Afghanistan: Not one more cent!

We have given to the Afghan government and people, over $60 billion.

Not one more cent.  Not a penny.  Not a farthling. Not a Half-Penny.  Not ... anything.

Hopeless Afghan struggle to save boy sex slaves

Anuj CHOPRA

19 December 2016

Quivering with quiet rage, Shirin holds a photo of his teenage brother-in-law, who now lives as the plaything of policemen, just one victim of a hidden epidemic of kidnappings of young boys for institutionalised sexual slavery in Afghanistan.

Shirin is among 13 families AFP traced and interviewed across three Afghan provinces who said their children were taken for the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi", or paedophilic exploitation, in Western-backed security forces.

Their testimonies shine a rare spotlight on the anguished, solitary struggles to free sons, nephews and cousins from a tradition of culturally-sanctioned enslavement and rape.

Shirin recalled how his 13-year-old brother-in-law screamed and writhed as he was taken from his home earlier this year by a police commander in southern Helmand.

"When I begged for his release, his men pointed their guns and said: 'Do you want your family to die? Forget your boy'," Shirin told AFP in Lashkar Gah.

"Our boys are openly abducted for bacha bazi. Where should we go for help? The Taliban?"

The heart-wrenching stories, mostly from Helmand but also from neighbouring Uruzgan and northern Baghlan, were revealed after AFP reported in June how the Taliban are exploiting bacha bazi in police ranks to mount deadly insider attacks.

The report, denied by the insurgents, prompted an Afghan government investigation.

AFP is withholding the names of the victims and the accused police commanders as many of the boys are still being held captive.

- 'Crazed with grief' -

A common theme in the testimonies collected from stricken families was that of helplessness. Their boys were mostly abducted in broad daylight; from their homes, opium farms and playgrounds.

Once taken captive, they can be shuffled among police checkpoints, complicating efforts to trace them.

Sometimes they emerge into the open as policemen flaunt their spoils.

For fathers like Sardarwali, the crushed hope of such an encounter is almost too much to bear.

After months of fruitless searching, he caught a glimpse of his kidnapped son in a crowded marketplace in Helmand's Gereshk district.

The child -- a slight boy who loved nothing better than playing with his siblings -- was dressed in a fine embroidered tunic and wore a bejewelled skull cap.

Sardarwali was desperate to reach out to his son, to hold him -- but did not dare approach the bevy of policemen that surrounded him.

"I watched him disappear into the distance," Sardarwali said.

"His mother is crazed with grief. She cannot stop crying: 'We have lost our son forever.'"

Parents' agony of losing a child to sexual slavery is compounded by concerns that in captivity their boys will become addicted to the opiates some are given to make them submissive.

Worse still, many fear they could be taken to reinforce frontlines, where police are suffering record casualties in their fight against the Taliban.

Or -- as one Helmand family shockingly discovered –- get killed in the crossfire as insurgents over-run the checkpoints where they are held.

Still, some families take grim solace in the knowledge they are not alone. Their villages are full of bacha bazi victims, many discarded when their beards begin to show.

- 'Unconscionable' -

Bacha bazi has seen a chilling resurgence in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where it is not widely perceived as homosexual or un-Islamic behaviour.

Young boys dressed effeminately have an ornamental value in a society where the genders are tightly corralled. Their possession is a mark of social status, power and masculinity.

The practice has spurred a violent culture of one-upmanship within police ranks, as officers jealously compete to snatch the most beautiful boys, said a former top Helmand security official.

"Often the only escape for enslaved bachas is to make a deal with the Taliban: 'Liberate me and I will help you get my abuser's head and weapons'," the official said, referring to insider attacks.

The Afghan government has said it has zero tolerance for child abusers in security ranks.

[Really, so is that why several high ranking members of the previous administration have been directly implicated in this behavior!]

 

But Uruzgan government spokesman Dost Mohammad Nayab acknowledged nearly every provincial checkpoint had a bacha. He fears any move to extricate them could see angry policemen abandoning their posts, paving the way for the Taliban.

"It is difficult to separate policemen from their bachas in this security situation," Nayab said, explaining that police serve as a pivotal first line of defence against insurgents.

Hillary, Bill, and the Paedophile

Now, to be honest, having sex with under age minors doesn't make Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile ... he is much worse.  He has the money to buy the girls, force them, and keep them on his private island for his guests.

Like Bill and Hillary.

