Prince Andrew no surprise

[Pixxie7]

No surprise that the met have stopped. Their investigation into PA.

@julieca

The police in Rotherham would not have thought it was okay for their daughters. They thought the girls were slags. They knew it was not right, but blamed the girls. They did not think it was okay.

Of course they thought it was OK or they’d have acted without an extremely brave and determined woman forcing them to. It was a spectacular failure of policing among many.

Another law that needs urgent amendment then

The law was amended in 2003.

The alleged events took place before that.

Are we still grappling with this?

WAG land isn’t so far from Tramp and private parties at a financier’s house house, was my point (my party was at a financier’s house). And some of them were definitely teenagers - what I was saying is that I couldn’t tell you whether they were 18 or younger.

Those are just false parallels that detract from the whole world of abuse constructed by Epstein. You are taking it right out of context. Yes, lots of young girls might deliberately set out to bag themselves a footballer, lots of ordinary, non-vulnerable young girls might love the bling, the dressing up, the male attention etc. They're all too young to know what they are doing and once they realise that the price for that bling and attention is having to sleep with a fat middle-aged man, most will leave of their own accord. Those type of girls are seeking something rather than running away from something. VG fell into a trap. By the time she realised it was too late, the threats and abuse had started. Because JE didn't put her in hospital, nobody will call it abuse.

Most financiers wouldn't systematically abuse to the extent JE did. Epstein had his own island, his own plane, his own world. It is impossible that his clients did not know where they were going and why. JE and GM were not normal people: they were sex obsessives who spent every waking hour planning, scheming, finding girls and then abusing them. Not possible to be friends with an obsessive and not be aware of their obsession - once you did realise, you would run a mile, not go back for after he'd been convicted in 2009!! Underage sex was JE's entire life, it's documented.

@Blossomtoes I have read in detail the Rotherham Enquiry papers. No the police did not think it was okay, if by okay you mean normal or fine. They thought the girls were slags, but they didn't see it as the crime it was.
There are many things people judge as not okay and that they would not want their own children involved in, without it being a criminal matter.

@Blossomtoes

Riiiight. The POLICE reckoned it's OK.

Why else would they have failed to prosecute for so long?

I was clearly taking the piss, out of the police.

Recent events have shown the police's attitude to the abuse of women and how much they care about improving the situation.

@Serenster I am finding it quite disturbing how you are trying to minimise the documented abuse by Epstein and his friends.
And I agree that of course, Andrew knew at least some of what was happening. He won't be held at account though.
And I do wonder if Charles had made new friends who are sex abuses that will later be made public?

[quote julieca]@Blossomtoes I have read in detail the Rotherham Enquiry papers. No the police did not think it was okay, if by okay you mean normal or fine. They thought the girls were slags, but they didn't see it as the crime it was.
There are many things people judge as not okay and that they would not want their own children involved in, without it being a criminal matter.[/quote]
This makes no sense at all. Are you seriously defending the police for not prosecuting those disgusting men? Because that’s what it looks like.

Of course I am not defending the police. Those men raped and groomed those girls.
But you are saying the police thought what was happening was fine. The police did not think it was fine. But they blamed the girls, not the men.

@Jaysmith71

Another law that needs urgent amendment then

The law was amended in 2003.

The alleged events took place before that.

Are we still grappling with this?

As if a non-lawyer (99% of the population) would give a shit.

If the law's not there to protect all people at any time, what is it there for? Shall we just be grateful for the pathetic approximation of justice it offers, shut up and go away?

Most financiers wouldn't systematically abuse to the extent JE did

I agree with you that this is an important point. Thankfully, most rich and powerful men are not like Epstein. In his abusive, exploitative and criminal behaviour he was an outlier (to put it mildly).

You then go on to say that everyone who dealt with him in the context of his “cover” if you like - his highly successful finance business - must have realised that he was this outlier. That underneath the success and the wealth was a paedophile, abuser and truly awful human being.

That basically means that his associates - which include Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, Courtney Love, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, Alec Baldwin, Ralph Fiennes, Griffin Dunne, Ted Kennedy, David Koch and Princess Mette-Marit of Norway - all must have realised that the hugely successful business man they had met was a hardened criminal, but decided to turn a blind eye to it, and were happy to be seen and recorded in his company?

Or perhaps it is actually more likely that he kept the extent of his activity a sordid secret? And that looking at his associates with perfect 20:20 hindsight doesn’t actually give you an accurate picture of what the people who flocked around him knew, and thought?

