Here’s what I know, Megyn Kelly, you are a traitor, not only to your gender but to every victim of sexual assault past, present and future. What’s worse, you are a mother and an attorney, so you know better on both fronts.
But to answer your question as to the vagaries of age, well, I’ll leave that to actress Christina Ricci who posted in reaction to Kelly’s comments: “There’s definitely a difference between a five-year-old and a 15-year-old. But that difference is not ‘whether or not sleeping with them makes you a paedophile’.”
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I have listened to interviews of victim survivors of Epstein and still recoil hearing one fragile voice refer to Epstein’s penis as his “pee pee”. I have reported on family violence and youth issues my entire working life and seen the reality of rape. I have also been a lost and scared kid out of home at 16, desperately seeking a sane adult to trust. At that age, you always think it’s your fault. That there is something inherently wrong with you. It’s hard to shake.
Epstein’s victims were young, troubled girls. His pimp Ghislaine Maxwell could sniff out their vulnerability when she procured them from school gates like a hyena circling a pack. These victims – some aged 14 at the time they were abused – live with the trauma of what was done to them every day. No one can judge how they feel. There is no comparison for them.
What’s more, they see the commentary, they read the debate. They hear it is all a “Democrat hoax”, that Epstein was a nice guy who liked women “on the young side”, a bit of a creep but nothing more to see here. If no perpetrators exist, then where does that leave the victims?
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There is not a moratorium on pain. Listen to the Epstein victims in this video released this week and tell me how their suffering is going? Look at the pictures the victims hold of themselves at the age they were molested and tell them to be grateful it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Suggesting there is a rape-light category of victims is obscene, immoral and devastating to victim survivors. To mollify, reframe or reduce sexual abuse against women and girls is how misogyny thrives. Megyn Kelly, with her pious, supercilious bile, has shown she might call herself a journalist, but from now on I’ll call her out for what she really is – a disgrace and, worse, an enabler.
Wendy Squires is a writer and author.
Lifeline 13 11 14; Beyond Blue 1800 512 348; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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