It isn't proven, but it is a story and could be verified ... because the SS have to be involved.

Pakistan and Children

And I do not think this is out of the ordinary.  She will die for this crime, but she prevented the girl's father from molesting his daughter.

The tribal court will find her guilty and will probably have her lashed 100 times and then stoned or some other barbaric method.

Pakistani woman suspected of killing, cooking husband

November 25, 2011|By Reza Sayah, CNN

A Pakistani woman is being held on suspicion of killing her husband, cutting him up and trying to cook the pieces, Karachi police said Friday.

Zainab Bibi, 32, was arrested in connection with the murder Tuesday of her husband Ahmad Abbas, police said.

Her 22-year-old nephew, Zaheer Ahmed, is accused of helping Bibi stab Abbas to death and carve his body into small pieces.

Police said she wanted to cook her husband's body parts so she could dispose of them without being caught.

Neighbors raised the alert when they detected a foul odor in the neighborhood, police said.

Pakistan's domestic satellite channel ARY News spoke to Bibi in the police station where she is being held in the southern city of Karachi.

In an interview broadcast late Thursday, she claimed to have killed her husband because he wanted a physical relationship with their daughter -- and said she did not regret her actions.

"I killed my husband before he dared to touch my daughter," she told ARY News.

pakistani

Harm a Child = Die (in prison)

There are very few individuals living, who deserve to die.  Anyone who harms a child deserves to die.  Among the worst a code exists.  This being will not live long among them.



Lantana man gets life in prison for impregnating girl, 9




By WAYNE K. ROUSTAN
Sun Sentinel
Thursday, March 24, 2011



Fede Datilus, 33, was convicted and sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison plus 5 years for impregnating a 9-year-old girl, according to Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe.

The trial evidence showed that Datilus sexually battered and impregnated the victim when the two were living in Lantana. The victim carried the baby to term and delivered the infant when she was 10, prosecutors said.

The victim's father learned of her pregnancy when he took her to a clinic on March 18, 2009. She reluctantly identified Datilus as the man who impregnated her during questioning by investigators and counselors through a Creole translator, according to court records.

She had been in the U.S. for only 2 1/2 years and told a counselor she feared being returned to Haiti if she revealed what happened to her, according to the case file.

Datilus was found guilty of sexual battery on a person less than 12 years of age, punishable by up to life in prison. He also was found guilty of impregnation of a child which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years behind bars, according to McAuliffe.























evil

In the place known as Afghanistan ........

 There is not much that can be said about the article below.  Origin is the BBC from 2010.  It has not changed unless it has worsened.  There is a Frontline documentary on this issue that can be accessed by clicking on this link.  Watching the documentary and thinking back on what is written/stated in this article shows a contrast in the reality or lack of reality many people live with each day in the place called Afghanistan.  There was a time I did support our actions in that place, more than most even.  That time passed quickly when I read and saw crap like this.  They are not worthy of anything but scorn and maybe desolation.  Evil comes to mind.

India: So far and yet so close

The idea that India is a model to be followed, a leader among nations, is simply foolhardy, mimiked by fools and idiots. 

India has far deeper problems than can be explained in a few sentences, but the following is one example of why India will never be a power to follow until they have solved this issue ...  but I suppose all cultures are the same, equal, and worthy.


The following is taken from a much longer article in The Guardian, January 22, 2011.



Shobha was the youngest of seven children and was dedicated aged eight. At 12, she was taken out of school and her first paying "partner" was her 35-year-old brother-in-law. "No one asked my consent, money talks. Girls like me grow up in living fear of reaching puberty." She was determined that her own daughter would escape the same fate. "The devadasi system isn't about religion. Its about economics. We're just traded like a commodity. I know the pains as a serving devadasi, how exploitative this practice is. We are the victims. What happened to me shouldn't happen in another's life. I want to stop this and I decided to fight."


Sometimes several generations from the same family are devadasi, like Lalitha, whose mother and grandmother were dedicated before her. Like Hanamavva, however, Lalitha is determined to stop the practice. "I was shocked to find out I have to practice this system because I have been dedicated. I was determined not to become devadasi. In my village there are 100 devadasi. About 20 are between 12 and 18. I try to persuade all my friends not to get into this evil practice but they are vulnerable. Both the parents and the community are pressuring them."

