The question in the Epstein case: At what age must one be to know one's own mind?

For most of human history, if a person reached the age of 30 that was considered to be an “advanced” age; only some of the nobility and other privileged classes who lived in more comfortable conditions could expect to live longer. Because of low life expectancy and high infant mortality, an adolescent was no longer considered as such once he or she hit puberty; they were considered de facto “adults” at that time. Only those from the upper classes could afford to “wait” a few years longer. This only really changed upon the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and the dramatic medical breakthroughs in combatting various diseases, which allowed longer life expectancies for even the working poor.  

This brings me to issue of when does a person start to know their own mind. Do you remember when you were 14 years old—when most “kids” are freshmen in high school? Even at the age of 13? When I was in 8^th grade at a Catholic grade school, as “older” students my classmates didn’t view themselves as “kids” anymore. They thought, acted and behaved as their parents did, or were allowed to. All knew the value of money, and a few had part-time summer jobs when they did not receive “allowances” from their parents (I never did). My adolescence and teenage years were for the most part a miserable affair, mainly because my introverted nature (and constant fear of punishment on the slightest whim) was “interpreted” and acted upon as if it was evidence of delinquency—an “easy” inference because of my “ethnic” appearance even within my own family. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t have the capacity for independent thought, or was incapable of finding ways to mitigate my circumstances. If my mother thought I was taking advantage of a brief period of “kindness” when I asked for a cookie, I would bake my own batch—until the family came back home unexpectedly one day, and as before I was forced to spend evenings in the barn until I was called in for bedtime. 

Anyways, if you try “explaining” to a 13 or 14 year old in this social media world that they don’t know their own mind, they will probably tell you to mind your own business. It is only the flick of a switch later when an “innocent child” is old enough to carry a gun into a war zone—and not necessarily a “war” in another country. “Kids” have even been charged as adults when they kill with guns in the commission of a crime. Most people are inclined to say that they are too young to know the difference between right and wrong, but if children reach their teenage years without knowing the difference, who is to blame for that? They should know by then, because if they don’t, that means that there will be serious problems with continuance of civilization as we know it.

I have to tell you that while many issues—race, the environment, gun control, and political malfeasance—were as alive 50 years ago as they are today if not even more so, certain other elements of social discourse have changed dramatically since I was young, especially in regard to the “special victims” movement. I purchased all six seasons of Time-Life’s release of Laugh-In, a popular show which ran on television from1967 to 1972, and I have to admit that contrary to what more jaded viewers today may think, it was astonishingly more “adult” than what people see on network television today not just in its political and social commentary, but in its frequent use of sexual “innuendo,” which back in a more open-minded time was considered fair game for mirth. However, the so-called “sexual revolution,” it seems to me, only lasted as long as Laugh-In was on the air, before the feminist “revolution” set in and “sex” became something of a crime, depending upon one’s interpretations and what their motivations are as much as the actual facts—particularly when people with fame, power and especially money are involved.

But we live in a nation of laws, and when it comes to questions of maturity or self-awareness there is no distinction when those under the age of 18 are involved. This is not always evenly applied; boys as young as 12 or 13 who have had sexual relationships with adult women are generally considered more “lucky” than “victims,” even though adult women are obviously taking advantage of their natural “curiosity.” Some of these women are allowed to believe that they did not do anything “wrong.” Mary Kay Letourneau is only one of many recent examples, and in another famous case, actress Gloria Grahame (best known as the “bad girl” of film noir) didn’t seem to have suffered overmuch after she had sex with her 13-year-old stepson Anthony Ray (who did go on record to confirm what had been only a “rumor”), and a few years after the end of her marriage to his father, director Nicolas Ray, married him—since they were no longer technically “related.”  

But when teenage girls or even “young women” are involved, another switch is turned on. The New York Times has printed a story concerning the judge in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal case allowing his accusers to tell their stories in open court. Those who were legally underage were indeed victims not just because that is what the law says they are, but their lack of awareness of the realities of the world did not allow them to take a “holistic” view of how society deems the situation they found themselves in—which is what we must say in order to deny them the ability to say that they knew exactly what they were doing, even as just teenagers.

Am I being slightly “cynical” here?  Why not? Are the accusers completely “blameless” in their own victimhood? The Times notes that Epstein and some of his “employees” procured teenage girls and young women for money—meaning they were paid to “perform” either with him or with his “guests.” Furthermore

He then engaged in sex acts with the girls during naked massage sessions, prosecutors said, paying them hundreds of dollars in cash each time. Mr. Epstein also encouraged some of his victims to recruit additional girls who were then abused, allowing him to maintain ‘a steady supply of new victims to exploit,’ the indictment had charged.

Am I the only person who doesn’t see something “amiss” here? Certainly had he lived to stand trial, Epstein’s attorneys would have pounced on what I am gleaning here, successfully or not. Did these teenage girls and “young women” actually see themselves as “victims” at the time, or in fact did they allow themselves to be “persuaded” to do it for the money? They were being paid hundreds of dollars for each “performance,” probably more money than they ever saw in their life at the time, and that just maybe it was not all that hard to “persuade” a friend by letting her in on the cash cow they found, regardless of what was asked of them to do. Were these “persuaders” not themselves complicit in what is being charged as sex-trafficking? They couldn’t have been completely uncomprehending of what they were doing and why—especially since they were not “forced” to do it.

Insofar as the Epstein case is concerned, the “MeToo” movement and its ilk has allowed at least a few women to re-interpret what they did and call themselves “victims.” In this case the law says they are victims, at least those who were legally underage; but in general did they actually see themselves as such at time? Or is this hypocritical after-the-fact remorse that they were on the wrong side of the current gender politics debate? It can’t be any more hypocritical than all those women who have accused Donald Trump but have never filed criminal or civil actions against him; if they were not such hypocrites, Trump’s name would be in the waste bin of history where it belongs, instead of wreaking havoc on the whole country.