How American society shields perpetrators of child sexual abuse

A human rights researcher examines the wave of public ignorance claims that followed the Justice Department's January 2026 release of Epstein case documents, when billionaires, politicians, heads of state and academics insisted they knew nothing of his trafficking network despite his 2008 plea deal on underage prostitution charges.

Drawing on genocide research and sociologist Stanley Cohen's framework of literal, interpretive and implicatory denial, the piece traces how both individual perpetrators and entire communities avoid accountability. It cites Bush-era torture denials, Epstein's own minimizing of his crimes as mere 'offending,' and the treatment of Larry Nassar's gymnastics victims as parallel cases where institutions protected their own standing over victims' truths.

The analysis argues that communities calculate the cost of believing victims against the cost of reordering power structures that privilege the accused, and choose the former with grim regularity.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.