I am finding it quite disturbing how you are trying to minimise the documented abuse by Epstein and his friends

You may well, julieca. Luckily for me though, I’m really not that bothered about what people who have no interest in the rule of law, support vigilante justice, and think state sanctions should be imposed based on their own partial view of what they’ve read in mainstream media, think about me.

If the law's not there to protect all people at any time, what is it there for? Shall we just be grateful for the pathetic approximation of justice it offers, shut up and go away?

The law is, of course, there to protect everyone. An important aspect of those protections is that you can only be convicted of a criminal offence if what you did was an offence at the time. We do not apply criminal laws retrospectively.

Not that it really matters in this case as, even under the law as it stands today, whilst Epstein appears to have committed criminal offences in the UK, it is not clear that Andrew has. Having consensual sex with a woman who is over the age of consent and has been trafficked is not an offence unless you pay or offer to pay, and there is no suggestion by Giuffre that he did. Having non-consensual sex is a crime regardless of whether the woman has been trafficked, but the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the incident took place and that the accused did not reasonably believe that the complainant consented. Rape is an unusual crime where the victim may have been factually raped (i.e. she did not consent) but the accused may be not guilty as he reasonably believed she consented.

@julieca

Of course I am not defending the police. Those men raped and groomed those girls. But you are saying the police thought what was happening was fine. The police did not think it was fine. But they blamed the girls, not the men.

A five-year investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found that the Rotherham police ignored the sexual abuse of children for decades for fear of increasing racial tensions. The IOPC upheld a complaint that a father of one of the victims that police took "insufficient action". The complainant claims he was told by a police officer the town "would erupt" if it became known that there was Asian men were regularly sexually abusing underage girls.

@derxa I have read the full report. That is why Councillors did nothing. It is not why the police did nothing.

@Serenster Meeting someone is very different to flying to his private island with the unusual decor that made his house look like the brothel it was. Yes anyone who went to that house and his private parties should have realised what was going on.

That basically means that his associates - which include Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, Courtney Love, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, Alec Baldwin, Ralph Fiennes, Griffin Dunne, Ted Kennedy, David Koch and Princess Mette-Marit of Norway - all must have realised that the hugely successful business man they had met was a hardened criminal, but decided to turn a blind eye to it, and were happy to be seen and recorded in his company?

You can't simply lump them all together as his "associates" and say they were all equally aware of or familiar with what JE was doing.

There's a huge difference between meeting JE randomly at a party and boarding the Lolita Express on multiple occasions or staying at his several homes.

Some of them will have known very well, because they were interested in what JE had to "sell". Trump's famous quote "It is said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side". Why even bother saying the younger girls bit, if he didn't know.

Some of them will just have been at parties and may have been instinctively repulsed by him much as we all are when we meet an older man surrounded by teenagers.

You don't need perfect 20:20 hindsight to realise he was a creep, just as nobody needed it with Savile. The evidence was there. Especially after 2008. How many of the people you listed met him after that date?

All the names I mentioned were either guests on his island and/or circled (literally, had a black circle drawn around their names) in Epstein’s private address book.

Also you can know something is not right, but have zero evidence of a crime.
I remember a colleague telling me she went to see Gary Glitter and just knew from the way he looked at young girls, where his inclinations lay. But she did not witness anything happening apart from looks. And looks are not a crime.
But she never went to a Gary Glitter concert again.
Anyone going to Epsteins parties more than once is complicit.And that includes Andrew.

@Serenster what did the black circle mean?

It’s also interesting to look back at the tributes published by many, many famous people when Jimmy Savile died, and those in public roles who attended his funeral.

Again, apparently they all knew exactly what he was, and didn’t think they needed to distance themselves from him. Or, they had no idea.

@Serenster Charles was a personal friend of Saville.

Yes, so were most of the people who attended his funeral and paid him tribute.

Thank you, prh47bridge, I do get all that.

But again, not enough is being or has been done. Women are NOT protected, they are vulnerable in all sorts of ways.

For example, kerb-crawling in the UK not being a crime if you are targeting schoolgirls.

Really? I doubt it. Hundreds of people attended his funeral.
Charles met up socially alone (except for staff) with Jimmy and popped in to see Jimmy at his holiday home.

If Saville was meeting up socially 101 with all those hundreds of people who attended his funeral, he wouldn't have had time to do anything else.
They will have been lots of acquaintances. People who met him at a large charity do or event, or maybe met him on a number of occasions at that kind of things. They are acquaintances, not friends.

If VA was working as a prostitute at the age of 17 and if Andrew had sex with her then it was illegal and he could be prosecuted. Whether or not it was voluntary or coerced or whatever. If she was under 18 at the time.