The Real Horror of the Epstein Story Isn’t the Crime—it’s the Indifference. (A Personal Story.)
Children who suffer sexual abuse are forever changed, their brains literally physically altered by their experiences. Meanwhile, the many, many men (and women) who abused them will feel no impact.
Editor's Note: Amber Erceg is a friend of the Outlaws. We've been trying to get her to contribute to our newsletter for quite some time. When we saw this powerful post on her social media page, she was kind enough to allow us to reprint it.
As someone who was subjected to childhood sexual abuse for years, I have a complicated relationship to the Epstein story (as I expect most people in my position do.)
It is deeply important to me personally to bear witness to the stories of victims. I know how critical feeling seen, heard, and believed is to healing from this type of abuse. And I also know that these victims are victimized in part because so few people in their lives *do* see and hear them. Being able to sit with them in their testimony, even if only from a great distance, is a support I feel truly privileged to provide (and is the driving force behind my series of drawings of children who survived abuse.)
"When It Started" is a series of drawings of survivors, drawn at the approximate age their abuse began. Ballpoint pen/ink drawings by Amber Erceg
But while I feel empowered by reading books like Virginia Giuffre’s “Nobody’s Girl”, detailing the abuses perpetrated upon her, first by her father and later by Epstein and his associates, reading some of the emails that have been released has been triggering. Not because I am not prepared to hear of the abuse - nothing I’ve read of their actions has at all surprised me - but because of the flippancy with which they speak of their crimes and the wholesale lack of recognition of their victims as people.
Children who suffer sexual abuse are forever changed, their brains literally physically altered by their experiences. Regardless of the path their lives take, they will always feel the effects of their abuse. Every day for the rest of their lives the ramifications of the harm they suffered will impact their opportunities, their choices, their relationships, their health, and their ability to move through the world. Regardless of the resources available to them or the support they may someday receive, the effects of abuse are forever lurking beneath the surface, silently guiding them. They will never be wholly free.
Meanwhile, the many, many men (and women) who abused them will feel no impact. Even outside of legal justice (which the vast majority of predators will never face), they are free to remain empowered and confident, with the impact they’ve had on others’ lives never even considered, much less atoned for. They are so unburdened by their crimes that they joke with each other about them. Send gifts winking at them. And conspire on how best to discredit their victims should they find the strength to speak. These men are evil for the crimes they committed, but they are equally monstrous for the flippancy with which they regard them.
After reading Virginia Giuffre’s book I told Mike, my partner, that I believed there would be nuclear-level fallout if the Epstein files were ever released. I still believe that. But it remains to be seen whether that fallout takes the form of a reckoning where victims are believed and perpetrators are held to account, or if we instead find ourselves publicly accepting once and for all that girls’ bodies belong to men.
Amber Erceg wanted to keep her bio simple, yet complete:
"Amber is an artist, a writer, and a mother with a day job."