The Real Scandal Isn’t Epstein. It’s Us
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair
When I was a child of about 11 years old, I had my first encounter with a person, and by extension, a system that converts power into sanctioned predation, feeding on others to sustain its own sickness.
I was swimming alone in our backyard pool, the way kids do when the warm and outstretched days of summer make them come alive. I was a strong swimmer, so my parents trusted me with access to the pool when they were away from the house. He came through the gate without knocking—he never needed permission. In our world, certain people never did. He was old enough to drive a car, old enough to rent an apartment, old enough to have a job that required a tie. Yet he was treated, in our social orbit, like a perpetual son of the house—welcomed and indulged.
He slid into the water, laughing in the way adults laugh when they believe they are charming rather than frightening. I enthusiastically picked up on his cues, and was delighted to see him…someone I could play with, I thought excitedly, perhaps he would toss me off his tall shoulders into the water with a huge splash, or watch me dive. But he had other plans. His playful demeanor suddenly turned serious as he steered me to the deep end of the pool. Then he pressed me against its wall, the rough plaster scraping my back. One hand held the top of my head, pressing my face close enough to the waterline that I could feel the threat of drowning. He didn’t need to say it. The rules were already clear: I would cooperate. I would keep it quiet. I would not make a scene that could disturb the delicate alliances of respected, prominent neighborhood families.
It wasn’t presented as violence. It was just another summer afternoon, just another man who believed the world and everything in it owed him access. The adults who adored him would continue to adore him. The house, the pool, the alliances, the potlucks and Easter egg hunts, the polished and perfect upper-class neighborhood—all would carry on, untouched.
Only I would leave the water carrying something heavy and corrosive that wasn’t mine to carry. It was just an ordinary day in the ordinary life of an ordinary girl.
* * *
He was the kind of man ranch culture quietly canonizes—rough, sun-hardened, as old as the land. His hands were calloused from years of wrestling barbed wire and icy winters, his body wide from the beer, biscuits, and gravy, his breath sour with age, a permanent scowl carved into his face. His thick glasses perpetually cloudy with grease. Spittle lingered on his chin when he shouted or cursed. His authority sat quiet, looming and immovable.
At fifteen, I already had a driver’s license and could head one hour southwest into the mountains to the family ranch every weekend to ride my horse. One sunny Saturday morning I walked into the darkened cabin that served as a tack room to fetch my horse’s halter. I expected an empty room; instead, he was there, sitting in the shadows toward the back, as if waiting. Out here there were no neighbors, no passersby, no one to hear anything. Just the two of us and the heavy quiet of vast land.
“Come here and say hello,” he told me. When I hesitated, he reached out—fast, practiced—and grabbed my arm. “Come closer,” he said. “Give me a little kiss…” His voice had the tone of a man pretending his desires were harmless, even benevolent.
I stayed polite. Girls like me were taught to be polite, to mind our manners. I tugged my arm free with a charming smile, murmuring something respectful that let me escape without offending him. Because offending him was its own kind of risk.
The next morning, and every weekend after, my horse, who usually lived in a small, shaded pasture near the house, was mysteriously turned out across all three thousand rugged acres. Gone. Uncatchable. Hours of searching on foot as punishment for the boundary I’d held. Nothing spoken. Nothing acknowledged. Just a quiet retribution from a man who knew his power would never be questioned.
And I carried that fear, that compliance, because out there, alone on the land, there was no one else to carry it.
It was just an ordinary day in the ordinary life of an ordinary girl.
* * *
There were other moments, too—quieter ones, harder to classify, harder to explain. Moments when trusted adults in my own household blurred boundaries I didn’t yet have words for. Nothing happened that the world would label criminal, but everything happened that could shatter a young girl’s sense of safety. The body of a grown man pressed close in the dark, seeking comfort I never agreed to give, demanding relief from a fragility I was never meant to soothe. His breath at my neck, the unmistakable suggestion of a line crossed. I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched the sheets, wishing the whole thing away.
And then there was the night another hovered outside my bedroom door like a restless scavenger, pacing the hallway while I sat locked inside, my desk chair braced beneath the doorknob. I stayed that way until dawn—lights on, curtains drawn, perched upright on my bed with a kitchen knife in my lap.
