Clearing Up The Misconceptions of “Epstein’s List”

I woke up last Wednesday, and did my morning routine of scrolling my social media for an hour before I actually got up, and suddenly came across two things that I would have never thought I would see together in a sentence: Stephen Hawking and “Pedophile.” As you could probably imagine, I was shocked and a little mortified, as any rational person would be after watching some memes portray Stephen Hawking as a pedophile, especially so early in the morning (I should seriously reduce my screen time this is getting unhealthy). What a way to start the New Year, huh? According to an Independent article, last week Wednesday and Thursday, a large collection of documents were unsealed by the Supreme court, which were a part of a defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, accomplice to the convicted sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, back in 2015. In the documents that were unsealed, the public has compiled a list of people that were in contact, whether it be mentioned somewhere in the hundreds of emails or had letters addressed to. What this has led to, however, is hundreds of people on the internet, rushing to call anyone who was even slightly mentioned an accomplice to the heinous crimes committed by Epstein, thereby spreading information that way not necessarily be true.

The Origin of the “list”

A victim of Epstein’s, Virginia Giuffre, filed a defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, after Maxwell had accused her of lying about the abuse she had received from Epstein. What was special about this case, however, was that Giuffre had specific names of famous people that had abused her along with Epstein, which is why Maxwell had fought very hard against the unsealing of this list of names. This was filed in 2015, and settled in 2017, and placed under protective seal, causing the identities of the names involved to remain anonymous. According to an Independent article, The Miami Herald, a fellow news source, had sued for the release of those names Maxwell’s legal team fought against it. In 2019, around 2000 pages had been unsealed, however there were still many names that remained anonymous until now. Just last month, US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled that the documents should be released, however still keeping the names of the victims anonymous. What we have now is a list of people, many of whom are high profile and quite famous, yet it doesn’t mean that they were all taking part in what Epstein was doing.

What we have currently

Now this list isn’t really a list. It’s a ton of documents which have been unsealed, this list was brought up from the people that were mentioned within each document. This is by no means a “client list” which social media has misrepresented. Several people were mentioned in this list, and many of whom are famous, such as Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Donald Trump, George Lucas, Stephen Hawking, Chris Tucker, Michael Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis, Al Gore, and David Copperfield, to name a few. Many of these people and names weren’t partaking in things Epstein was doing, but rather just knew him and had been to his mansion, like in the cases of the magician David Copperfield and Michael Jackson. According to an article from the Guardian, Johanna Sjoberg (victim of Epstein’s) said that Copperfield only “did some magic tricks,” and she only met Michael Jackson at mansion, and “didn’t give him a massage” when asked by a lawyer. Stephen Hawking as well was only mentioned in a 2015 email sent to Ghislaine Maxwell, the details of which can be found here.

So before you go around accusing high profile individuals of abetting in the horrible deeds of Epstein, make sure you do your research first. This goes to show just how unreliable the internet can be, jumping much too quickly to conclusions. Bold accusations like the ones I saw on social media are a result of people lacking in research and just echoing what they had heard someone else say in the previous post. In this ever changing world of technology and media, it’s even more important that we fact check the things we see on the internet.

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SPARSH AIYAR

Former Editor in Chief at The City Voice | 1st Place Video Interview | MIPA 2021-22 Division 1 Digital Media Contest

Hey there! My name is Sparsh Aiyar and I'm the editor in chief of The City Voice. I also make videos on our YouTube channel, so please make sure to check that out! I'm a huge music nerd and I play a lot of guitar so if you also like guitar, feel free to reach out. If you have any questions about the City Voice, please feel free to contact me via gmail, I would be more than happy to help!