Devadasi remain common in the poorest towns and villages of provinces of the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2006, the National Legal Service Authority in Bangalore launched an awareness programme for police and judges, and said there were 250,000 "devadasi" girls who had been dedicated to Yellamma and Khandoba temples. But the remoteness of many of the villages, and the continuing rise in demand from organised traffickers who pay well for young girls to fill the brothels of India's vast cities, is thwarting efforts to combat the system.

"The social customs combined with economic pressures have pushed girls into the system. The fact that not one of them is married and most of them have children not only leaves them in a traumatised condition but renders their children stigmatised forever," said an authority spokesman.



and from another Guardian article -



Now 26 and diagnosed with Aids, she has returned to her village, Mudhol in southern India, weak and unable to work. "We are a cursed community. Men use us and throw us away," she says. Applying talcum powder to her daughter's face and tying ribbons to her hair, she says: "I am going to die soon and then who will look after her?" The daughter of a devadasi, Parvatamma plans to dedicate her own daughter to Yellamma, a practice that is now outlawed in India.


[...]

Roopa, now 16, has come to buy bangles at the festival. She was dedicated to the goddess seven years ago and was told that Yellamma would protect her. Her virginity was auctioned in the village, and since then she has supported her family by working as a prostitute out of her home in a village close to Saundatti.


"The first time it was hard," she admits. In fact, her vagina was slashed with a razor blade by the man she was supposed to sleep with the first time. Her future, like that of other devadasis, is uncertain. Once they are around 45, at which point they are no longer considered attractive, devadasis try to eke out a living by becoming jogathis or begging near the temple.

[...]

BL Patil, the founder of Vimochana, an organisation working towards the eradication of the devadasi system, says that although the dedication ceremonies are banned, the practice is still prevalent, as families and priests conduct them in secret. The National Commission for Women estimate that there are 48,358 Devadasis currently in India.


"For certain SC communities [Scheduled Caste – a government classification of lower castes] this has become a way of life, sanctioned by tradition," he says. The priests conduct the ceremonies in their own houses because "it is profitable for them".



All cultures are equal, all are the same, all are worthy.

















 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
india

Afghanistan and Dancing Boys

Foreign contractors hired Afghan 'dancing boys', WikiLeaks cable reveals

Episode fuelled Afghan demands that private security firms be brought much more under government control





Jon Boone guardian.co.uk
Thursday 2 December 2010


A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and "quash" the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.

In a meeting with the assistant US ambassador, a panicked Hanif Atmar, the interior minister at the time of the episode last June, warned that the story would "endanger lives" and was particularly concerned that a video of the incident might be made public.

The episode helped to fuel Afghan demands that contractors and private security companies be brought under much tighter government control. However, the US embassy was legally incapable of honouring a request by Atmar that the US military should assume authority over training centres managed by DynCorp, the US company whose employees were involved in the incident in the northern province of Kunduz.

There is a long tradition of young boys dressing up as girls and dancing for men in Afghanistan, an activity that sometimes crosses the line into child abuse with Afghans keeping boys as possessions.

Although rarely discussed or criticised in Afghanistan, it is conceivable that the involvement of foreigners could have turned into a major public scandal. Atmar himself warned about public anger towards contractors, who he said "do not have many friends" and said they needed far greater oversight.

He also said tighter control was needed over Afghan employees of such companies as well.

"He was convinced that the Kunduz incident, and other events where mentors had obtained drugs, could not have happened without Afghan participation," the cable said.

Two Afghan policemen and nine other Afghans were arrested as part of investigations into a crime described by Atmar as "purchasing a service from a child", which the cable said was against both sharia law and the civil code.

He insisted that a journalist looking into the incident should be told that the story would endanger lives, and that the US should try to quash the story. But US diplomats cautioned against an "overreaction" and said that approaching the journalist involved would only make the story worse.

"A widely-anticipated newspaper article on the Kunduz scandal has not appeared but, if there is too much noise that may prompt the journalist to publish," the cable said.

The strategy appeared to work when an article was published in July by the Washington Post about the incident, which made little of the affair, saying it was an incident of "questionable management oversight" in which foreign DynCorp workers "hired a teenage boy to perform a tribal dance at a company farewell party".

In fact, the episode was causing palpitations at the top of government, including in the presidential palace.

The cable records: "Atmar said that President Karzai had told him that his (Atmar's) 'prestige' was in play in management of the Kunduz DynCorp matter and another recent event in which Blackwater contractors mistakenly killed several Afghan citizens. The President had asked him 'Where is the justice?'"

