We are spiritual beings having a human experience. When someone ignores this, thinking you are just a body, detachable from spirit like a shadow, you demean the core sacred center of the life of this person, a multifaceted human being. Making them into a thing. Disposable, like kleenex. To take lovemaking and turn it into a crass use of someone’s body, often not even to give pleasure, and certainly not intending that this person receive tenderness, compassion, or love, but simply to exercise power over them, ensnared like a trapped animal, is extremely destructive. Often it is exacerbated by even more violence and cruelty. For many of us, it would instinctively be better to be murdered than raped. Rape incurs deep shame, feeling abased. It never goes away. The scars last for decades, even in healthy relationships; sexual abuse suddenly may rear its ugly roots of torment and emotional scarring. The body remembers, and shrivels down into fear and wanting to find safety, even after successful therapy. As a gynecologist, I have known this, I have seen it in women even into their 70s and 80s.
To sell a person into slavery is a terrible thing. To sell them to do manual labor, dangerous and unrecompensed work, is hard enough; but to make their body feel so abused and their personhood so corrupted, is soul-destroying.
The Epstein sex-trafficking ring lasted for 30 years. There were at least a thousand identified victims. Many have told their stories in court, and won their cases. The majority of women who were used by this ring came from Eastern European countries. That is probably how the tracks got covered for so long. The monetary value of that ring was 1.5 BILLION dollars. In early reports, it was said that 1.1 billion came from Trump. I don’t have the attribution to that, but maybe this week, when Congressman Ro Khanna allows the victims to tell their stories to Congress and the public, we will get more details about the way the money was hidden. But this is not just about money. It is about a long-standing practice of abuse of children and women, and we need to have good men and women rise up and share OUTRAGE, and promise to tighten the laws, to not let it happen again. And to bring the perpetrators to justice. Certainly not to allow access to children; girls and young women, but also young men. Jesus had heavy words to say about those who hurt children (Matthew 18:6). For those who want our country’s ethics to be based in Christian thinking, it is worth pondering that.
Martina Nicholson, MD
retired gynecologist
martina2b 