Jeffery Epstein Was A Symptom of a Public Health Problem

The sexual abuse of children is rampant, at "public health" level

I wish I didn't have to write this article.

Jeffrey Epstein—noted convicted child-sex-trafficker— made a lot of money.

Treasury’s Epstein file details 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion flowing in and out of just ONE of Epstein’s bank accounts.

He didn't make a lot of money because people didn't want to buy what he was selling. He made a tremendous amount of money selling children to wealthy people for the purpose of predation.

The very unsettling fact of the matter is that the sexual abuse of children is widespread. It’s common. Among the more unsettling facts? Most of the people who commit child sexual abuse are not pedophiles. You heard that right. How large is the scale of this problem, Epstein or no Epstein? One in five girls will be a victim of child sexual abuse.¹ One in twenty boys, too².

That's more common than heart disease in New York State:

An estimated 17.7% of New Yorkers aged 65 and older reported having some type of CVD in 2021.

The rate of pedophilia in the population is about 4%³. To put this in context, here is the list of the most popular names of kids in 2022:

That list of baby names was also a way to introduce the impact of the pedophiles—and others—who offend.

I’m using baby name frequencies to make an unsettling point about the scale of this problem: if we include 100% of all girls’ names on the top 20 list from 2022, we only hit just over 10% of girls. 100% of the top 20 named girls would have to be abused, along with another 10% of all girls, to get to the prevalence of CSA in girls in the US.

It’s everyone you've ever met named:

And they each get a plus one. That is a problem at a scale that can, and should, make you want to claw your eyes out. To include boys abused, the numbers add up to the equivalent of every:

• Noah

• Oliver

• James

• Elijah

• William

• Henry

• Lucas

Every boy with those names born this past year? Together, they make up approximately 4.8893% of the population, close to 1/20th (5%).

Only 50% of the CSA is perpetrated by pedophiles:

The other 50% of individuals that have abused children are those who do so without a sexual attraction to children⁴

Thus, even if we could, by magic, round up all pedophiles? It’s only half of the people sexually abusing children.

For pediatric subspecialists, and I pray, all other humans, not having children abused is the goal.

As a child and adult psychiatrist, the experiences of children who suffer from CSA are said to me, over and over again. I’m a therapist for the chronically suicidal to the degree that I wrote a book on the topic. This is what people have to talk about. It is nightmarish to listen to, and that is just hearing what happened second-hand. This is not just a one-dead-sex-trafficker problem. It’s an “all of us” problem. The rate of child sexual abuse is “public health” level high—uncommon at best, not rare:

For a moment, consider that as the public hears endlessly about the ghoulish activity of the late Jeffrey Epstein, making billions of dollars selling, say, “13-year-olds” to adults with wealth and privilege, over 20% of all the individuals listening have themselves suffered abuse at the hands of adults when they were kids. Or, worse yet, some percentage of children are being sexually abused right now, and get to hear with nothing but clarity, every time the news is on, that there have been no consequences for thousands of people who paid to do so, despite the DOJ having the evidence that this occurred…maybe.

These kids and now-adults are more likely to be suffering now, by the way, from a range of psychiatric symptoms:

A population-based sample of 1411 adult female twins (Kendler et al., 2000) found that any CSA was associated with major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and substance dependence. This association was explained by more severe forms of CSA and not by background familial factors or parental psychopathology. In another population based sample of men and women aged 15–64 years, MacMillan et al. (2001) found the risk of lifetime risk of psychiatric disorders was increased by a history of CSA for both men and women. In women there was a significant relationship between sexual abuse and all disorders, while in men the only significant association was between sexual abuse and alcohol abuse/dependence (MacMillan et al., 2001). Dinwiddie et al. (2000) demonstrated strong associations with depression and suicidal ideation in sexually abused men and women, but higher rates of conduct disorder and alcohol dependence in males and of social phobia in females.⁵

This common experience of being abused causes suffering throughout life. PTSD, I will note, is particularly common across studies:

Each of the above studies examining PTSD among children who were sexually abused found evidence of a high rate of PTSD in their samples, three out of four studies finding 42 to 50% prevalence rates.⁶

And I’m willing to bet it causes more suffering to endlessly hear, on the news, that hundreds to thousands of adult humans who paid-to-perpetrate are casually strolling around, scott-free. It can’t escape the notice of the many, many survivors that there is no such thing as justice. Even when the “lead perp” is dead. These survivors can’t help but be learn the lesson— they never mattered. Not when compared to the need to protect the customers of the devil himself. A Foul-mouthed, hacked, and otherwise offensive Elmo tweet over on X sums it up succinctly:

Elmo’s account was hacked and went on a real tear recently. The authors of this newsletter don’t endorse what Elmo said.

Why are we talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

Because child sexual abuse is a plague on the house of humanity, and even a semblance of justice for the victims won’t undo that. It would, however, be a nice start.

1. Finkelhor D., Turner H., Ormrod R., Hamby S. L. (2009). Violence, abuse, and crime exposure in a national sample of children and youth. Pediatrics 124, 1411–1423. 10.1542/peds.2009-0467 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

2. Crimes N. C. F. V. O. (2012). Child, Youth, and Teen Victimization. Washington, DC: National Center for Victims of Crime; Available at: http://www.victimsofcrime.org/library/crime-information-and-statistics/child-youth-and-teen-victimization[Google Scholar]

3. Tenbergen, G., Wittfoth, M., Frieling, H., Ponseti, J., Walter, M., Walter, H., Beier, K. M., Schiffer, B., & C. Kruger, T. H. (2015). The Neurobiology and Psychology of Pedophilia: Recent Advances and Challenges. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00344

4. Beier K. M. (1998). Differential typology and prognosis for dissexual behavior – a follow-up study of previously expert-appraised child molesters. Int. J. Legal Med. 111, 133–141

5. Walker, J. L., Carey, P. D., Mohr, N., Stein, D. J., & Seedat, S. (2004). Gender differences in the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse and in the development of pediatric PTSD. Archives of Women’s Mental Health, 7(2), 111-121.

6. Rowan, A. B., & Foy, D. W. (1993). Post-traumatic stress disorder in child sexual abuse survivors: A literature review. Journal of Traumatic stress, 6(1), 3-20.