by Camilla Fitzsimons
On 30 January, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released over 3 million pages of the so-called Epstein files. This was to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law in November 2025 by Donald Trump, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
In total, around 3.5 million pages including photos and videos, witness testimonies, fight logs, wire taps, bank records and private correspondence have been released, all of which were gathered across criminal investigations into multiple cases of human trafficking that mostly involved teenage girls. Some analysts have suggested this mountain of evidence is just a fraction of the total files held by the DOJ. According to one estimate, what has been released is as little as 2% of the total files held by the DOJ.
In 2019, and at a time when some reports claim he may have been cooperating with authorities, Epstein reportedly died by suicide whilst awaiting trial for conspiracy and for trafficking minors. Two years later, Ghislaine Maxwell, his closest co-conspirator, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after she was found guilty of multiple crimes connected to the trafficking and abuse of children, the victim numbers of which reportedly ran into the thousands. In 2022, another co-conspirator by the name of Jean-Luc Brunel who managed the Epstein financed French modelling agency MC2 Model, also died by suicide and again whilst in custody awaiting trial.
Epstein also once served time in prison. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to two counts of paying for sex, one of which related to a child. This Palm Springs, Florida case involved multiple victims whose eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies were investigated by local police as well as by the FBI over a 3 year period. Despite the obvious seriousness of the crimes, which Epstein admitted to, most of his 18 months sentence was served in a minimum-security facility with day release privileges. He was released early.
Well-documented associates of Epstein include Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) who was photographed with one victim, the late Virginia Giuffre at a UK residence when she was just 17 years old. Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit Hoiby, is also known to have exchanged hundreds of emails with Epstein following his conviction. Featured politicians include former US president Bill Clinton, current US president Donald Trump, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The oligarch Bill Gates is photographed with young women (or girls) whose identities are redacted, and the academic Noam Chomsky is photographed with the paedophile including aboard a private plane. There some new names too including the filmmaker Brett Ratner, who continues to claim he didn’t know Epstein despite a picture emerging that clearly shows the opposite.
The Epstein files corroborate decades of witness and victim testimonies, shared across many formats, including in books, documentaries and interviews, of a hugely disturbing network of organised crime which involved high levels of abduction, grooming and trafficking of mostly teenage girls and young women. Multiple victims have identified either Maxwell or Brunel as their recruiters. This included via a pyramid scheme where both Maxwell and Epstein recruited vulnerable teenage girls, sometimes as young as 14, then paid those same victims to recruit other girls into the sex trafficking ring. Some victims have shared the most disturbing of details, something again corroborated by the DOJ’s decision to hold back files that depict or contain child sexual abuse materials or “images of death, physical abuse or injury of any person”.
This sex trafficking and paedophile ring was also no small operation. Teams of people were involved in arranging travel, both for those trafficked, and for those abusing them. Others managed the upkeep of the lavish environments where the abuses took place including a small and secluded island owned by Epstein which can only be accessed by air or sea.
The strongest and most obvious theory as to why Epstein kept so many records is that the criminal network he oversaw acted as a mechanism for exerting control over his powerful, well-connected and often very wealthy associates. Much of what has been released links Epstein to intelligence services including credible claims that he brokered deals for Israeli intelligence. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that Ghislaine is the daughter of the media mogul Robert Maxwell who is widely believed to have spied for the Israeli Mossad. Epstein also held close ties with the CIA with files released confirming planned meetings with William J Burns who served as CIA director during the Biden administration (therefore after Epstein’s death). Claims Epstein was a spy might sound fanciful, but so did the idea that a powerful cabal at the top of society was trafficking teenagers and that their abusers were some of the world’s most rich and famous people. Indeed, those who previously claimed this was the case were mostly written off as conspiracy theorists. (For more on Epstein’s intelligence connections I recommend The Blindboy Podcast – A deep dive into Effrey Jepstein).
The fall-out from the Epstein files
There has been some fallout for just some of those who have been named. One of the latest casualties is the former US Senator George Mitchell. In 2026, Queen’s University in Belfast (who also has strong connections with the Clintons) cut ties with their former Chancellor, who was honoured in this way because of his role as chair of the North of Ireland talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement (1998). Queens severed their relationship with Mitchell because of documents that prove he was in contact with Epstein long after the paedophile’s 2008 conviction, something he had previously denied. The university have even removed a statue of Mitchell that was unveiled in 2023 at a reported cost to the institution of over 40,000 euro.
