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I don’t know what compelled me to search for the name of my college in the Epstein files this week, but doing so brought me closer to the sordid affair than I ever thought possible.
I graduated from Eugene Lang College in New York City in 2011. It’s a small liberal arts school that never had more than 1,500 students during my tenure. My search turned up about a dozen messages from Epstein’s Gmail account. The sender’s name was hidden behind a gray block, redacted by the Justice Department to protect the identity of a victim. But, in typical Trump administration carelessness, they failed to redact the email signature identifying her as a Eugene Lang student.
Her email exchange with Epstein happened a few years after I graduated. But her class year of 2014 suggests that our time at the college may have overlapped. It’s possible we passed one another in the hallways or sat side by side in a crowded lecture hall.
There’s a sad sweetness to her emails. She calls Epstein “Sneaky,” a nickname used by several of his close friends and acquaintances. She tells him about her English as a second language course and how she’s looking forward to an upcoming visit from her parents. In many of the emails, she asks to use an American Express card to buy clothes or groceries. Others arrange times to meet at Epstein’s apartment. All of his replies are curt and cold, rarely more than a single word: “Yes” or “ok.”
This discovery pulled me down a rabbit hole of similar emails from other girls. In one, Epstein advises a young woman to “watch some p*rn, learn some new tricks.” In another, a girl details her afternoon meeting with an unnamed man who was impressed by how outgoing she was for being so young. “Very good,” Epstein writes back.
One of the most upsetting emails I read was from 2015. A girl excitedly tells Epstein that she got a new job. His response is angry and punitive. He orders her to return the clothes he bought her and tells her that she owes him $800,000. His net worth at the time was $600 million.
Epstein understood the terrifying power his wealth gave him, particularly over the defenseless and young. He exploited that power on an unimaginably horrific scale, but his tactics are familiar to anyone who has been abused by their boss or issued a predatory loan. This feels like a story that Democrats should be telling.
Learning that there may be less than six degrees of separation between me and Epstein has been chilling. But it’s also been a reminder that there are more of us than them. |
