Behind the Smile, Behind the Mask... There Lies a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.

Good morning everyone and happy first week of March!

I haven’t written in a while… I’ve been busy picking up extra shifts at the Spa and trying to save up money for extra bills this Spring. When I haven't been working, I've been busy reading True Crime and trying, not so successfully, to keep my body in shape. I just started listening to this book on tape called Nobody’s Girl. It’s the story of Virginia Roberts, just one of the many victims of Jeffrey Epstein. It’s a harrowing story; raw, real and full of emotion. I was listening to it as I ran the Hot Chocolate race in Seattle last Sunday.

As I started the run, my legs were full of lead and lack of ambition, but as soon as I started listening to Virginia’s story(or Jenny, as she calls herself in the book), I became lost in a world that is both haunting and engulfing.

Maybe I like becoming involved in other people’s stories because they are so different from my own. I like the excitement and intrigue of separating myself from my own life and becoming immersed in another’s. But Jenny’s story is one I’m happy to say I never had to experience. Like so many other stories of abuse and neglect, Jenny was raised in a family where her own father started molesting and abusing her at the age of seven, and her mother turned a blind eye to what was going on. A couple years down the road, Jenny’s father handed her over to be molested and abused by her uncle… and so the cycle started, setting Jenny on a projection of lifelong abuse, neglect and molestation.

It's hard to learn about a life that was snubbed out before it even had time to flourish. It seemed that fate was against Jenny from the very beginning, and what can you do when your entire worldview is shaped before you are even old enough to have a say in what you think, feel, or before you've had the opportunity to experience love fully. Aside from the physical aspect of the abuse, Jenny talks about the psychological impact everything had on her.

The ultimate betrayal is being molested and abused by someone you trust and look up to.

This can warp your sense of reality and make you believe that what occurred was your fault, that you deserve the abuse, and that love and pain go together.

I won’t go into detail of everything that happened, but many of the things that occurred were hard to listen to and wrap my head around. When Jenny met Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, she believed that they were trying to help her, that this was a turning point in her life where she could have her own career, make her own money and become independent from all the evil that life had dealt her. What she walked into was far from an escape from the life she knew but instead magnified it.

When she finds out what the job entails, which she believed to be working as a masseuse(today we use the term Massage Therapist as a sign of respect for the job and to separate it from the negative connotations of sexual practices that sometimes plague the industry)at a high-end spa in Florida, she describes herself as taking her brain “off-line.”

As with many victims of sexual assault, you separate yourself into parts, and your body works independently from your brain, as you try desperately to protect yourself from the trauma.

Jenny was sixteen years old when she became ensnared by Epstein and Ghislaine, and for two years she worked as a personal sex slave to both of them and was also trafficked to other rich elitists within their circle. Epstein and Ghislaine had dozens of young girls at their constant beck and call, and when the girls became older, that is no longer in their teens, they would use them to recruit others. It was a vicious circle of horrific abuse that I’ve only begun to crack the surface.

Even after Jenny was abused so terribly for most of her life, as a grown woman she still wanted to have a normal father/daughter relationship with her dad. Because she had been trained from such an early age to please others, especially men, to remain silent and accept her fate, she still longed to please him, even after everything. But some people cannot be saved, no matter how hard you try, and after trying to rectify things with her dad she realized it wasn't sustainable, nor safe.

Jenny was lucky in a way to find love with a good man, whom she raised three children with, but after her third child was born(a daughter), everything that happened to her came bubbling to the surface. She wanted to advocate for victims of sexual abuse and protect her daughter from the same fate that befell her. I know this is a topic circulating the internet like a tornado right now, but aside from what the internet might talk about, the numbers of victims, etc..  The story of Jenny is so poignant, deeply felt, and personal that it causes one to look beyond the numbers and at the individual impact of such horrendous evil, that marred the life of so many. Jenny was a fighter and a survivor, and she fought for as long as she had enough breath to do the job; unfortunately, she would lose the battle to suicide in 2024. She was 41 years old.

In my life, I've seen PTSD in some of my friends. Things that were done to them cannot be forgotten and have shaped their view of the world. Because their world view has been shaped by their experiences, they often react angrily to things that seem mundane or ordinary. I know now, more than ever, that it's important to protect your mind, body and heart from people who might break them; and yes, it's important to trust the person you share your energy with, especially during sex. It has an impact, even if you don't know it at the time.

Jenny had zero autonomy over her body. She was given away again and again, with no thought or repercussion to the incredible damage that was being done to her. The offenses don't just occur at the moment, but follow victims for the rest of their lives; often popping up at the least likely moment, while doing everyday things... Growing up in the Catholic Church, sex is never talked about, unless you're "happily married" and open to children. Sex is often referred to in a negative and sinful light; but I believe sex between two consenting adults isn't the real problem, I believe it's something like what I've described in the paragraphs above. I believe the real evil is using women and children for sex against their will. What do you think?