Mitchell is certainly not the only person affected. In 2022, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor paid an estimated £12 million out of civil court settlement to Giuffre. In 2025, he was finally stripped of his titles and has now moved out of his official royal residence into a less palatial, luxury home. One week after his brother, King Charles, indicated for the first time that the British royal family would cooperate with authorities, he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office then released without charge several hours later. It is possible that the police may have questioned Mountbatten-Windsor on information in the latest file release that teenagers were indeed trafficked into the UK for his sexual gratification (something victims have maintained for years), but there is no denying that sudden police interest is because of evidence that points to the fact that he shared sensitive trade secrets with Epstein when he held the role of the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment between 2001 and 2011
Mountbatten-Windsor is not the only example where it is other aspects of people’s dealings with Epstein that have resulted in negative consequences. Another is the case of former MP and Minister of state Peter Mandelson who has both quit the Labour Party and resigned from the House of Lords. This is mostly because the Epstein files suggest he shared confidential and financially sensitive information and that he received direct payments from Epstein, into his own bank account. Mandelson was also arrested in February 2026, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released some hours later pending further investigations. Mandelson’s involvement has had wider ramifications because of PM Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint him British Ambassador to the US in 2025 despite knowing he maintained a relationship with Epstein after the paedophile’s conviction. Calls for Starmer to resign have abated in part because of Morgan McSweeney’s decision to quit his job as Chief of Staff instead. McSweeney has been the centre of attention regarding a separate and very different set of files – ‘The Labour Party Files’ which, according to Paul Holden’s best-seller The Fraud, name McSweeney as the front-man of a ruthless, right wing political campaign that used dirty tricks to undermine a Corbyn led swing to the political left.
Other countries are navigating their own political scandals too. In France, ex government minister Jack Lang and his daughter Caroline are under investigation for tax fraud in relation to connections with Epstein whilst in Norway where the former PM, Thorbjørn Jagland, has been charged with gross corruption for misappropriating public money including for trips to visit Epstein.
For others there has been reputational damage. For example, Bill Clinton continues to live under the shadow of suspicion mostly because of multiple entries in flight logs to Epstein Island and compromising photographs of the former US President in a private pool, a hot tub, on a private plane and in a social setting. In each photo the identities of the women (or girls) he is socialising with are blacked out. Despite this, Clinton continued to claim he knew nothing about Epstein’s evil empire throughout a March 2026 closed-door testimony hearing to the US Oversight House Committee convened to investigate what powerful people knew and did.
Not just a few bad men
Future criminal proceedings against Clinton and others named in the files seem unlikely given that, almost immediately after the DOJ published their final release of files, the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche shared the opinion that “horrible photographs” and problematic emails don’t necessarily lead to prosecutions maintaining there are no plans to bring any additional charges relating to Epstein. Understandably there is outrage at this announcement including by some victims who have vowed to release a list of those who abused them. This is yet one more notch in the bedpost of disappointments for victims, some of who have outlined how their distress at how the DOJ have made no attempts to try and contact them despite them making themselves available.
However, whilst the sex trafficking ring exposed by the Epstein files has been rightly exposed as particularly egregious given the powerful and well-connected nature of the perpetrators it is important to position it within a much broader pattern of gender-based violence and with the much wider failures of criminal justice systems for all victims. Time and again, similar crimes are perpetrated by men who don’t hold the same sort of class power and privilege. A good example of this is the case against 51 men who, over several years, sexually assaulted Gisèle Pelicot in the French village of Mazan as she lay unconscious after being drugged by her husband, one of those accused. Most of these men worked in ordinary jobs including as firefighters, journalists, students, truck drivers, prison guards and nurses. Some perpetrators were in their twenties, others were pensioners. To this day, most of them maintain that they did nothing wrong. There are other examples too. In January 2026, a UK-based couple were sent to prison for ten years for operating a sex trafficking ring. One presumes that their clients were ordinary people’s husbands, brothers, fathers and friends.
These extreme examples sit within a broader context where, according to the UN, one in three women and girls will at some point in their lives, be denied safety, security and/or financial and psychological independence by a male perpetrator that they know. Even in a small country like Ireland, hardly a day goes by without reports of horrendous crimes. On the 16 January 2026, the day I wrote the first draft of this piece, a man was sentenced for pouring boiling water on this wife then hitting her with a claw hammer, another was jailed for 13 years for sexually assaulting the teenage sisters of his girlfriend, another had his sentence for coercively controlling his wife increased and a man was sentenced for sexually assaulting his four year old grandchild. These are examples that made it to the courts, most male violence against women does not get that far.
Given this context, should we be surprized that, although Guiffre first formally accused Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of rape in 2014, it would take a civil case for her to receive any justice. She never got justice for the abuses she endured from family members and friends, all of which she details in her posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl (2025).
Instead, Guiffre, and all victims of sexual assault, are met with, cultural silences and a legal system that is not only complicit in its protection of powerful men, but which relies on, misogynistic myths about sexual assault including that someone should behave in a particular way before, during and after an assault.
Given the recognizable traumas many victims experience in seeking justice through the criminal justice system, none of us should be surprised that recent research found that over seventy percent of victims of sexual violence did not report the crimes against them to the police. This should come as no surprise given that according to recent statistics in the same jurisdiction as few as just over a fifth of sexual offences reported resulted in a criminal conviction.
Shielded from prosecution
More broadly, many criminal justice systems allow statute of limitations rules that shield sex traffickers and others from prosecution by setting maximum limits after which legal proceedings cannot be initiated. And whilst the Epstein files highlight the extent to which criminal justice systems uphold a very particular image of who warrants investigation, they also gatekeep what crimes will be most likely to result in charges and custodial sentences. For example, compare the UK’s criminal justice system’s inaction over the Epstein files to its treatment of two Just Stop Oil protesters called Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland who, in 2024, were sentenced to two years in prison for pouring soup over Vincent van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers, even though there was no permanent damage done to the painting.