According to a separate cable both incidents helped fuel Afghan government demands "to hold a tighter rein over [private security companies]" – a demand that also led Atmar to offer that the overstretched police should take over protection for military convoys in the south of Afghanistan.

Earlier this year Karzai issued a decree calling for the dissolution of all private security companies by the end of the year, an edict that has since been slightly watered down.

In a meeting between Atmar and the assistant ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, the US diplomat said he was deeply upset by the incident and that the embassy was considering Afghan demands that the US military should beginning overseeing the DynCrop operations.

Privately, however, they knew that such an arrangement was not "legally possible under the DynCorp contract".

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
afghanistan

Afghanistan: Bad Bad People, and thats the ones we support. Forget about the rest.

Generally, my view of anyone who 'harms' a child is they do not deserve the chance to rot in prison.  'Harm' is subjective, and I would define it very loosely as anything that causes physical harm to a child, and extreme emotional or mental harm.  However, to cross into the area of no rotting in prison because they don't deserve it, one must cross a threshold that is more than spanking a child once in their life or yelling at a child once in their life.  It does include any act of sex or sexual content. Nambla should pay attention.  Tolerating the abuse for any reason is tolerating an evil that should not be tolerated.

I have heard of the issue that follows, and been aware of it for some time, and perhaps I have not thought too much about it to avoid the conclusion I must reach - we should leave and let them slaughter each other.  Less of them.  But, what of the children harmed by this evil practice.  The disdain for them, their culture, their 'religion', their .... we die so they can sodomize little boys.  Wrong on so many levels and worth crying over.









Afghanistan's dirty little secret




Joel Brinkley
Sunday, August 29, 2010


Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."

All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.

"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.

President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai family been bacha baz? Two Afghans with close connections to the Karzai family told me they know that at least one family member and perhaps two were bacha baz. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and would not be more specific for publication.

As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time."

He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified.

In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."

So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."

Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure." Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"

That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys.

Addressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary goal for coalition governments, as it should be.

But what about the boys, thousands upon thousands of little boys who are victims of serial rape over many years, destroying their lives - and Afghan society.

"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."

As one boy, in tow of a man he called "my lord," told the Reuters reporter: "Once I grow up, I will be an owner, and I will have my own boys."




It is more than a dirty secret.  We may all have little secrets - like we drank too much in college, or we used a little too much of a drug, or we like to gamble or drive fast ... but this, is not a secret nor is it little - it is purely wrong on every level.

It is also not a matter of shrugging your shoulders, shaking your head and dismissing the issue as something done by the equivalent of Manbla in the West.  No.

Not when generals and commanders, detectives and police officers, all the way up to their president and his family, and back down again to some really disturbing questions.

PBS has a program, about 54 minutes.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid


In it, so many questions.  One I find very difficult, is when the police chief of this 'town' or 'city' is answering a few questions from the investigator / reporter for Frontline.  On his desk / wall are two photos - one of Hamid Karzai and one of Massoud, the now dead Lion of Panjshir.  Massoud led the Northern Alliance, and all the commanders in the Frontline were of the Northern Alliance.  A man I respected, once - now a problem for me to reconcile given he is dead ...

For someone on the far left, the response would be - but there are paedophile priests in your churches, and scout troops, and ... everywhere.  Yes, true - there were some.  Of the total number of priests, the highest number estimated is 1-2%, so ok, it was possible, and same with scouts and ... the point is, we find them and we sort them out, even if we do not do enough - their culture protects it, their culture endorses it, their laws are ignored, their religion sanctifies it, for it surely does not oppose it when everyone knows it occurs and they do not act.

The next link- found by clicking HERE is interesting, especially one paragraph.



















pedophilia

Bad People who Deserve Justice

One drawback to not watching the news and reading very little of the mainstream media drivel, is you miss bits like this story, which may or may not have been reported.

I find nothing useful about this person and if the allegations are true, he is one of the truly deserving who has no right to live among civilized people.   He is a waste, a human flaw, and Darwin needs to correct a few mistakes.  While Epstein is the biggest flaw, there were others who aided and supported, who benefited and knew and who should suffer the same Darwinian fate.

About anyone else, a thug, a burglar, a thief ... fine, jail - and don't harm them.  But someone who harms a child and does so with impunity, and worse - does so flagrantly ... vile and evil are two words that come to mind.








Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free



Conchita Sarnoff
Wed Jul 21, 2010
The Daily Beast


NEW YORK – Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein becomes a free man today, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term. She reports:


• Palm Beach’s police chief objected to Epstein’s “special treatment” and gave The Daily Beast an exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation.

• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney’s charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years.

• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.

• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.

• Epstein’s attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims’ families; one even posed as a police officer.

• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.”


Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, which has been even less arduous than Polanski’s time at a Swiss ski chalet.

During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day. Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.

With that, the known victims of Epstein’s sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is closed unless new ones come forward. According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S. and may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile.

But the question remains: Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections—former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers—Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among them—to escape equal justice?

Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, certainly thinks so. He gave The Daily Beast exclusive access to the transcript of his nine-hour deposition for the victims’ civil suits, in which he explained how the case against Epstein was minimized by the State Attorney’s Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice, all in an atmosphere of hardball legal tactics and social pressures so intense that Reiter became estranged from several colleagues. At the time, Reiter, who retired in 2009 and now runs his own security firm, objected both to Epstein’s plea agreement and to the flexible terms of his incarceration in the county jail rather than state prison. Asked during the deposition whether he thought Epstein received special treatment, he answered “yes.”

In March 2005, Reiter’s department, acting on a complaint from the Florida parents of a 14-year-old girl, launched an investigation that would eventually uncover a pattern of predatory behavior stretching back years and spanning several continents, knowingly enabled by Epstein’s associates and employees. Two or three times a day, whenever Epstein was in Palm Beach, a teenage girl would be brought to the mansion on El Brillo Way. (“The younger the better,” he instructed Haley Robson, a local teenager who was paid to bring other girls to the house, and who declared, on a police tape, that she was “like a Heidi Fleiss,” the infamous California madam.) Advised that she would be giving a “massage,” the girl was then pressured to remove her clothes, submit to fondling and a large vibrator, and sometimes lured into more invasive sexual contact. Each girl was paid $200 or more, depending on how far things went, by house manager Alfredo Rodriguez, who was instructed always to have $2,000 cash on hand.

The Palm Beach Police Department identified 17 local girls who had contact with Epstein before the age of consent; the youngest was 14, and many were younger than 16. And that was just at one of Epstein’s many homes around the world—he also owns property in New York, Santa Fe, Paris, London, and the Caribbean. Subsequent investigation by the FBI, reaching as far back as 2001, indentified roughly 40 victims, not counting Nadia Marcinkova, whom Epstein referred to as his “Yugoslavian sex slave” because he had imported her from the Balkans at age 14. Now 24, Marcinkova became a member of the household and is alleged to have participated in the sexual contact with underage girls.

Epstein quickly got wind of the investigation, and progress on the case got messy very quickly. He hired a squad of lawyers and private investigators and dispatched influential friends to pressure the police into backing off. Instead, local detectives pressed on and brought the matter to the attention of the FBI. The detectives asked their federal colleagues whether the fact that some victims appeared to have traveled out of state on Epstein’s planes—plus the use of interstate phone service to arrange assignations—might be violations of the federal 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. (Florida enacted the federal TVPA in 2002.)

So when State Attorney Barry Krischer, who also ran Florida’s Crimes Against Children Unit, proved reluctant to mount a vigorous prosecution of Epstein, saying the local victims were not credible witnesses, Chief Reiter wrote the attorney a letter complaining of the state’s “highly unusual” conduct and asking him to remove himself from the case. He did not, and the evidence his office presented to a state grand jury produced only a single count of soliciting prostitution. (Krischer has since retired and would not comment for this article.) The day after that indictment was returned, Reiter was relieved to have the FBI step in and take over the investigation.

The details that eventually emerged were often shocking and occasionally bizarre. For Epstein’s birthday one year, according to allegations in a civil suit, he was presented with three 12-year-old girls from France, who were molested then flown back to Europe the next day. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein’s sexual pleasure. According to a former bookkeeper, a number of the girls worked for MC2, the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein’s. Brunel received $1 million from the billionaire around the time he started the agency.

The non-prosecution agreement executed between Epstein and the Department of Justice states that Epstein and four members of his staff were investigated for “knowingly, in affecting interstate and foreign commerce, recruiting enticing and obtaining by any means a person, knowing that person has not yet obtained the age of 18 years and would be caused to engage in commercial sex act”—that is, child sex trafficking. Yet the agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to only two lower-level state crimes, soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor child for prostitution.

