Epstein Scandal Is Just the Beginning of Government’s Failures To Protect Kids | Opinion

If people are really concerned about child sex trafficking, they should not treat it like a political tool.

While it’s always a good thing when child sexual exploitation receives the attention it deserves, the issue should be more than political fodder or a talking point for conspiracy theorists. It is, of course, important for the public to recognize and expose powerful people who exploit the vulnerable. That list is long—allegations have plagued Matt Gaetz, Bill Cosby, Robert Kraft, Linda McMahon, and Sean Combs, to name a few from recent headlines. The circumstances around Jeffrey Epstein’s ability to obtain a secret plea deal while running an international child sex ring should absolutely be exposed.

That being said, the problem of child sexual abuse and exploitation merits sustained attention. If people really care about sexual exploitation and trafficking, their focus should be on how the powerful fail to put children first both in politics and in society.

A major battleground in the fight to protect children is social media and AI regulation. Following reports that leading Big Tech companies knew about their products’ negative effects on children—including increased risks of sexual exploitation—legislators sprang into action. At the same time, however, other leading congressional figures have disrupted those efforts, allowing the exploitation to continue unchecked.

Last year, for example, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) did Big Tech’s bidding to sink the Kids Online Safety Act, preventing it from receiving a vote in the House after it passed the Senate 91-3. Conservative news outlets identified Meta’s control over House leadership as key to killing child protection legislation. This was the same congressional leadership that slipped a Big Tech-friendly non-budget provision into the budget bill that would have repealed all state legislation trying to curb AI exploitation of children.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) tried to do the same in the Senate, but was fortunately defeated when Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) had the courage to amend it—their amendment passed 99-1. But now that courage is being rewarded by Big Tech efforts to sneak the regulation moratorium into other legislation. Big Tech spent $51 million lobbying just last year, including to defeat legislation such as child online safety measures. Meta alone spent nearly $6 million dollars last quarter lobbying against, among others, child online safety provisions. The public should condemn these actions and, as we’ve already seen, if this child protection legislation can actually get to a vote, it passes in overwhelming margins.

If those who are upset about Jeffrey Epstein really care about child sex trafficking, they should also be outraged at the Trump administration, which is currently undermining child sex trafficking protections. The Department of State “shut down” the office primarily responsible for combating human trafficking—the Office to Monitor and Prevent Human Trafficking—a move which one former U.S. ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons describes as making it “impossible” to carry out what the law requires to address human trafficking. The administration also cut funding to a group that was tracking the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russian soldiers from their families and brought to Russia, a well-known hub of human trafficking. Domestically, the Department of Justice cut more than $500 million in grants to victim services including  ”direct funding for victims’ services for survivors of human trafficking.” Additionally, it gutted the Civil Rights Division, which houses the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit.

If those following the Epstein scandal really care about the sexual assault of children, they should continue to act when the Epstein story fades, to address the government’s assault on the nearly 40 percent of trafficking victims who are children. The government—by carrying Big Tech’s water in legislatures, by cutting offices that enforce trafficking laws, and by cutting services to trafficking victims—is not only abandoning victims but facilitating their exploitation. Activists who truly care about child exploitation must continue to pressure Congress and the executive branch to act to protect children as vigorously as they demand answers in the Epstein case.

Mary Graw Leary is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America focusing on criminal law and human trafficking and a former state and federal prosecutor.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.