We never spoke of any of it. The house simply resumed—chores, school, family meals—as though silence could transform confusion into normalcy. Danger was subtly omnipresent, under the façade of the perfect family. Here at home, I learned something unmistakable:
I was expected to carry the discomfort of grown men so they didn’t have to.
It was just an ordinary night in the ordinary life of an ordinary girl.
* * *
There were more incidents like this. They became woven into a tapestry held together by self-recrimination and shame. I learned to keep adults’ secrets in the same way I learned to tie my shoes—through repetition, through reward, through silence treated as maturity. I carried things for these people and for society so that they did not have to hold them.
When I escaped home to go to college, I learned I was not the only one. At the girls’ dorm late at night, my friends and I would gather over thick-crust pizza and donuts. Sometimes these kinds of secrets would be shared. If there were ten girls in the room, eight of us offered such stories.
We all carried the shame for what someone else chose. We carried the secrecy for what someone else did. We carried the consequences of someone else’s hunger. And we carried the toxicity of a system that rewards those who exploit others for power. Revealing these truths to each other brought relief, but only enough to shift the weight from one pair of shoulders to many. The burden stayed with us. Just ordinary days in the ordinary lives of ordinary girls.
As it turns out, it was never ours to carry. It belongs not only to the people who directly perpetuate violence against children, but to those who willingly keep their secrets, those who choose to turn a blind eye, who don’t want to talk about it, and those who think, “this is not my problem”, or worse, “I’m not that guy”.
Later into young adulthood, when others trusted me with their shadowy narratives of violence and abuse, I learned that boys, too, were prey. I also listened to first-hand accounts of formally organized networks woven through every echelon of power across the globe, from the most humble school bus driver, to police, judges, clerks, priests, doctors, to the most celebrated of the elite class—intentionally hidden, meticulously organized, and built to keep child exploitation running in plain sight.
And while much is already known about the child-crimes within the Catholic church, little is known about the many children violated inside one of the largest and most successful spiritual movements following the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho). The children of these devotees living inside the ashrams all over the world, were anointed by the Master’s hand, yes, but tragically initiated through abuse by his disciples.
In 2024 some of these children, now adults, came forward with a brave documentary film Children of the Cult, exposing a systemic culture of profound predation. And yet, a community of over 200,000 ‘spiritually conscious’ people remain silent in the face of these clear revelations. Most still cling to their malas sporting an image of their beloved Osho, declaring their undying fidelity.
None of these incidents I describe above are isolated. Epstein, it turns out, is just the tip of the iceberg—a small, visible chip, protruding from beneath which sits a behemoth as vast and old as one can imagine, reaching into every corner of contemporary society worldwide.
I have written at length about the power-over paradigm dominant in our contemporary culture. It’s miasmal in quality, spreading like a toxic vapor, saturating daily life, a kind of spiritual pollution that normalizes exploitation as just the cost of doing business. The wealthy and protected treat human bodies the way they treat nature: for extraction, consumption, and profit.
What we call ‘power’ in these circles is often nothing more than arrested development in a suit (or a robe)—grown men with the impulses of frightened boys wielding authority they never matured enough to hold.
And those around them, who are not perpetrators, are guilty of their own brand of crime - complicity, through silence, knowing it was happening, witnessing it, catching wind of it, and still choosing to do nothing, to say nothing. The system is upheld with an inviolable guy wire that runs between villain and bystander.
All the fretting, posturing, and politicization of the Epstein files is just another form of denial, another way to distract from the system, and another form of complicity. You don’t need a document dump to know what is in those files. Just believe the survivors. They have been publishing the truth, naming the names, describing the exact details throughout their lives for decades.
What their, and my, and all survivor stories reveal is so much more than sexual predation, and so much more than the atrocities of a small handful of depraved men, or simply an isolated freak network within a civilized society; it exposes, in fact, that our society itself is profoundly uncivilized. It exposes our entire culture—who we are as a collective—as profoundly pathogenic.
My mentor and friend, the late Dr. James Prescott, a neuropsychologist and former health scientist administrator at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, contends that the greatest threat to world peace comes from those nations which have the most depriving environments for their children and women.
