Epstein’s Empire Relies on a Sex-Trafficking Culture

The Hidden Child Trafficking Industry of the Family ‘Courts’

Mar 10, 2026

We are in a World War headed toward Armageddon, because a president’s psyche could not handle this:

Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was … around 13 years old….

Or this:

the second woman detailed how Epstein and Maxwell’s abuse began while she was around 13 years old and … Epstein took her to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club to meet him.

Indeed, the association is so strong, the public has gone so far as to label the attack on Iran, “Operation Epstein Fury.” Donald Trump’s very return to the presidency in 2024 involved using the Epstein scandal to seduce a disenfranchised and disenchanted electorate. Of course, being of the predatory class, he had no intention of bringing greater accountability or transparency to his buddies.

In traumatic bonding, victims cling to and idealize their abuser rather than confront their extreme exploitation. But delusion can “trump” reality only so far, and thus the coverup grows to be worse than the crime. Donald Trump may have dealt a death blow to American prominence in the world—if we even survive—so that his crimes can escape exposure. But he may escalate still—so that “the emergency situation” could be used to call off the midterms altogether (and victims will largely support him).

Traumatic bonding is reinforced by a hidden industry referred to as, “Family Court.” The misnomer serves as the greatest protective guise: operating with extraordinary “discretion”, secrecy, and therefore impunity, Family Courts leave the public unaware that the law literally does not apply in these so-called, “courts”. This combination of power and impunity attracts the most criminal judges, predatory “guardians ad litem,” and sexually-deviant “custody evaluators.” Indeed, few settings shelter—and “legalize”—greater levels of violence against children, child pornography, and child sex trafficking than Family Court, where repeating utterances by a judge can incur a 33-year sentence, when even the murder of a female spouse carries only two to six years.

Every day, Family Courts extract more than 160 new children from their safe, stable, and loving homes to send them to their torture, rape, battery, and murder. Every day, Family Courts ignore children returning bruised if not in body bags as a result of their coerced placement in danger. Every day, the country suffers from exceptionally high rates of parents murdering children, dying by murder-suicide, and killing ex-spouses, without imagining how Family Courts are facilitating—even forcing—these conditions.

A comprehensive Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study revealed that one in four girls, and one in six boys, are sexually abused if not raped in their homes. Almost one in two marriages end in divorce. Abusive parents are the most likely group to traffic children to family, friends, and pedophilic sex rings. Consequently, Family Courts have a lucrative industry in their hands. Abusers do not have to have been married to gain custody; children issued by rape is enough. Small children, toddlers, and even nursing infants are not off limits. Statistics state that Family Courts give approximately 60 to 75 percent of children to their abusers, but my experience as an expert witness in 77 cases across 33 states shows a rate closer to 99 percent. I once wondered what causes Child Protective Services to have a failure rate of 80 to 94 percent; Family Courts are an answer.

Therefore, let the Epstein scandal point to the much larger, hidden part of the child-trafficking iceberg. Every day, Family Courts are not just victimizing innocent children; they are multiplying perpetrators.

I daily receive dozens of letters like the one below (and affirm that she is correct in everything she says):

Dr. Lee,
I greatly appreciate all that you do to raise awareness of what is happening with family courts. [Child and Youth Services] ignore all forms of abuse including child sexual abuse with physical evidence and children’s disclosure, just like family courts,… and give them to the perpetrator regularly….
My divorce attorney [told me] that there were so many CYS reports made by mandated reporters, not by me, that I could lose my sons in a custody case. I told her all of those reports were from mandated reporters, not me, and they were all against my ex, not me, but she said … I would lose them to the person that the mandated reports were made about….
I was also warned … by a children’s advocate that, no matter how much physical evidence I have and how much sexual abuse and abuse they disclose, I would … lose them to their abuser. Then I would spend the next however many years it takes until they each turn 18, trying to find money to get them back, but that would never actually happen…. She said she has been watching that, and multiple kids die by the hand of their abuser or commit[] suicide from the abuse, happening for 22 years.
More recently after Kayden’s Law [a law that tries to keep children alive through family court battles] was passed,… I was hoping that would change things, but I still have been watching videos … of protective parents getting put in jail trying to help their child, because the courts are not following Kayden’s Law any more than they were following the children’s best interest law, and these videos are quickly deleted by Facebook because of threats from the family court system and CYS….
If one or all of us die, these are the things [my ex-husband] is not only capable of doing, but has done and gotten away with in the past, because I was not believed and he was never investigated. One of the online advocates I follow talks about how even police officers in her family don’t do their job properly and investigate at all….
I have been trying to decide if going public with this would help or harm the situation, the way it ultimately harmed Virginia Giuffre, who I don’t believe actually killed herself, because she stated online she was not suicidal…. I remember before I understood the reason behind it, I kept thinking Woody Allen’s fame and money was the reason he stayed out of jail and still got supervised visitations of Dylan Farrow, even though she disclosed what he did. Now I realize the entire system including CYS/CPS is financially designed to not help victims.
Your advice and help are greatly appreciated.
[Name Redacted]

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is leading a public course series on major issues of our day, with Preventing Violence Now. More information and registration are here.

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and cofounder of Preventing Violence Now. She mainly worked with maximum-security prisoners and public-sector patients, before she became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that alerted against dangerous leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on dangerous leadership that has recently been expanded, in addition to a volume on how dangerous signs in a leader spreads and two critical statements on dangerous leadership. As many of the dangers she warned against unfolded—including millions of unnecessary pandemic deaths, the propagation of political violence, the exacerbation of economic inequality, the destruction of democracy, the devastation of the climate, the replacement of international collaboration with hostile confrontation, a renewed and accelerated nuclear arms race, a global emboldening of dictators leading to brutal warfare and genocide, and growing state-sanctioned cruelty and human rights violations—she has advocated for another way. Now, the author of the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; 17 scholarly books and journal special issues; and over 300 opinion editorials, introduces her curriculum on rising above the current destructive course to embrace an awareness of, “One World or None.”