AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Chad]

[Mick Harper]

I believe you have. Suspiciously often as a matter of fact. It may be you are acting out because you weren't given an Ivanhoe costume but I've only got a City & Guilds in this area so I will defer to better qualified colleagues.

[Mick Harper]

Every year the Movies 24 channel becomes the Movies 24 Christmas channel and shows exclusively Christmas movies. This year without changing its name it has started showing exclusively Christmas movies in June and July. You would be correct in assuming that either some TV moguls have realised that after six months we will be thirsting to watch again all the Christmas movies we watched last Christmas or their algorithm has gone wonky and they are powerless to stop the mayhem. You would also be correct to wonder what the world's coming to.

[Mick Harper]

The arrest of Ghislaine, and the learned vapourings of Alan Dershowitz on Newsnight, sent me back to the Netflix series, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich. What struck me most was, after every detailed catalogue of abuse we heard recited by the victim, the following sentence would invariably begin, "And then the next morning when I went back to the house...

I understand that enjoyment is no barrier to harm, and the young have to be protected from the old, but this is very different from normal abuse stories in which the victim dreads each occasion even if circumstances means they do have to return to the scene of the crime every day. "And then the next time I was trafficked as a sex slave in his private jet across the Atlantic, I had to have sex with a handsome young prince..." [Which, it was odd to see, Andy was in those pre-raddled days.]

There was some fascinating commentary on one of the advantages of the jet-setting young-flesh aficionados: that ages of consent vary in Louisiana, Florida, New York and London. Most of us have to hang around for our protegées to reach their sixteenth birthday (or whatever), they just order the pilot to vary the flight plan. Though I think I am right in saying nobody actually spells out exactly what young flesh can and can't consent to. Neither Geoffrey nor Ghislaine seemed to be into penetrative sex. Nor, since Ghislaine is accused of trafficking, whether a seventeen-year-old can legally agree to get on a plane in Florida (age of consent, 18) in order to fly to New York (age of consent, 17) to have it off legally with an oldie. And by the way, nobody ever mentions that Epstein himself had matinée-idol good looks.

[Mick Harper]

Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix)

This is turning out to be fascinating for all the wrong reasons. The money stuff is absolutely mind-boggling but we're soon on to the private Caribbean island. Now the problem here is that all the teenagers have disappeared along with all the underage sex, grooming, prostitution and suchlike malfeasances. In their place we are given a procession of twenty-something, very athletic and (it has to be said) not particularly attractive women. Who are crying rape. The first one was quite persuasive about Jeffrey's manoeuvrings which resulted in her being 'raped' but only until, in the next sequence, she remarked pensively, "He raped me three times that first day."

Our next witness described herself as a professional masseuse and was indeed asked to 'give Jeffrey his massage'. Her testimony was that the massage proceeded along normal lines until 'he turned over, grabbed my wrists, flipped me over and raped me.' I don't know whether this is is covered at massage school. Perhaps not on the grounds of medium unlikelihood. She fled to the furthest part of the island and one sympathised irrespective of the degree of force that was involved. Though later she complained, "I was raped over and over again." And one sympathised over and over again.

Bill Clinton makes an appearance on the island and is closeted with Jeffrey. As does Alan Dershovitz though, the programme is quick to point out, only for a lunchtime business meeting. Lawyers! Making house calls! Whatever next.

[Mick Harper]

"The Africa trip [with Bill Clinton and Epstein -- and Kevin Spacey made three] was the most amazing thing that happened to me in my life and I remembered thinking that maybe the abuse had stopped because it didn't happen in Africa but the abuse started all over again. It never stopped after that. It never once occurred to me that I was being paid for anything more than being a masseuse. I was there to do a job and on the side this person was abusing me." For three years.

[Ishmael]

I too am struck by how little "there" there is there. If I slept with a 16-year-old, and some asshole tried to blackmail me for millions, I'd turn myself in, reveal the blackmail scheme, and plead ignorance of the girl's age. I'd get probation.

In right-wing circles, everyone shouts "pedophile!!!" not "statutory rapist!!!" Where exactly is the pedophilia? Nonexistent so far.

And many of these "victims" are quite sketchy.

[Mick Harper]

Well, yes, labelling is crucial. The paedophile tag is, as you say, critical. The reports always refer to 'some as young as twelve' but these tiny tots are never produced, only older tots. It is clear that Epstein had a team of recruiters in Miami (it is unclear whether Ghislaine was one of them, the others have not been charged) though mainly it was the 'abused' girls bringing along their mates to be abused. Two hundred bucks was the going rate.

In the case of the professional masseuse of three years standing, it was her seventeen-year-old sister that was brought along. "I had no idea he was doing it to anyone else so I didn't worry about her being abused. I feel so guilty now." No news as to whether she is going to be tried for procuring minors.

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

The weak link for all Jeffrey's former associates is that he pleaded guilty, was convicted and served time for solicitation of prostitution in 2008.

Despite this not satisfying the victims or the public, the fact that the now disgraced prosecutors actually got a deal to get him convicted, and do time, meant that the Epstein name was from then on always associated with being a convicted sexual offender. He was always going to be ruined.

You would have to be mad or royalty, or both, to associate with a convicted sex offender, who had pleaded guilty, in the current climate.

[Ishmael]

But something really does seem to have been going on. There's such a mystery surrounding his money. And who murdered him? What was their motive if there were no [significant] crimes?

Where are the real victims?

Because I have my doubts whether any of these accusers have anything to do with any of it. Certainly, nothing they've revealed is of earth-shattering import worthy of a conspiracy to kill a man in his prison cell. It feels to me like these accusations are a smokescreen for the real conspiracy.

But where's the evidence of this "real conspiracy?"

Nothing so far.

[Mick Harper]

The same is (still) true of Robert Maxwell's death so we could start by discovering the otherwise preposterous link between Ghislaine and Jeffrey. For a start, who was on top.

PS Oh yeah, and where is the Mossad in all this? Silence speaks volumes.

[Grant]

Only a few of the "hundreds" of 16,17 year olds who were abused have complained. Question has to be which powerful men were serviced by the compliant girls who didn't complain and what did Epstein do with the films he made of them doing it?
And where are these films? I can't believe Epstein erased them.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]