It is hard to see that we are among those nations. It’s no wonder we dance around, diminish, pearl-clutch, victim-blame, ignore, and utterly miss the entire point of this moment.
What is the point? The point is to use this moment to open our eyes and behold the truth of who we are. If we are willing to tell ourselves that hard truth, we, as a society, can begin to build something new. But if we don’t open our eyes, our collective compartmentalizing of this moment makes each one of us complicit in perpetuating a culture that has dangerously outgrown its time.
The point is to reclaim what has been appropriated: true leadership. In this current over-culture, we misattribute the heft, charisma, and power of those who prey upon others as actual qualities of authority. We bestow titles, honors, post-nominal letters, and credentials to these people, who then make the decisions about your family’s economic future, your health, and your future.
The point is to step into the leadership that is rightfully ours by unseating the elite, by caring for the whole, protecting the children, telling the truth, exposing the secrets, being accountable to integrity, and no longer carrying what is not ours to carry.
“I would respectfully correct something that Virginia [Giuffre] said. She said she was trafficked to a bunch of leaders. I would say she was a leader who was trafficked to a bunch of cowards,” said author Anand Giridharadas during a recent interview with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now. “All these women [Epstein survivors] have proven themselves to be the actual leaders because leaders are brave. They take risks. They do what’s right even when it’s not convenient. And what has been revealed ultimately by this Epstein story is that we are led by a group of people who do not deserve to be called leaders. And these women point to what leadership looks like.”
All survivors point us towards the possibility of a New Human story - one where our legacy is one of dignity, vitality, accountability and love. But we too must follow their lead, face the shadow and be brave to do our part. It’s not enough to stand on the sidelines just watching the train wreck, or worse, diverting our attention away because we cannot bear it. This new story requires all of us, because it impacts all of us.
What can you do? Here’s a partial list:
Use your wallet – do not purchase from companies that you know are a part of keeping the system at play, either directly, or by association: Amazon, Home Depot, JPMorgan, Victoria’s Secret, to name a few.
Use your vote – do not vote for those who are complicit by silence, inaction, or association.
Be a good witness and listener – many, if not most, of the people in your life have stories of abuse, violence, and exploitation. And some may be preyed upon by people you know. Be a good listener, do not try to fix, and above all, believe the survivor. They have nothing to gain by exposing the truth, and everything to lose.
Be a good citizen – keep eyes and ears open, bear the discomfort, hold the paradox of “good people doing bad things”, and become informed. And when you hear stories about survivors, do not make the mistake of focusing on the survivor; turn your eyes towards where they are pointing—the people, the organizations, the system.
Stop carrying for others – if you are a survivor, consider shedding the cargo of silence, and returning the burden back to those who need to carry it—the perpetrators, and the system that supports them. Do this in a way that feels safe, respectful of your dignity, and powerful. The more stories that are out there, the more the world can no longer look away. Women’s Law is an essential resource for support, and/or call the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN), that organizes the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline. The Hotline is a referral service that can put you in contact with your local rape crisis center. You can call the Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or access RAINN's online chat service.
Be a leader by being a protector of women and children – through your care and presence in whatever context you find yourself. Model what true leadership is. Take your rightful place.
We stand at an inflection point in human history—not because of the files, or the headlines, or the spectacle, but because survivors have placed the truth in our hands. What we do next will reveal who we are.
If we listen.
If we believe.
If we stop carrying what is not ours.
If we pick up what is ours: responsibility, agency, accountability, care.
A new human story is already being written by those who have spoken the unspeakable.
The question is not whether we will follow them.
The question is whether we will deserve to.
Note:
Children of the Cult, once available on Amazon Prime, Netflix and Apple TV is now mysteriously deplatformed. But here is a 30 minute clip from the first episode.
Kelly Wendorf is an ICF Master Certified executive and personal coach, published author, spiritual mentor, disruptor, and socially responsible entrepreneur. As founder of EQUUS® she specializes in the liberation of robust leadership capacities in those who are most qualified — the empathetic, the conscientious, the accountable, the generous, and the kind. Did you like this essay? Kelly is available for a wide range of services including Coaching, Workshops, The EQUUS Experience®, Retreats, Keynote Speaking and more.