leviathan-supersystem:

“He would find out they have no home, no car, that they need a place to live, and he would provide a place to live,’’ Edwards said. “He can get you to the best doctors. Sometimes he would do that and sometimes he wouldn’t do that, but the promise was real because as soon as you walk into his house and see there are legitimate cooks, chefs, and assistants, everybody catering to him — it gives this air of legitimacy. I mean, everybody in this whole entire mansion can’t possibly be running an illegal sex trafficking operation, right?”

Virginia Giuffre, who was recruited by Epstein when she was 16 and stayed with him until she was 19, said that Epstein promised “to fix” anything that was wrong in their lives, offering to pay for their education and help them with their careers — and he demonstrated that he had the power to accomplish that.

Then there were the enablers.

“There were doctors and psychiatrists and gynecologist visits. There were dentists who whitened our teeth. There was a doctor who gave me Xanax. What doctor in their right mind, who is supposed to protect their patients, gives girls and young women Xanax?’’ Giuffre said.

Ransome said at one point when she was on the verge of a breakdown Epstein sent her to a psychiatrist to whom she confided about the abuse. He did nothing except put her on lithium.

“I find it so funny with all these people, after Jeffrey was arrested, saying ‘we didn’t know — we didn’t see anything,’ ” Ransome said.

“Jeffrey was always surrounded by girls, always. And these weren’t normal girls. You could see it in our faces. … We were damaged, we were medicated. How can you sit in front of a group of girls with Jeffrey and say ‘we just didn’t know it’? You had to know.’’

“To hang out with him with any degree of regularity, you had to generally know what was going on. You had to know these are people that are in his life only for sexual purposes, and you have to wonder how voluntary it really was and how he was pulling it off,’’ Edwards said.

“If you were with him on one weekend and you are with him the next weekend, and it’s a whole different crew of females — some of which you clearly couldn’t tell were under 18 or over 18 — it’s just impossible to have been completely in the dark about what was actually happening. I think people turned a blind eye because they were getting his money or they really knew what was happening.’’

Over the past 10 years, Edwards has interviewed close to 100 of Epstein’s victims, estimating that about 30 to 40 of them were over the age 18.

“You can take the story we learned of Epstein back to 1993 or ‘94, and even then he had more of a type, where if he had his preference, he would want, for sexual purposes, the age range of 14, 15, 16. That’s just what he preferred,’’ Edwards said. “But also, to be seen in public, that wasn’t acceptable, even as brazen as he was. So throughout the last 25 years, he’s also always had women that exceed that age range, up to, say, 23.’’

What made Epstein’s process a crime was that he used fraud and coercion, two of the key elements of the crime of sex trafficking, to lure his victims into commercial sex acts. Edwards said neither Epstein nor his recruiters were ever direct about the fact that he wanted sex. In fact, Epstein preferred to manipulate them into believing he was going to be their savior.

Epstein’s “air of legitimacy” extended well beyond the cooks and maids who worked in his various homes in New York, Palm Beach, New Mexico, Paris and on his island off the coast of St. Thomas. To his victims, it was also all the well-educated, wealthy and renowned scientists, philanthropists, arts patrons and politicians, including a former president, Epstein surrounded himself with that gave him both credibility and, to them, power so fearsome that he could use it to ruin their lives — and in some cases, did.

Ransome was convinced that Epstein was such good friends with former President Bill Clinton and current President Donald Trump that she believed it when Epstein and Maxwell threatened to harm her if she didn’t comply with their demands to have sex.[…]  Ransome said it was “common knowledge’’ that Epstein was friends with them.