I’ve been closely, even obsessively, following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, through each of its gory and shocking stages. Recently, I shared an article that further details his crimes against girls, including one victim’s account of turning her into a child recruiter for him.
Epstein’s inability to empathize with his victims is the big red flag of malignant narcissism. His foundational belief was that if he could force a kid to have sex with him, it wasn’t forced because, on some level, he was doing her a favor bestowing his attention on her, and she was a trollop anyway. One can blame white privilege, class privilege, and male privilege for his feelings of entitlement but, really, it comes down to one thing: his total lack of remorse meant he needed to be locked away from society.
Though he manipulated kids with his money, you don’t have to be rich to do what he did. You just need to be someone who is so emotionally disconnected that you make up false narratives to justify your crimes.
A client whose failing marriage made him extremely overwrought developed a delusion that a child of about 7, the daughter of a friend of his, was sexually interested in him. Over dinner he’d shared with mother and daughter, he believed the little girl shot him meaningfully saucy looks, sexual looks that showed she desired him in an adult way. He convinced himself that her mother would approve of their relationship because he’d been financially generous to them. Despite my best efforts and warnings, he arranged to see them again and proposed an arrangement where he’d support the mother while carrying on an affair with her little daughter. Now, this guy was never diagnosed with a mental illness. He was a highly functional, well-to-do business owner, someone’s dad, someone’s grampa. But he developed a pedophilic obsession so destructive that he literally ignored everything and everyone that stood in his way. He was persuaded that she was lusty and precocious and that this gave him the right to have sex with her.
The next time he called me, he didn’t want to talk about it, except to say he was surprised when the mother got huffy with him and left with her child. He was still nursing anger over the rejection. I considered him lucky she didn’t have him arrested.
Like other pedophiles, the abuser tried to diminish his responsibility by claiming she was a “willing participant.” And what’s wrong with that theory? First, that pre-pubescents may have enormous curiosity about their own bodies, but adult-style lust is not yet in their biological bailiwick. It is literally impossible (though I always leave room for the tragic one-in-a-million cases) for a child that age to feel what my client thought she felt or to act as he believed she was acting. It was the projection of HIS desire onto her. Imagining someone so young, so vulnerable and so naive that he would feel totally powerful over her in bed was HIS sick fantasy, not hers.
It’s a common thing in narcissists: whatever their sins, they project them onto others. In the realm of sex it means that when they are ashamed of their desires, they’ll blame others for inciting those desires or for somehow forcing them into unconscionable behavior. If they dangle gifts and offer bribes, the people who accept that must all be whores. In other words, it’s never the narcissist’s fault when he or she hurts children. It’s the kid’s fault, or the parents’ fault (for calling the cops) or society’s fault for not truly understanding the predator’s inner sensitivities and complicated personality. Or it’s the belief that they are entitled to privileges others should not have because, you know, they are so amazing and wonderful and they deserve special treatment from Society.
If this sounds like Epstein, it’s because it is. It also sounds like Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, and Roman Polanski, and other infamous child predators we know who claimed special status as misunderstood artistic geniuses who’d “never hurt” anyone. It may also sound like your uncle, your aunt, your Sunday school teacher, your Boy Scout leader, or your friendly neighborhood ice-cream seller.
And now, today, this story out of Pennsylvania
He’s a staunch anti-LGBTQ activist who made a living by oppressing a sexual minority to boot. Yep, I think I will stick with the theory that pedophiles and predators make other people feel horrible about themselves so they can posture and pose as good people. The sad thing is how many children of narcissists repeat the cycle by aiding and abetting them. Almost every predator in the public eye has entire hordes of enablers and publicists shredding evidence and telling lies.