Although the police investigation was officially closed, Chief Reiter tried to stay abreast of the federal case against Epstein. He was particularly concerned that Epstein be registered as a sex offender, which was part of the final deal, and that a fund be set up to compensate his victims—which was not, although Epstein agreed to bankroll their civil lawsuits. Attorney Dershowitz says Epstein’s agreement to pay attorney fees for the victims and agree to civil damage claims—without admitting guilt—amounted to “extortion under threat of criminal prosecution.”

But exactly which crimes did the Department of Justice threaten to prosecute? The Daily Beast has learned that there were several earlier versions of the U.S Attorney’s charges, including a 53-page indictment that, had he been convicted, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years. Brad Edwards, attorney for seven of the victims, confirms the existence of an earlier draft of the non-prosecution agreement, officially under seal, in which it appears that Epstein “committed, at some point, to a 10-year federal sentence.” But in the end Epstein’s legal team refused that deal and threatened to proceed to trial. And that’s where the question of whether the case was “winnable” before a jury again came into play, according to a source in the U.S Attorney’s Office, which shared the state attorney’s view that the prosecution was far from a slam dunk.

For one, it was clear from the start that Epstein would spare no legal expense and that his team of veteran lawyers, whose cases ranged from O.J. Simpson to the investigation of Clinton’s relationship with an intern, would play rough. When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective Joe Recarey’s report, Dershowitz began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels. Reiter’s deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background checks on both the police chief and Det. Recarey. Dershowitz denies all of that. According to Reiter, both he and Recarey also became aware that they were under surveillance for several months, without knowing who ordered it. And the Florida victims began to complain that they and family members were being followed and intimidated by private investigators who were then linked to local attorneys in Epstein’s employ. In one reported instance, the private investigator claimed to be a police officer, and Reiter considered filing witness-tampering charges.

The credibility of the victims was also an issue; they had never complained of their treatment by Epstein until they were contacted by police, and they may have voluntarily returned to the Palm Beach mansion several times. Many of the girls came from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes, and they were susceptible to Epstein’s cash, intimidation, and charm. Those who were 16 when they went to El Brillo Way would have been in their 20s by the time they took the stand, and Epstein’s investigators had dredged up every instance of bad behavior in their pasts. According to an exchange in the Reiter deposition, a few of the victims had worked in West Palm Beach at massage parlors known as “jack shacks.” Each new compromising detail was immediately forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office, where staff met frequently with Epstein’s lawyers.

The Florida statutes are clear: Any person older than 24 who engages in sexual contact with someone under the age of 18 commits a felony of the second degree. The victim’s prior sexual conduct is not relevant; ignorance of her age is no defense. She needn’t resist physically to cast doubt on the issue of “consent.” For a child under 16, even lewd behavior short of touching is a felony of the second degree. But convincing a jury that a sexual encounter is a heinous crime is difficult if the victim can be made to appear willing and unharmed, not to mention vulgar and mercenary. It wasn’t hard to imagine some of the victims quickly being discredited in court by Epstein’s crack legal team, who repeatedly noted that the age of consent is lower in many other states.

But that doesn’t quite explain why the Department of Justice would forgo the child-trafficking charges, which pertain regardless of a girl’s attitude or character. Epstein’s final sentence is so out of line with the statutory guidelines for that crime that it appears the department may have been influenced by the existence of his many powerful friends and attorneys. A highly intelligent man who once taught math at the Dalton School in New York without a bachelor’s degree, Epstein has been a serious and respected player in the highest reaches of politics and philanthropy. He has made substantial contributions to political candidates, served on the Council on Foreign Relations, and donated $30 million to Harvard University.

Moreover, many of his high-powered acquaintances availed themselves of Epstein’s private jets, for which the pilot logs, obtained by discovery in the civil suits, sometimes showed that bold-face names were on the same flights as underage girls. A high-profile trial threatened to splash mud over all sorts of big players, just as both Gov. Richardson and Bill Clinton’s wife were running for president. Also, a hedge fund prosecution in which Epstein offered to give evidence was heating up. Alberto Gonzales, who was U.S. attorney general throughout most of the Epstein investigation and resigned just before the non-prosecution agreement was signed, told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.” But that may have been an impossible mandate, given the players involved.

Instead, said attorney Brad Edwards, “Epstein committed crimes that should have jailed him for most of his life…he was jailed for only a few months.” And this week he walks through his door a free man.
















bad people