Broader than the criminal justice system, the Epstein files exist within a social context that continuously valorizes feminine coding such as rewarding compliance, punishing resistance, and shaping male expectations about how women should behave in social settings. This is a world where women are over twice as likely as men to experience sexual harassment as they move through the world. It might not be all men, but for many women and girls it is always men.
Importantly, many men who harass women, and also some that are violent towards women, genuinely believe that they are not doing anything wrong. This belief is fuelled, and their actions often authorized because of the ideology of male supremacy which is also upheld by the majority of men who do not harass women and girls or act violently towards them. This is because they don’t do nearly enough to call out those who do.
Corporate media also plays a key part in how sexual assault and harassment is perceived in today’s world including how many news outlets use passive language in describing the contents of the Epstein files. In my own internet searches, I came across articles that solely described Epstein as a ‘disgraced financier’, that talked about ‘unlawful sex with a minor’ and times when children were described as ‘underaged women’. Meanwhile, one BBC online article that failed to detail the seriousness of the allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor posed a question on how the royal family should best manage ‘The Andrew Problem’.
It is also remarkable how Donald Trump, already a convicted rapist, has escaped much negativity despite thousands of mentions in the files and being photographed with the sex offender several times. Instead, other journalists watched on and did nothing as Trump berated a female journalist for not smiling enough when she asked him about his involvement with Epstein. In the same week, one Irish radio current affairs show raised several reasons why the Taoiseach should not visit Trump in the White House in March 2026 but never mentioned his inclusion in the Epstein files as a cause for concern.
Some victims have also endured intensely negative media scrutiny, especially Virginia Giuffre who has detailed the personal impact of negative headlines and the constant media scrutiny. Instead of supporting and uplifting the testimonies of victims, certain media outlets are much more interested in reproducing compromising pictures of powerful men than they are about protecting victims or taking seriously the horrors of what was being inflicted on them.
But victim blaming, by which I mean shifting the responsibility from the perpetrator to the survivor for example by talking about a person’s past life or the clothes they were wearing is not new nor confined to this case nor is the absence of calls for arrests. Instead, the corporate media has a long record of routinely arresting and pressuring law enforcement to make arrests when it involves low-level misconduct and especially when those misdemeanours relate to working-class and minoritized ethnic groups.
Capitalism as the root cause
Outside of feminist circles, the fact that the vast majority of all men, regardless of their social circumstances, benefit in some way or another from the privilege of simply being male is not talked about nearly enough. Indeed, sometimes people on the left are uncomfortable any sort of narrative that point to the day-to-day interpersonal behaviours of most men as part of the reason why so much violence against women and girls goes unchecked. I for one have been disappointed, but unfortunately not shocked, to see some defence of Noam Chomsky’s particularly close relationship with the human trafficker despite reports he received €270,000 from an account linked to Epstein (something he has denied).
Asking men to become aware of their privilege and their actions does not negate a feminist analysis that squarely points to capitalism as the root cause of the subjugation of women. After all, how else do we continue an economic system that, according to the UN, needs women and girls to do 16 million hours of unpaid care work each day Yes many men do more and sometimes equal domestic and care labour, but this is asymmetric and it is still largely thought of as women’s work. Women also outnumber others in paid domestic and care labour, much of which is precarious.
To maintain this capitalist system, the status of women and girls must be undermined more broadly. This includes in every-day interpersonal relationships like heterosexual unions, but also within families more broadly, in the workplace and in other social environments. Meanwhile many of the terrible harms committed against mostly women and girls are also undermined by governments who sometimes express outrage about male violence against women but never commit enough money for safe houses and other services that are so desperately needed or for the adequate housing that would allow people to leave dangerous and unhealthy situations. And why is there never enough the sufficient political motivation to create and fund education programmes that might go some way in helping to combat growing levels of sexism and misogyny.
It is also the case that a rigorous analysis of the Epstein files would also insist on more scrutiny of international labour laws. This includes the blurred lines between the near equal prevalence of human trafficking for labour exploitation, and the extent to which many multinationals exploit their employees. I’m talking about the millions of people, mostly in the global South, who work in horrific conditions in sweat shops, farms, warehouses, factories and other environments where their bodies and their minds are also exploited and abused.
The Epstein files are horrific and those accountable should certainly be brought to justice. But they are also a gateway into talking about the relationship between everyday sexism and sexual assault and between patriarchy and capitalism more broadly. These are the ingredients that help keep most of the perpetrators of male violence against women unaccountable and not just those who happen to be in the spotlight now. Unless we understand misogyny as both interpersonal and structural and as something that exists across all corners of the globe, what chance do we stand of protecting those being trafficked right now, and those who will be trafficked in the future?
6th March 2026
(a shorter version of this same article was first published by Rebel News and can be found: here.)
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I am a professor in Adult Education and a feminist scholar based in Maynooth University in Ireland. If you like this blog then check out my book Rethinking Feminism in Ireland (2025, Bloomsbury) which is free to download at this link.
