized, or the religious order whisks him away to a monastery in Rome. And then the congregation is left confused and hurt, and things change or they don’t. Some still believe the abuser and dedicate themselves to making the victims as miserable as they can. Some are so disgusted they leave the Church, and other people claim it was because they lacked faith. But often enough, nothing happens. The people get a new pastor and go on as they had before.

Similar patterns happen in political movements of all kinds.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the United States in September, or next January or after the midterms. I don’t even want to think about 2028. I feel like I’m swimming in a septic tank as it is, and I assume it’s just going to get worse.

My heart goes out to the people that Epstein and his cronies abused, and to their families. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have the worst thing that ever happened to you hijacked to swing a presidential election.

Let’s all try to make it a better world.