'I’m a survivor of sexual violence. I've seen powerful men rally around a predator like they're protecting a mate'

Sara Robinson is a former Cardiff councillor and a multi-award-winning PR consultant(Image: Mike Hall)

I’ve been watching the Epstein files coverage with a familiar knot in my stomach. Not because the revelations shock me (none of this is news to women). But because we’re talking about literally everyone except the people who were abused.

What it means for Trump. Mandelson’s future. The artist formerly known as Prince Andrew. It’s a masterclass in looking the wrong way, and I reckon that’s exactly the point.

Because if we actually talked about what this scandal is fundamentally about – the systematic abuse of women and girls by influential men who thought they were untouchable – we’d have to confront some deeply uncomfortable truths.

I know this playbook all too well. I’m a survivor of sexual violence. I watched this behaviour unfold up close; powerful men rallying around a predator like they were protecting a mate who’d had one pint too many, not someone credibly accused of abusing their position. Careers protected, reputations laundered, victims quietly undermined.

The machinery doesn’t just live in shadowy cabals at the upper echelons of society; it operates in plain sight. It’s there in the whisper networks women build to survive – the unwritten maps of which rooms not to be alone in, which colleagues to avoid at the Christmas party, who to avoid........

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