It is one thing not to be believed. It is quite another to be believed but not get justice. That is another form of abuse. A brutal public shaming, where your pain is used as clickbait for media platforms. Headlines about torture. About trafficking. About stolen girlhood. About women who were treated as sexual commodities, and traded like cattle for the slaughter.
And yes, when we hear these stories we are shocked. We are appalled. We write comments in chat rooms. We talk about this with our friends. We shake our heads and we say, ‘can you believe this?’
It feels like the ‘knowing’, the releasing of the stories is the beginning of justice.
But I don’t know. It feels like second-generation opportunism. Where outrage is farmed for cash, not used for change. Not for justice. Not to give back what was taken. Not to stop it from happening again. Because these stories of rape and abuse are potent content in a market where clicks are king. It is here that narratives are shaped, and reshaped. And these stories are told and retold in gratuitous detail.
What does this tell a woman or girl, who is raped today, who is thinking of reporting? When she sees this fucked-up unfairytale unfold? Where the handsome prince is a sexual predator? And the damsel in distress is what gets these pricks hard in the first place.
What does it feel like to not get justice when the world gets to know you were raped? For the thing you will be remembered for most is that you were tortured and abused? For this to be common knowledge? Not something held in a circle of trust, but to be circulated across the globe? Your broken girlhood traded for clicks. Aren’t we still trafficking? Not their sex, but their pain.
Right now, women and girls around the world have a front row seat to watch patriarchy’s favourite feature film – the one where the bad guys get away with it, again. Where they use the system they created, to protect them. Is this justice we are watching now – or is this a bugle cry to women around the world to tell them that speaking out is hopeless? That they will be crushed? Threatened, coerced, driven mad, and forced, as was the sad end of the brave Virginia Giuffre, to choose suicide?
I read her book, published posthumously. I read it because I wanted to hear her story from her, not quoted on a website. Giuffre, a powerful advocate for survivors of sex trafficking and one of the most prominent accusers of Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell. This relentless voice of truth. Who is suddenly gone. There is a chilling paragraph towards the end of her book where she says she is not suicidal and if something happens it should be investigated. Another paragraph tells of two men who are so powerful and dangerous they cannot be named because of the harm they can cause her and her family. Fuck. And she still chose to speak out. That sort of courage is unfathomable.
Women know the justice system was never designed with victims in mind. Presumption of innocence applies to the perpetrator, not the woman in a short skirt. Not the woman out late at night. Not the woman who is intoxicated. His ‘not guilty’ is won by waging a war on the victim’s legitimacy. Not on his innocence. The job of his defence is making her ‘less’. Her personhood becomes the doubt he needs to walk.
For women all over the world who have experienced sexual assault, abuse and rape, the Epstein files confirm one thing we already know. These men, these powerful, well-connected leaders, these tech billionaires, these philanthropists, these scientists, these fashion industry icons, these financiers, these entitled, rich and royal men, will not be held to account.
Because they run the world. They make the rules. This is the patriarchy, working as designed.
It is time for real justice. It won’t happen without us. To be silent is to be complicit. So open your mouths and scream. Demand change. Make change.
Let’s rise.
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian, and artist, and was the Greens candidate at the past two elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
