Breaking bad silence

Epstein and Dutroux compared

There is much talk these days about the freedom of speech, the freedom to say what you think, and the freedom to stop others saying what they think. As far as I can glean, there is nothing stopping people talking about Jeffrey Epstein. It’s just that some people think that other people have inexplicably stopped talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Which shows that you don’t need to restrict freedom of speech to direct what people will talk about.

On 14 January, Michael D. Sellers posted an article on his channel Deeper Look saying The Epstein Files Went Silent. That Should Worry Us. In it, Michael states categorically “The purpose of this piece is not to speculate about what’s in the unreleased files.” He is very methodical in what he writes, which is why I like to follow him. That means he won’t theorise about things he cannot see plainly in front of his eyes, which is a very laudable approach to forensic evidence.

But just as we must theorise about what exactly is to be found at the centre of the Earth, or on Jupiter, or what the true nature of God is, there are some things whose entire, full truth may never be revealed to us, and that makes theorising about them that bit more fun, because, by their very nature, we will never know whether our theories are right or wrong. At least not until it’s too late to say I told you so. So, on the subject of Jeffrey Epstein, I would hereby like to theorise.

There is widespread suspicion, and no little circumstantial evidence, that people who were closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein were so associated for the purpose of, what a former prince of the realm has called, “inappropriate friends”. I have not heard of Mr Epstein playing the piano like Liberace, or having the repartee of Truman Capote, or spouting the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was a two-bit parvenu who happened to snatch onto the coat-tails of a rising investment star, for whatever reason that indeed occurred. His coterie of associates from near and far is so improbable for a man of his standing (high school teacher) that, while in no way denigrating high school teachers, it does raise serious doubts as to how (even high school teachers would avow) he inveigled his way into owning a Caribbean island and a private air arm. Nothing, but nothing, can explain the wealth that he acquired, as were it manna from heaven. Nor the social circles which he frequented with such apparent ease and aplomb. We might well care to ask those associates who have been outed, like Mandelson, Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump, Clinton and the rest: what exactly was the subject of their conversation? I fear the responses would be of the style I cannot exactly recall … just like Lady Bracknell who can’t remember her own deceased brother-in-law’s name:

I cannot at the present moment recall what the General’s Christian name was. But I have no doubt he had one. He was eccentric, I admit. But only in later years. And that was the result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other things of that kind.

Well, eccentricity is not quite the order of the day at this juncture, but lapses in memory can be manifold when an inspector of police comes a-calling.

Following the conviction of Wayne Couzens in London, the police officer who abducted, raped and murdered office worker Sarah Everard, at whose public memorial service Metropolitan police officers waded in with batons raised to arrest attendees, an investigation was commenced into the question of why fewer than one per cent of reported (not to mention unreported) rapes in the United Kingdom result in a conviction. Rape is a capital crime against the person. A conviction rate of one per cent is not an accident: it is policy. It is policy that falls within a strange pattern of statutory enactment: if you want to do something, prohibit it.

What prohibition does is create not two strata, such as one has with a question of morals (the morally wholesome and the morally repugnant, as would be the case with, say, believing in God (the two judgments being reciprocal for each such group)), but rather it creates three strata: the law-abiding, the criminal, and the criminally immune.

The law-abiding would not engage in the prohibited act even if it were not prohibited. The criminal expose themselves to censure through the justice system: they pay for their peccadilloes, unless they have a fast get-away car. The criminally immune, on the third hand, engage in the act and need never fear prosecution. Because they install a hermetic barrier that ensures the capture and conviction of enough of the criminal strata to convince the law-abiding that the law—which is often ushered in in a flurry of press attention—actually works. The prohibited acts are indeed punished, and the newspapers see to it that the public is made aware of that fact. And, that being so, there is a pressure release on the social valve that demands a clamp-down on such behaviour. In short, those who are beyond the hermetic seal are rendered immune from censure. One sees this time and again in, say, privatised utilities or financial regulators: a scoundrel dumping a container-load of refuse in a country lane will be pursued with the law’s every resource, because of the illegality and anti-social nature of such an act of dumping; quite right too. But financial markets miscreants who are fined, pay at a level that constitutes a cost of doing business, rather than true penitence. The executives of water companies that dump untreated sewage into rivers are rewarded, with munificent bonuses. They are above the hermetic seal of answerability, even when their acts are publicly known.

