For years, Jeffrey Epstein conjured a kind of grotesque fascination: the private island, the powerful friends, the whispered allegations. But focusing on the lurid details of his life and eventual death obscures the far more unsettling truth his case lays bare. Epstein’s story is not really about one man’s depravity. It is about a system – legal, cultural and institutional – engineered to protect the powerful through silence. His crimes thrived not because they were hidden, but because the people who knew were coerced, encouraged or more than willing to shut up.

Silence was not incidental to Epstein’s success. It was central to it. And in this, he was hardly unique.

The most revealing document in the entire Epstein saga is one of the first to come to light: the non-prosecution agreement the Department of Justice quietly signed in 2007, shielding Epstein from federal charges and insulating unnamed “co-conspirators”. The girls he had abused – minors the government was legally obligated to inform – were kept in the dark. The message was unmistakable: protecting powerful men mattered more than honoring the voices of the girls they harmed.

Even now, after Congress forced President Trump’s hand to........

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