President Donald Trump is desperately trying to divert attention away from his decision to cover up the Epstein files. Good luck. Whatever his role in the Epstein child sex trafficking universe, the cover-up is a separate issue, as the Catholic bishops could tell him. The fundamental problem is this country doesn’t like institutions—whether government, church, university, school, or sport—that cover up child sex abuse.
We have been here before. There have been impassioned demands for the release of Catholic clergy sex abuse files across the country since the 2002 Boston Globe’s Spotlight report on clergy sex abuse in the Boston Archdiocese. The series was followed by some searing disclosures and file releases, but to this day the bishops have continued to fight in the courts and public square to keep as many of their secrets as possible in locked filing cabinets. Over twenty years have passed, but the demands for transparency have not abated, and no one has forgotten despite their public relations tack of saying, “Trust us. It’s over! We are the safest place for children.” The latter claim is patently untrue as CHILD USA has shown in peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also doesn’t matter. So long as the cover-up continues, they will not be trusted. The same principle applies to Trump.
The information in child sex abuse investigations is important to understand the child sex abuse epidemic that crisscrosses our institutions and educate the public, but it’s never enough by itself. Lawsuits and prosecution are also needed. Sadly and ironically, it will be a cold day in hell before the United States government brings the Catholic bad actors, including bishops as well as many priest perpetrators, to account for the sexual abuse of so many children. Over the years, U.S. attorneys have routinely taken a pass on these cases and if they didn’t, Washington has shut them down—Democrats and Republicans. It’s just U.S. politics—lawmakers pander for the religious, including Catholic. The failure to prosecute has contributed to the unending demands for transparency. So Catholic survivors and advocates feel MAGA’s pain.. The leaders you trusted don’t care about child sex abuse enough to release the truth.
Just as important, the Catholic experience has taught us that the files are chump change compared to the payoff of prosecution. There is no doubt that Epstein abuse and trafficking files—whether disclosed already or not—are replete with names that create prosecution possibilities. The problem here is that Trump and his Attorney General Pam Bondi must know that if they are published, there will be calls for prosecution. There is no way that she can dump this information into a black hole and walk away.
Bondi, of course, is not the only prosecutor with cold feet related to Epstein-related prosecution; she follows a lineup of U.S. attorneys, federal and state attorneys general, and district attorneys nationwide. She is just the latest in a conga line of feckless prosecutors unwilling to use their power and office to attack systemic child sex abuse involving the “important” men in the Epstein scheme. Unfortunately for the Trump administration, when the American people demand accountability about child sex abuse they aren’t interested in just the papers. When truths surface, justice must follow.
The biggest problem for Trump here is that he is either a possible defendant for child rape, aiding and abetting or conspiracy to abuse and traffic underage girls or, at the very least, a witness of circumstantial evidence. The men who cavorted with Epstein were scions of society from Bill Gates to Prince Andrew to Victoria’s Secret’s Leslie Wexner and Apollo Global Management’s Leon Black. There were hundreds of victims, and Epstein entertained the male elite in New York City and his private island. Only a woman, his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, has been prosecuted and convicted. That means the masters of the universe likely have been sweating out the slow walk to suppression and Trump’s fumbling now. No doubt some have had some frank or veiled conversations with the Trump administration if not the president himself.
One need only skim Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” or watch images of his inauguration to know that cozying up to rich men is a cornerstone of this Administration. Are they now going to take down many of them, including Trump, with these files? They can’t go after Clinton without going after the rest in Epstein’s and Trump’s orbit. Cuing up one of the bishops’ failed gambits, Trump said Bondi should only release what is “credible” and then focused on Clinton. So long as he is setting the parameters for release and not releasing it all, this is a losing tactic. It’s still a cover-up.
For the populist MAGA folks to watch the man they believed would slay the dragon of the “deep state” deep-six the files of a global child sex abuse ring has to be devastating. It’s like the Roman Catholic faithful learning the Pope was involved in covering up clergy sex abuse—as has every Pope to date including Pope Leo.
Yet, can we set aside these powerful men for a moment and focus on the children? If you want to successfully fight child sex abuse and trafficking, you must take a child-centered approach and stop worshipping the cogs in the wheel of systemic abuse. It takes three robust measures: transparency and justice for the victims, bringing enabling institutions to account, and effective prevention. Exactly which one of these necessary elements to fight child sex abuse did Trump, Bondi, and Kash Patel intend to undertake once they dipped their toes into the child sex abuse ocean and invited MAGA to swim with them? Their cover-up proves they intended no good for children.
To satisfy the American people, full justice requires transparency and prosecution of both the perpetrators and organizational leaders, e.g., the prosecution of the President of Penn State, Graham Spanier, for endangering children and not just Jerry Sandusky by himself. At the same time, there need to be civil lawsuits against the institution to get to the core of the system that so severely traumatized children. On the Epstein side, many of the victims have received compensation, but there has been a shortage of prosecution of the powerful men who made the Epstein universe revolve.
Bringing institutions to account—whether the Church or the federal government—requires disclosure, prosecutions, and lawsuits. It also requires changes in the law from eliminating the statutes of limitation to criminalizing not just the act of abuse but the trafficking and grooming as well. The MAGA instinct to find justice for these victims is an American one, and there is a robust movement in the United States to reveal and bring to account all those who have let children suffer. Without the government’s records, it is hard to fully know what to change to make sure this never happens again.
A sincere attempt to rid our country of the epidemic of child sex abuse also requires science-based, effective, and affordable child sex abuse prevention. The strongest prevention is also built on full knowledge of the schemes that led children to be traumatized. Secret files and shielding the responsible hamper the best efforts to ensure children aren’t abused in the future.
The Catholic bishops can tell the president from hard-earned experience that once the calls for transparency start, you can be transparent or obfuscate. The latter means the issue never goes away. The more you fight, the more you have to fight. It’s quite simple: Americans hate cover-ups.
Marci A. Hamilton is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Founder of CHILD USA, and was a consultant for the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program. marcih@sas.upenn.edu. (215) 353-8984.
