I sat down to write an analysis of the former Trump administration’s environmental policies. Instead, my fingers typed a tale of Donald Trump and little girls. If that sounds disturbing, that’s because it is. Fair warning.
If you’d rather stick with the environmental implications of another Trump presidency, I can strongly recommend Jason Anthony’s thorough piece entitled “Over the Cliff,” at Field Guide to the Anthropocene here on Substack.
I plan to return to my usual nature-focused work next week.
—
I am a woman, and I am angry.
No, I am furious. I am incandescent with rage, I am a bonfire.
I am having an emotion. It’s one good girls are not allowed to express.
Because I am a woman, then, my body turns anger inward, an aikido maneuver against my soul.
I get a migraine. Each photon of light, and each sound wave, enter their relevant aperture, tiny stilettos to my cerebellum.
I don’t just get a migraine, not really. I become a migraine. Black pulses of pain ooze downward from the top of my head, coalescing in a corset of nausea around my midsection. I can’t breathe well. I vomit for hours, until my stomach feels like it’s the next thing that will come up my throat.
I finally pass out somewhere, sweaty and shaking. My body has kept the score.
When I wake, I smell bad, but my spirit feels cleansed. Washed clean, but also, thinner. Like Bilbo, like butter scraped over too much bread.
I stand with my forehead against the shower wall, willing the warm water to save me, from my anger, from my pain. To thicken my soul.
—
I’ve just re-read the complaint in Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. I haven’t looked at it in eight years, but with one of the named defendants dead and the other one up for the American presidency, I thought maybe I should give it another look.
I first read it in 2016, several months before that year’s presidential election. My daughter was a toddler, I was a research attorney working for two judges in a civil trial court. Day on day, week on week, I swam in the muck of all the ways humans steal from, cheat, and generally fuck each other over.
The worst were the family squabbles, the absolute vindictiveness between siblings who had the misfortune to inherit joint property, or a family business, or who took it in turns to neglect and steal from an aging parent.
Luckily for me, I suppose, I worked in civil trials, rather than on the criminal side of the courthouse, where things took a remarkably darker turn.
One day in June 2016, I got notice of a new case filed in the federal court for the Southern District of New York. I printed it out and took it home to read after work.
—
I am having trouble typing these words. My fingernails are lengthening into claws, and I can’t sit in my desk chair because my tailbone has stretched into a lashing, tawny puma tail.
I’m a cougar now, and not the one you’re thinking of. No, I am the one who leaps upon her prey from above, snapping its spine with one bite, hauling it in my mouth up into a tree where I will stash that limp deer to feed my children.
—
[Please be aware that what follows is extremely difficult reading. If you able, please read every word. Of course, not everyone will be able. Of course.
But if you can face this, don’t allow yourself to skim. If you elide parts of it, your brain may later think, Oh, maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was just youthful shenanigans, or something. A good judge is known to be an extremely close reader, to keep in mind each word of a plaintiff’s allegations through perhaps years of trials and appeals. The truth of these words was never adjudicated: they never had their hearing in court.]
In her sworn allegations before a federal court, under penalty of perjury, the plaintiff in Jane Doe v. Trump and Epstein relates the events of her 13th summer thus (my emphasis added):
7. Plaintiff was subject to acts of rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, duress, false imprisonment, and threats of death and/or serious bodily injury by the Defendants that took place at several parties during the summer months of 1994. The parties were held by Defendant Epstein at a New York City residence that was being used by Defendant Epstein at 9 E. 71st St. in Manhattan. During this period, Plaintiff was a minor of age 13 and was legally incapable under New York law of consenting to sexual intercourse and the other sexual contacts detailed herein. NY Penal L § 130.05(3)(a).
[. . .]
9. Plaintiff was enticed by promises of money and a modeling career to attend a series of parties, with other similarly situated minor females, held at a New York City residence that was being used by Defendant Jeffrey Epstein. At least four of the parties were attended by Defendant Trump. Exhs. A and B. On information and belief, by this time in 1994, Defendant Trump had known Defendant Epstein for seven years (New York, 10/28/02, “’I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,’' Trump booms from a speakerphone. ‘He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life.’”), and knew that Plaintiff was then just 13 years old. Exhs. A and B.
