By Alison Macklin, Director of Public Affairs

Published Date: 2/26/26

The release of the Epstein files should be a moment for collective reckoning. Instead, they are exposing something far more uncomfortable: in the United States, outrage about sexual exploitation has always been selective. Around the world, authorities are reopening investigations tied to Epstein’s network and urging survivors to come forward. In the United States, however, accountability has been slow, incomplete, and deeply unsatisfying. And while the Department of Justice struggles to deliver meaningful consequences in one of the most notorious sex trafficking scandals in modern history, federal attention is increasingly consumed by culture-war fights over sexuality and education. That disconnect is not just frustrating. It reveals a pattern that is centuries old.

Long before Jeffrey Epstein built his network, the United States was already home to one of the largest systems of sexual exploitation in human history: chattel slavery. Black women and girls were routinely bought, sold, raped, and forced to bear children for profit. We call it slavery, but it was also organized sexual violence and trafficking on a massive scale. This history matters because exploitation in America has consistently targeted those with the least power and the fewest protections.

Today, Black and Brown girls and women remain disproportionately vulnerable to trafficking and sexual exploitation. Indigenous women and girls face some of the highest rates of violence in the country. Survivors and advocates have been sounding the alarm for years. None of this began with Epstein. And none of it ended with him.

What makes the Epstein case explosive is not just the horrific abuse itself but who was allegedly in the room. Wealth. Influence. Global elites. Suddenly, the public is forced to confront a reality many survivors already understood: systems meant to protect young people can fail spectacularly when powerful people are involved. Years later, survivors have watched documents surface, names circulate, and questions mount while meaningful accountability remains limited. That reality sends a dangerous message about whose harm triggers urgency and whose suffering is treated as background noise.

At the very moment the country should be laser-focused on preventing exploitation, political energy has shifted elsewhere. Across the country, policymakers claiming to “protect children” are aggressively targeting comprehensive sex education — one of the few evidence-based tools shown to help young people recognize grooming, understand consent, and report abuse. This is not a coincidence. For years, well-organized political movements, many aligned with Christian nationalist ideology, have pushed to restrict or replace comprehensive sex education and strip classrooms of discussions about consent, healthy relationships, and inclusion.

At SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, we track these trends nationwide, and the pattern is unmistakable. If the goal is truly to protect young people, undermining one of the most effective prevention tools makes no sense. Comprehensive sex education teaches young people that their bodies belong to them. It gives them the language to recognize manipulation, coercion, and grooming. It builds pathways to report harm to trusted adults. Predators depend on silence, confusion, and shame. Evidence-based sex education disrupts all three.

We like to believe we are more enlightened than the past — more protective, more just. But the Epstein files pose a hard question: if we truly prioritized prevention and survivor safety, would our national focus look the way it does right now? Protecting young people requires more than outrage. It requires transparent investigations and real accountability for predators, including those with power and privilege. It requires sustained investment in survivor support and community-based prevention strategies. And it requires universal access to comprehensive, medically accurate sex education.

The Epstein scandal did not create America’s exploitation crisis. It exposed it. The real test is whether we respond by strengthening the systems that protect young people or by continuing political battles that leave them more vulnerable. History is watching — and so are the survivors who deserve more than our temporary attention.