This is a little bit off topic but if you bear with me a bit I think it is relevant.
I think people who have never been groomed maybe do not quite understand how it works. Out and out trafficking works through threats and violence but grooming can be more subtle and manipulative.
I was groomed once, not I hasten to say for any sexual puropse but in the context of a religious set up. I was targeted because I was vulnerable but also because I had contacts with other people who could possibly be brought in. Please don't think that I am equating what happened to me with the kind of abuse and damage the victims of Epstein and his cronies suffered but I think I may have some understanding of the process
I was constantly flattered and encouraged to think of myself as special, one of the insiders if you will. It took me a couple of years to realise that these people did not genuinely have my interests at heart and were using me for their own ends.
As I said, there was no element of sexual exploitation involved for me but I can see how it could work in the same way with those young girls encouraged to see themselves as beautiful and special and privileged rather than used and abused. When they finally saw the situation for what it really was they would maybe not at first recognise their own blamelessness. I am old now and it took me literally years to process what happened.
Easy to say, look at the picture, she looks happy to be there. Maybe at the time she thought she was happy to be there. Much later, when she realised how she had been used, she would have had to come to terms with all those feelings and the much worse ones that replaced them. From the evidence of the long term damage done to VIrginia and probably to many others, it seems as if coming to terms with it all was not always possible.