10. Defendant Trump initiated sexual contact with Plaintiff at four different parties. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant Trump, Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted. Exhs. A and B.
11. Immediately following this rape, Defendant Trump threatened Plaintiff that, were she ever to reveal any of the details of the sexual and physical abuse of her by Defendant Trump, Plaintiff and her family would be physically harmed if not killed. Exhs. A and B.
12. Defendant Epstein had sexual contact with Plaintiff at two of the parties. The second sexual encounter with Defendant Epstein took place after Plaintiff had been raped by Defendant Trump. Defendant Epstein forced himself upon Plaintiff and proceeded to rape her anally and vaginally despite her loud pleas to stop. Defendant Epstein then attempted to strike Plaintiff about the head with his closed fists while he angrily screamed at Plaintiff that he, Defendant Epstein, rather than Defendant Trump, should have been the one who took Plaintiff’s virginity, before Plaintiff finally managed to break away from Defendant Epstein. Exhs. A and B.
13. The threats of violence against Plaintiff and her family continued, this time from Defendant Epstein, who again reiterated that Plaintiff was not to reveal any of the details of his sexual and physical abuse of her or else, specifically, Plaintiff and her family would be seriously physically harmed, if not killed. Exhs. A and B.
—
In her sworn declaration in support of the allegations of the complaint, Jane Doe stated:
9. Both Defendants had let me know that each was a very wealthy, powerful man and indicated that they had the power, ability and means to carry out their threats. Indeed, Defendant Trump stated that I shouldn't ever say anything if I didn't want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that I had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having my whole family killed.
—
The remarkable thing about this case is that another witness filed a sworn statement corroborating Jane Doe’s. Remarkable, of course, in that rape is rarely witnessed by a third party who’s willing to testify, much less by a woman.
Tiffany Doe admitted to having been employed by Epstein to recruit underage, vulnerable girls under pretense of providing a network for a modeling career. She also stated that her job duties required her to “supervise” all encounters between Epstein’s clients and the girls:
6. I persuaded the Plaintiff to attend a series of parties of Mr. Epstein that took place during the summer of 1994. I told her that, if she would join me at the parties, she would be introduced to people who could get her into the modeling profession and she would be paid for attending.
7. It was at these series of parties that I personally witnessed the Plaintiff being forced to perform various sexual acts with Donald J. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were advised that she was 13 years old.
8. I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop.
9. I personally witnessed the one occasion where Mr. Trump forced the Plaintiff and a 12-year-old female named Maria perform oral sex on Mr. Trump and witnessed his physical abuse of both minors when they finished the act.
—
What I want for Jane Doe, instead of the terrors described in her court filings, is that she had spent her 13th summer riding bikes with her friends, maybe bestowing a kiss or two, then forgetting she was a teenager sometimes and making up plays for her stuffed animals. I want the same for Maria’s 12th summer. And for all the summers of all those little girls whose childhoods ended in Jeffrey Epstein’s houses of horror.
Jane Doe withdrew her federal suit several days before the November 2016 election. How could she??
Well.
“Defendant Trump threatened Plaintiff that, were she ever to reveal any of the details of the sexual and physical abuse of her by Defendant Trump, Plaintiff and her family would be physically harmed if not killed.”
—
These men did not rape these girls despite their young age. They did so because of it. They knew they were just little girls, and they liked it.
They know, I mean. I should use present tense. They like it.
Jeffrey Epstein named his private jet service the Lolita Express.
He and his longterm partner and madam (and sometimes lover) Ghislaine Maxwell flew powerful men (and some women) in his aircraft to Epstein’s Caribbean island or his New York domicile for his famous parties.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s friend said she asked her what she thought of all Epstein’s underage girls, and Ghislaine replied, “They’re nothing, these girls. They are trash.”
—
I’ll leave this fact here without comment: in the summer of 1994, when Jane Doe was 13 and Maria was 12, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka was 13.