Not all hermetically sealed-off acts are publicly known, however, because if they were, the outcry would be heard from here to … Jupiter. The general public will only be outraged about sewage in rivers when they go to swim in a river, or if the river that flows past their homes starts to stink: they are that bit more concerned about the river (the victim, if you like) than the culprit.

But if a paedophile abuses a child, even a child that people do not know, they will be incandescent about the act, and will seek punishment of the act, cost what it may. Their first thought will lie with recrimination against the culprit; only secondarily will their concerns go out to the child.

If it needs saying at all, paedophilia is no ordinary crime, because, like rape, it is not impelled by profit or gain (which is a frequent incentive even for murder), but by power. It is an exercise of power over the child, over the child’s parents or guardians, over the child’s society, over the law, over justice, over every shred of decency that can be torn to shreds. When Amon Göth addressed prisoners in his concentration camp in Crakow in the Second World War, he announced himself to them as their god. It was a play on words, but he relished it (god in German is Gott, which sounds similar to Göth). It is the sense of being a god—the depravity of that perversion—that inspires the act of paedophilia. Megalomania, which I talked about here, is a reaction to a sense of vulnerability, even if people think about it as being a thirst for power. Paedophilia, on the other hand, while driven by sexual lust, is fuelled by a thirst for power, and in particular power that defies the censure of depravity.

The case of Jeffrey Epstein knows a parallel in Belgium, which is why I can lay claim to some previous knowledge about such things. I have studied the case of Marc Dutroux, which rocked Belgian society to the core in 1996.

Dutroux procured children, through abduction. So, he was like the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, in more ways than one: the Child Catcher took the captured children to the dark, dank subterranean caves below the Baron’s castle. But as for what happened to them after that, he was unaware. His job was then done. The Dutroux affair started to unravel when two little girls in particular disappeared. Their names were Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo. For weeks, posters went up on trees and lamp posts, and the newspapers were full of the frantic search for Julie et Mélissa. Even King Albert publicly voiced his concern that he would not rest until the culprit had been found and punished.

Image: left, Julie Lejeune; right, Mélissa Russo. These images were impressed into the memory of every Belgian in 1996. With some, they remain there to this day.

The girls had been locked in a cellar in a house in Wallonia, and had been starved to death. They were abused. Their cries went unheeded by police, even when the official accompanying the police on a search of Dutroux’s property reasoned Can you not hear screaming? The Dutroux affair would eventually result in a thorough shake-up of policing in Belgium. I have known in my lifetime three public outcries of rage and anger at evil such as this: the Moors murders near Manchester in 1966, when I was but 5 years old; the Yorkshire Ripper in the late 70s, when I was 18; and the Dutroux Affair in 1996, just after I came to live in Belgium as an adult. The Moors murders were committed by a deranged couple (Ian Brady and Myra Hindley); the Yorkshire Ripper was a sole actor (Peter Sutcliffe); but the Dutroux Affair involved far more individuals than just Marc Dutroux.

The children whom Dutroux abducted were abused (and some were even murdered) at sex parties with rich toffs, which were filmed, and then blackmail kicked in. The scheme worked because the clients reached into the very highest of echelons. But who they were is shrouded in mystery because Dutroux took the fall for them. He’s now in Nivelles Prison, for the rest of his born days. Dutroux owned ten properties in the Charleroi area of Belgium, but was drawing large monthly amounts of welfare benefits. Well, locations were needed for these parties, weren’t they? When Dutroux was arrested for the second time (he’d already been in prison for similar offences, can you believe it) twenty witnesses came forward with testimony regarding the man. By the time of his trial, all twenty had died in mysterious circumstances—every last one. The chief prosecutor, who was digging into who the real criminals were, was replaced on accusations of bias. When we consider paedophilia as an exercise of power, the limits of that power are often beyond our imagination.

