Epstein Notes Suggested Bill Gates Engaged in Extramarital Sex
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Being specifically attracted to underage girls that could very well be adults seems vastly weirder than pedophilia, given the obvious alternative of being attracted to adult women who look like teenagers.
Looking at the pictures of the women that have been in the media, "conventionally attractive young women, a significant portion of whom were under 18" seems like a far more accurate description than "children". While "children" may be technically correct, someone trying to effectively describe what happened would not choose that word.
Yeah, but we're not just talking about 16 year olds here, we're talking about (way) younger than that.
And besides, okay, an 18 year old, for hookups that's fine up to age 25 in my book. 30 is also fine in most of Europe's moral view, in France they'd probably accept 35. But ffs. Gates was around 58 back at the time. That's far too old to hang out with 18 year olds, much less having sex with them.
There's been little indication that Epstein was interested in prepubescent girls. There's "as young as 14" in the indictment, still old enough to feasibly be visually indistinguishable from 18 year olds.
>And besides, okay, an 18 year old, for hookups that's fine up to age 25 in my book. 30 is also fine in most of Europe's moral view, in France they'd probably accept 35. But ffs. Gates was around 58 back at the time. That's far too old to hang out with 18 year olds, much less having sex with them.
There's little doubt that this stuff was weird, and that Epstein was a predator. It's less than obvious that those hanging out with him were any weirder than your average john engaged in buying sex from young attractive women.
It's a far more sensible point to consider when we're discussing the people around these individuals. If the girls surrounding Epstein had been prepubescent, that'd be a much worse look for the people around him.
The thing is, the law doesn't care. People all over the world got busted for such things (including, and that's what I find ridiculous, combinations like 17/19).
My recommendation - even if legal, as soon as you have doubts the other person is of age, just don't. Plenty of fish in the sea.
In polite society the idea of mature adults having sex with minors is generally considered so outrageous that it's easy to imagine how those around Epstein wouldn't have had to try very hard to convince themselves that the young looking girls around Jeff are totally adults.
It simply wasn't obvious to onlookers that Epstein was doing what he was doing, you wouldn't jump to assume that the young women around him were underage. Most of them apparently weren't.
Had Epstein surrounded himself with prepubescent children instead, it'd be far easier to assume that the people hanging out with him were interested in specifically minors rather than conventionally beautiful young women.
I don't think it's particularly surprising that his friends might have concluded that he isn't actually into underage girls, but simply accidentally ended up sleeping with a minor or two while having sex with hundreds of women.
I know a couple of people who spend excessive amounts of time and effort in order to hook up with lots of women. I don't particularly like either of them, but if one of them ended up facing statutory rape charges, my first assumption wouldn't be that they were deliberately trying to have sex with minors.
The charges faced by Epstein in 2008 must have looked so outrageous that it's not hard to imagine why those around him might have given him the benefit of the doubt, especially after the government basically let him off and communicated to everyone that his crimes weren't actually that bad.
There are some people aggressively misunderstanding me, I'm certainly not defending Epstein. I'm just offering a slightly more reasonable alternative theory than "everyone around him was a pedophile", which just seems fundamentally unlikely.
Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.
It's not the law. As a matter of fact there are special provision to lower the age of consent if some conditions apply, although this is not one of them.
How about we right all the wrongs that stemmed from violating laws (as there is plenty of work to be done there) before we try to pass personal opinions as laws
Indeed. But some common fucking sense would have prevented everyone in the Epstein Files to be named in these. Like, it's bad enough if you notice that someone is hooking up with questionably legal women or girls and don't say anything... but it's even worse to actively participate.
"I thought they were 18" is not a good defense and people have gone to jail despite claiming that.
I am not going to make excuses for pedophiles.
"Child" is most often a young human below the age of puberty. Consider how ridiculous you'd sound if you claimed that jurisdictions with an age of consent of 16 allow sex with children.
She didn't go into this much detail - but she could probably confirm/deny a few things if asked about it now.
I have no idea the sequence of events but it makes for a great antihero origin story.
That's one way of putting it. Here's another: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=x80EbmX5xys
NYT : "Epstein Notes Suggested Bill Gates Engaged in Extramarital Sex"
HN : Bill Gates had sex with children! :(