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Paedophilia is the term that needs definition. There have been some extreme claims of 12-14 year olds being raped, but it seems in the main to be more "underage by American law" which is "not 18 yet" (in other countries, age of consent is 16, for example).
So he was operating off "all men are attracted to hot young things" and throwing parties where there would always be a supply of attractive young women to pay attention to the guests and to act as arm candy. Pimping them out? Yeah, that's the big question here. If you're at one of these parties and the attractive young woman expresses interest in being your one night stand, do you take that as "this is a sex worker operated by my host" or the general "yeah attractive young women do throw themselves at me because I'm rich/important"?
Epstein was a creep, and he was recruiting vulnerable young women to exploit, and he probably wasn't adverse to gathering intelligence/kompromat on the people he invited to those parties as blackmail material and insurance. Epstein himself probably liked them young, and the younger the better (see the rumours about him as a teacher at that private school). But was he deliberately pimping out underage girls to people who knew they weren't 18/17/16? That is the entire rationale for the scandal and the conspiracy theories and the "he didn't really commit suicide" allegations, and that is what remains to be proven.
Similar cases of accusations of child sex abuse against high profile people in the UK have been tainted by fraudsters such as Carl Beech and by an atmosphere of over-correction, where police forces swung from dismissing accusations against celebrities to taking prosecutions on the basis of flimsy accusations which later collapsed.
Things such as the following - how credible are they? Could they have happened? Were they just people trying to jump on the bandwagon like Beech did in the UK?
They should be able to find out if 12 year old French triplets flew in and flew out of Florida, but did anyone do so?
Actually, the age of consent in America varies by state, from 16 to 18. The myth that it's a flat 18 across the country is due to the fact that virtually all television and movies are made in California, where it is indeed 18.
That's another odd thing about this case, the operation regularly too great pains to hold their events in places where the age of concent was 18 (Florida and the USVI). It's odd that potentially two people from states where they are above the age of consent were brought together in a state or territory where the age of concent is 18 specifically to have carnal relations.
Not odd at all? If the whole point is blackmail, the of course you move the operation to where it is illegal.
Exactly! It's odd if we accept OPs framing that Epstein is a simple conman.
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