The Real Crisis Behind the Epstein Emails
- Jillian Aurora
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
When the recent Epstein emails surfaced, I expected an appropriate response to the gross exploitation of minors by powerful men. But what I've seen in public reaction wasn’t shock or a demand for justice.
It was minimization.
"He wasn't a pedofile... he was just into the barely legal types... he liked 15-year-old girls."
"He wasn't into 8-year-olds... he liked the very young teen types..."
"There's a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old."
The Megyn Kelly's commentary reframed adult interest in teenage girls as “normal male behavior,” or “not true predatory behavior unless she’s a "real" child.”
Then I heard more echoes of these defenses - things I never expected to hear as part of mainstream discourse.
"Why do we believe it's wrong to have sex with teens?"
"Maybe the age of consent is too high."
"Some men are just attracted to younger women."
These are words I recognize.
These are words that stop the air in my lungs.
These ideas touch my ears with haunting familiarity.
These are the misplaced sympathies that keeps child marriage legal in the United States today.
And most people don’t realize how the belief systems that groomers and predatory adults rely on circulate in esteemed and respected social circles of America.
"But she's so mature for her age..."
When someone insists that it’s normal for an older man to be attracted to a girl who is “almost 18,” or that teenage girls are “mature for their age,” or that a 30-year-old man courting a 16-year-old is “not ideal, but circumstantially ok,” they are not offering harmless opinions.
They are exposing the cultural infrastructure that makes child marriage possible.
Because the logic is identical:
Adult male desire for youth is natural.
Teen girls are responsible for managing it (or rejecting it).
Parents or patriarchal authority can decide when a girl is “ready.”
If a girl is post-puberty, she is eligible.
This is exactly how predatory abuse becomes normalized.
This is how socially sanctioned grooming blends into daily life until it stops looking like grooming at all.
And this is the same logic that I experienced in my own childhood.
I Didn’t Grow Up Around Billionaires — I Grew Up Around Bystanders
I grew up in religious extremism that openly taught that girls became “marriageable” at 12 — the age they could biologically carry a pregnancy and the age I was told "women" married in the Bible.
I remember my parents encouraging a 26-year-old man at church to make private phone calls to me because he was interested in me. I was 14. I was lucky enough to dodge that bullet because he was deployed shortly after the connection began.
A man in his thirties was encouraged to build a relationship with me when I was 16 — because he was a respected Marine and a cop. It didn't matter that he was 33. After emailing me until I turned 18, he began calling. Thankfully, he was several states away and my extreme beliefs scared him away.
When I was 12, my family traveled to Texas to visit a couple we idealized for their "godly courtship." Their relationship had begun when the girl was 13 and the man was 26. He asked her father’s permission and her father told him to wait until he determined she was "ready."
They married at 16. When I visited them, they had seven children.
No one raised an eyebrow.
It wasn't abuse because "God" had sanctioned the union.
She didn't need protection or intervention because "she was mature for her age."
It was considered an ideal to be modelled.
So when adults today shrug at adult men showing interest in teenage girls, I don’t hear innocence.
I hear the same abandonment and betrayal that impacted my childhood.
The same excuses that shielded men from any accountability.
The same narratives that exposed and pressured girls to be complicit in their own exploitation.
The same cultural scripts that enforce real U.S. laws that make it easy to exploit girls.
The Reality is the United States Still Legally Allows Child Marriage
This is not rhetoric nor just my experience. These are the facts:
• Nearly 300,000 minors have been legally married in the U.S. since 2000
The total through 2021 is around 315,000.
• Most of these marriages were between minor girls and adult men
Roughly 86% of underage spouses were girls.
• Some U.S. states documented marriages involving children as young as 10–14
These cases are rare (1% between 2000-2015), but they happen and are legally recorded.
• Child marriage is still legal in more than half of U.S. states
Only 12 states have fully banned it.
• Parental or judicial consent often enables adult–minor marriages
Meaning the same adults who minimize and defend this practice are often the ones authorizing the marriage.
So when commentators in the news or online normalize adult attraction to minors, they aren’t expressing an innocent and outlying opinion.
They’re describing what the law already protects and permits.
Minimization Is Not Innocent — It Is Collaboration
More than secrecy, predators rely on plausibility.
They need a culture in which people defend their behavior for them:
“She is mature for her age.”
“Teens aren’t really children.”
“It’s not Ideal, but he's a good guy.”
“Men can’t help what they’re attracted to.”
“It’s not like she was 12.”
“It's happened throughout history; stop being dramatic.”
As a child, I accepted these lines. I was programed to believe them myself. I was even proud to be one of those "mature for her age women." Had a "qualified" predator showed up, I don't have a doubt in my mind my life would have looked very different. That truth still chills me today.
Hearing this same failure to stand up for children enrages me for that younger version of me and for all girls being exploited. It's indefensible.
This isn’t coincidence.
This is continuity.
Epstein’s behavior didn’t erupt from nowhere — it blossomed from a culture that still debates whether a 40-year-old man being “into” a 16-year-old is problematic.
A culture where parents, pastors, judges, and legislators have continuously upheld systems that protect men’s access to adolescent girls.
A culture where, for many, the horror only becomes “real” once it involves billionaires and juicy scandals — not when it involves ordinary families, churches, or state marriage laws.
Why I’m Writing This Now
I’ve not written about these details of my life before.
I’m writing them now because I want people to understand that we cannot minimize this behavior. And, I cannot witness it without standing up for the children without a voice - the same way I deserved someone to stand up for me.
So when I see:
The same language that excused my own childhood grooming.
The same ideology that maintains U.S. child-marriage laws.
The same belief system that keeps girls vulnerable and exploitable.
The same excuse structure predators rely on in every community.
I can't stay quiet.
Until we confront the cultural worldview that treats adult attraction to minors as “normal-ish” and teenage girls as fair game, nothing about this will change.
The Epstein case is horrifying — but the everyday conversation defending predatory norms is the haunting part.
Too many of us lived the quiet, everyday version of this long before it made headlines. Too many are still waiting for the adults in their lives to prioritize their protection over the men who seek to harm them.
Sources
Unchained At Last — Child Marriage Statistics
CHILD USA — 2021 Report on Child Marriage in the U.S.
UNICEF USA — Child Marriage in the U.S.
Tahirih Justice Center — Forced & Child Marriage in the U.S.
Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law — Legal Analysis of U.S. Child Marriage
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