So, why isn’t Epstein now still alive and also taking the fall? Well, I think it’s because his operation was different: because he didn’t just procure the kids, he procured the clients as well: I don’t want to insinuate anything into Ian Fleming’s story, but Epstein played the parts of both the Child Catcher and the Baron. And that was not wise. It was knowledge too far. He had to go. Dutroux never knew who the clients were, so that’s why he’s still alive. If you’re planning to set up a paedophile ring, bear this in mind: you need a puffer state between the big bad world you’re creating and the big bad world outside. Epstein was too porous: he wasn’t a bulkhead, but a bridge. And, more to the point, he still is a bridge, because of the files.

Remember this: if you want to do something, prohibit it. There is perhaps an argument that prohibiting homosexuality, such as it’s prohibited in much of Africa, is therefore a means to be able to do it. Homosexuality (as a crime) has a parallel with paedophilia, in that, being prohibited, those who commit either crime are susceptible to blackmail. The decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales was aimed at neutralising how susceptible homosexuals were to blackmail (many of whom were in the echelons of power—that’s how the moves to decriminalise even got made). When Alan Turing, the code breaker and mathematician, candidly admitted his homosexuality to a police officer whilst reporting a theft at his home in 1952, he ended up being prosecuted, and that was a serious shock to homosexuals in England and Wales and a cause for delight to blackmailers, who got confirmation of how cogent a threat of blackmail then was. Till then, homosexuality had been pretty much tolerated (especially during the dark nights of the wartime), without attracting much legal attention, even if there was a curling of the lip in some social circles (my maiden aunt knew a group of men in the Conservative Club of which she was a member, and once remarked to me, “Dreadfully nice fellows, but never a mention of any girlfriends.”)

There is nowadays widespread acceptance of homosexuality, although the rhetoric is still virulent in some parts, like Russia, Africa, and now parts of the US: the moves to marginalise homosexuals today do raise the question as to whether the ultimate motive could in fact be that it re-opens the way to blackmail.

On the other hand the invective against paedophiles is solid: the opportunities for blackmail are far less, because a homosexual will not kill you for blackmailing him, but a criminally immunised paedophile will, because the social penalties for being one are that much more drastic. So, whereas homosexuals were blackmailed in the past by those who came to know of their predilections, the blackmailer in a paedophile scenario is far more likely to be the paedophile: ‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly. Homosexuality is an act done at home, in the disco, by the docks, in alleyways, and on parking lots. Paedophilia at this scale is an act done in organised locations, accompanied by guns, absolute control and a total lack of scruples. Not every gay man has sex in public; not every paedophile owns an exclusive island paradise.

Trump got all hot under the collar about Epstein. So, he signed an act of Congress into law. That has gotten him off the hook, but only as long as he’s not in the Epstein files. But, if he is, that causes a problem for him: why would he not just prohibit the release of the files? Well, that prevents them being released, but it doesn’t make them go away. So, he chooses openness—release them! He then tells the Justice Ministry to sit on the files and to not comply with the very act he has just passed. That builds a hermetic seal which shifts him from the stratum of the criminal (just supposing) into the stratum of the criminally immune. That way the public is satisfied that he is cooperating, and they leave the statutory processes (which are fundamentally broken in the US right now in any case) to take their natural course. The public has seen redacted documents before, so of course there will be redactions. (See closing arguments for the State of New York in the HBO miniseries The Night Of.)

When Trump threatened sanctions against Venezuela earlier last year, Mr Rubio was tasked with honing them into shape. He never did. The whole point was to threaten Venezuela with the sanctions, but imposing them was never a priority, nor even the point from the outset: the priority was to show the world that the US had fired a shot in front of Venezuela’s bows, thus forming a purported justification for abducting Señor Maduro: in that case, if you want to do something, sanction it.

Now, I recognise that this is conjecture for the most part. You can read about Dutroux yourself here. There is, however, one telling aspect of the man that some find curious: he isn’t a paedophile. He committed paedophile acts, but the general conclusion is that he engaged in them only as a form of advertising—as an actor: they were filmed so that the films could be used as an inducement to the real clients, the aim being blackmail, but at a far more intense level than simply tipping off the cops. Dutroux’s interest lay in money: it’s as simple as that. He did what he did, and what he is being punished for now, for the cash, because he had nothing. His procurement work paid handsomely, and now he is repaying his debt, to cover for the unpaid debts of the really bad, bad guys. Epstein himself has already paid with his life. But his files are still that bridge.