Irreparable

By Cristina Inogés Sanz

There is a person who, each day, appears more and more as a light in the darkness. I am referring to Hannah Arendt. She said: Modern evil does not need monsters; it can be administered as procedure. And that is exactly where we find ourselves.

The so-called “Epstein case” has shaken us all and left us with the nauseating feeling that Epstein was not a unique figure, not a sinister mastermind, not a lone wolf—which would already have been bad enough. In reality, it involves an entire roster of names, each more prominent than the last on the international stage and across the most diverse fields, all of whom were part of a network of corruption, abuse, human trafficking—some of it involving minors—and, as it appears so far, even murders. A whole structure of power, money, and political control working hand in hand, and to secure the participation of the great and powerful, the means never mattered in achieving the ends.

Once again, the ritual is fulfilled: not believing those who dare to raise their voices and denounce what is happening, so justice seems to arrive too late once more. In addition to all this, a series of questions will haunt us for a long time—perhaps for life: Who knew what was going on? No one? Who helped protect Epstein and the entire structure he created? How many victims will we never know were victims because they literally disappeared? Where did they obtain the babies for their orgies and bacchanals?

Evil exists, and we have always known it. However, that presence of Evil (with a capital E), embodied in individuals who had been turned into the new gurus of success in countless fields, we did not see—or did not want to see. That Evil, which we are witnessing in the so-called “Epstein case,” causes an unknown pain in those who suffer it and in those who discover it in the victims, because what becomes visible is the most terrible thing of all: the irreparable. In this pain, there is no possibility of repair.

Some of those implicated in this case, where the moral degradation of a group of supposedly select citizens from many countries is unquestionable—in fact, they are amoral—have already announced that they will donate 99% of their fortunes to aid the victims. There could be no greater contempt or arrogance. They are so accustomed to obtaining everything with money that they believe they can buy their own consciences—if they even have them. Because let us not deceive ourselves: the victims do not matter to them. All they want is to wash their image clean, to maintain the mask of their false philanthropy.

The irreparable is not so because the victims cannot be compensated. It is so because it is not enough to acknowledge the harm done; financial compensation is not enough—what price did and does human life have for these amoral individuals?—it is not enough to give the entire world to each of the victims… So then? What the victims need is restorative justice. This justice demands that the institution or structure that caused and permitted what happened must change or disappear. Is it possible for this to happen in this case? How can restorative justice be achieved for the victims at the hands of those who truly run the world?

If such justice cannot be obtained for the victims of this aberration, it will mean they will be consigned to oblivion, that the impunity of most of the magnates remains alive, and that the structure created by Epstein will merely have entered a state of hibernation… until the right moment indicates it should be awakened again because, after all, one can emerge from an ethical collapse better off than expected. They will let a few fall—the least necessary and least important to them—to give the appearance that justice has been done. In reality, nothing.

Epstein’s island is no longer just a geographical location; it has become the setting of a horror film in which, probably, no screenwriter would have been capable of imagining the story that unfolded there. If only it were merely a setting! In truth—and this reveals the reality of the world in which we live—it is the place where a kind of debutante ball unfolded time and again. Because to be someone in the ultra-exclusive club of the corrupted world of power, one had to dance on Epstein’s island. It has been the highly profitable networking of terror.

All well. Between suspicion and evidence of what was happening there, there was more than enough time to become richer and richer. Epstein merely gives a name to the moral rot with which the world is manipulated.

What do we need, as humanity, to react?