—
I’ve started researching our ancestry, my daughter’s and mine. I know, nothing is more boring than a person who wants to tell you what they found on Ancestry.com. (“Turns out my great-great-great-uncle Hezekiah once ran a general store in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and you can still see his headstone in the cemetery behind the used car lot out on the edge of town! Wow!”)
Actually, the older I get, the more I think those Uncle Hezekiah stories are pretty interesting.
But I’ve been thinking about mitochondrial DNA, the kind you only get from your mother, and that she only got from her mother, and so on. For animals, our mitochondria are life itself, and they are the gift given to her children by every human mother in an unbroken line to a time before we could speak, or write.
I am tracing our mitochondria, so my daughter will know who before me, and my mother, and my mother’s mother, gave her these little engines of life. And so, if she has a daughter, she can extend the line.
I’ve hit a wall with my seven-greats maternal grandmother. Jeanne Piron was born in 1760 in North Carolina. Of her mother, I’ve found no record, but there are hints that I need to search the birth and marriage rolls for Chartres, France. That’s a project for another day.
There are records of four possible spouses for Ms. Jeanne Piron (later anglicized to Jane Pyron).
I hope she had four husbands.
I mean, I hope she strode boldly along the dirt streets of Caswell, North Carolina, to the mercantile where she placed her dry-goods order in a voice tinged with her mother’s French accent. Bewitching the local men, maybe she was even a bit of a cougar. Maybe she had a round face, black hair, and black eyes, like my grandmother did.
Maybe one or two of her husbands fought and died in the American War of Independence. I hope she had children to remember each of them by. I know she had at least one, my six-greats grandmother Polly.
—
I wonder if Jeanne Piron had migraines too. If she did, she would perhaps have called them megrims, an archaic word for an agony that mostly strikes women.
I don’t know what Jeanne Piron would have made of this nation we’ve become. Maybe, back in France, her mother would have told her it was normal for men in power, even heads of state, to rape little girls. And maybe, probably, it was. But I can imagine Jeanne hoping for a better future for her daughter Polly, and for all her granddaughters down the line.
I hope we can deliver that. I hope we can muster the strength to choose leaders who don’t think our little girls are trash.
—
My mind has a tendency to minimize horrors like Jane Doe’s case (and Maria’s, and all the children unnamed and unheard that suffer at the hands of these men). It’s a defense mechanism.
It can be easy to think, in regard to Jane Doe’s case: well, that was maybe a one-off. And anyway, her allegations were never proven in court.
I invite you to consider the following:
List of 26 credible allegations of assault or harassment, all or most of which occurred in public places or were otherwise observable by others
The findings of E. Jean Carroll’s suit
The original complaint filed in Jane Doe
I invite you to consider that sometimes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Ghislaine Maxwell, now incarcerated for sex trafficking, was Jeffrey Epstein’s business associate and madam. Here is the Vanity Fair piece from which I pulled the quote calling Epstein’s child victims “trash.” Jeffrey Epstein, of course, was found hanged in his jail cell before standing trial.
Their longtime friend, Donald Trump, is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party in the 2024 presidential election.
—
THANK YOU to all who read this. I know the courage that required. It was horrific beyond my ability to convey; I guess Jane Doe's words were enough. More than enough. If it wasn't clear, I believe her.
I wanted to reply to each and every one of the comments below, but instead, I am just dropping in here to say I read your comments and I appreciated so very much that you took the time to read Jane's words (and a few of mine) and to leave your thoughts.
Writing this post has made me physically and emotionally ill. Before writing it, I researched Trump/Epstein/Maxwell deeply; there was a LOT of horrific detail that is now in my brain, but did not make it in to this post. Much of it had to do with sexual abuse, but a rather large amount of it had to do with power structures and impunity. I am thinking even more about structural rot in the American political/capitalist system now that it appears certain we'll have a Trump candidacy, and I don't like what I'm seeing.
I am going to pull back from engaging with this post/topic for a bit, but there's a dark stew burbling in my subconscious mind, so I am certain some of these themes will re-emerge over the chaotic months to come.
Thank you all for caring about these girls, and the earth. And now, I am headed to the redwood forest for a hike. As they say, "The mountains are calling. Don't let it go to voicemail!" 💚🌲
Excruciating