The female (and male that we have not read about) survivors of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell human trafficking scandal want justice. Yet, recently on Linkedin, Nicole Huff, LCSW, posted a list of appropriate terms that should be used in court, instead of the terms perceived to be used shown below. The terms in italics are presumably what will be seen in court and in the media and what is next to these terms are the appropriate terms.

Someone I know has spent her entire life defending herself in front of her family and family friends for being an absent parent after divorcing due to domestic violence and a drug addict whom she was married to. The court took her child, since he had disappeared and these family/friends had continued to blame her for “giving the child away.” She finally had a revelation about this and realized, “Why am I blaming and defending myself, when he was the batterer and drug addict and the reason the court decided I wasn’t financially capable of raising my child?”

Many of my female clients (and a few males) who are the victims of similar divorce scandals find that they are being blamed and are having to defend themselves in courts as well. Many therapists repeat that they are hearing this same thing as well.

I know a guy who has never wanted a child and has paid for one abortion. I asked him why he never had a vasectomy. He skipped around this question by stating that if only a woman had set him straight, he might have had a child. Recently, I was in a small town picking up dinner and I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that read, “Vasectomies Prevent Abortions.” I wanted to run up and kiss the guy on the cheek. He was a 20-something guy who I think felt he had some wise words for today’s society. I’d bet he came from a single parent.

Women hold the “strings” as most of our society believes. We should “know better,” we are the ones who “carry the child,” or “have control over our body,” and therefore should be psychologically intelligent enough to understand when someone is playing us.

But, you know what, we aren’t all psychotherapists and I for one, can tell you that even I, as a therapist, was blindsided by a guy. Certainly a young adolescent, a young adult, or even an older adult, who is vulnerable, impressionable, has never been in psychotherapy or who has but the therapist didn’t know how to work with trauma survivors – so many factors here. I spent my whole adult life – until grad school, not knowing I had PTSD and this was after years of therapy. Therapists back then, weren’t confrontive and didn’t discuss your diagnosis with you. It was more like “So, how does that make you feel?” and with me, like many people, needing to have someone be more blunt and confrontive, I am too literal to talk about feelings. Most of us, in trauma, need a little more coaching, more strategy, to help us understand and say out loud what happened.

But not everyone is a trauma survivor. According to research which Sandra L. Brown, M.A., was a part of with a national university, only 37% (I think this is correct) were “learned helplessness,” or faced trauma on some level in their life, when they met up with the narcissist.

In Florida which is, I believe where the grooming of kids started with the Epstein/Maxwell perpetrators, these were kids. They were just starting out in life. Whatever method Ghislaine used to coerce them into meeting Jeffrey, for their “initiation,” I will call it, they may not have had previous trauma at all. I haven’t read reports on these kids (now adults), and I am not sure if anything has been released thus far other than his redacted report (which I haven’t tried to read).

In California, when I worked with CPS, the kids being groomed by the pimps on the street were all trauma victims as they lived in group homes and had been removed from their parent (s). 99% of their court reports said “father’s whereabouts unknown.” About 90+% had a secondary issue of the parent (s) using substances. Sometimes these kids were “born addicted.” One group home was an emergency home and was known to have pimps parked outside the door, a trail of them, waiting on the girls to walk out the door. Whenever I tried bringing this up, I was ignored as they didn’t focus on making this an issue. Their responsibility was to find a place for the kid, not to become activists on crime. We took workshops on the topic but it was never clearly dealt with. And the workshops were to give us continuing education and make us more aware. After that, we were back to work and just focus on writing the report.

I also did a ride-along with the police department, one night, hunting down prostitutes you might say. Yes, we were focused on the ladies, not the pimps. The policeman told me it was more difficult to catch the pimps. The news would report “sting” operations, which I began to note were simply media lies to shut people up about the topic. Oh, they would capture many women and lock them up (only the public didn’t know they were released a day or two later). People see these crimes and assume it means the problem is solved, yet the prostitutes were not the problem. The children sexually abused by Epstein/Maxell were not the problem, it was the pimp and the “Johns.” Women in domestic violence relationships and narcissistic situations (or any personality disorder for that matter) and this can be the same, are not the problem. Women who have unplanned pregnancies are only 50% of the problem. Remember, I noted that 99% of the court reports at the CPS office I worked at, “father’s whereabouts were unknown.”

If the father’s whereabouts had been known and if the father was paying child support and taking time to visit with his child, would the numbers in CPS be as high? I think not. Finances and needing a break once in awhile, are the biggest barriers to being a single parent. Children need the love and support of two parents.

The perpetrator is the problem. They are the ills of our society. Sure, we all have to take responsibility for the relationships we get involved in. No doubt about it. This is something for us to deal with in psychotherapy, so we can learn to be more mindful of these men (and sometimes women) in the first place. The perpetrator is to blame for their actions. If they were not playing games, planning to harm, focused on the outcome of meeting the woman/girl and what they planned to do with them, if they had any values, ethical obligations, integrity, there would be no one to be concerned about. This isn’t going to happen. Mental illness is genetic, mental health issues may or may not be, unplanned pregnancies will not end and society will continue to judge, evaluate and place blame on the woman.

Ghislaine Maxwell along with the scores of other women who groom girls for pimps (it is common for women to bring them in), is a different can of worms. While I am not trying to empathize with her, I do know when the “women” are young girls on the street, they are doing this for their own safety and protection. I think Ghislaine was in it for the money and because she has no ethics or values. Perhaps she has a story as well, but I don’t think she was a victim of Epstein. Money makes people very very greedy and relentless.

We as a society need to be more focused on the whole picture, not blaming the victim. In some groups of people, the idea of glamourizing the perpetrator, seeing the power they gain can cause them to yearn to be in their shoes. Where I worked in CA, the boys told me it was safer to be a pimp than a drug dealer. They talked about the gains of street work vs. a 9-5. What does this say about society? Where have we gone wrong in educating our people? How does politics demoralize others and keep them in their place? How many other Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s are unknown at this moment?

These are the questions that begs to hold a priority in our society. And, not by angry women either, people who are not grounded or who have a well-thought out plan. All this does is create some type of marketing violence and more blaming. This is a multi-factored issue that therefore requires a cadre of experienced professionals to come up with a solution. A team of psychotherapists, lawyers, and educators (in the least), need to come together, create a plan of action to take to a politician and stand behind them until they make change. I have seen new politicians create change on the local level – if it is something near and dear to their heart. And, I have seen politicians whine about trying to do something and it is the other side’s fault that they haven’t. Intelligence, grounded in a sense of purpose, with the intent to create change in a positive way, this is how we can began to make progress.