Teen-aged girls are justifiably frightened and feeling violated that their Yearbook photos could be used as a hunting ground for sexual predators.
Feb 16, 2026
When my almost-17 year old granddaughter talks, I always listen and pay close attention to what she is saying. She knows exactly what’s going on and is fearless in expressing it.
Academically brilliant, with an exceptional emotional intelligence, and her finger exquisitely on the pulse of music, social media and the cultural zeitgeist, my granddaughter is my guru and my muse.
At Sunday night dinner, this week, she told us how worried she was that her high school yearbook photos—she graduates next year—could be used by sexual predators to pick out potential targets.
“Our Yearbook company is Lifetouch,” she told us, “and it’s all over social media that the billionaire who owned it, may have given yearbook photos to Epstein to recruit young girls for sex.”
“Whoa,” I said, “are you sure about this? I’ve been following the Epstein Files story pretty closely and I don’t know about this.”
“Yes, Grampy,” she said. “This Leon Black guy they just identified as being close to Epstein owned Lifetouch, which produces all our yearbooks.”
Quickly, I took out my I-phone and Googled Lifetouch, and Leon Black, to find out what I could. I discovered that Leon Black, had, indeed been identified as one of Epstein’s biggest cronies, having shelled out some $158 million to the Grotesque Sex Trafficker over a five-year span, after Epstein had already been convicted in Florida of being a pedophile and a sex trafficker.
I learned that Leon Black, the former Chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC who had purchased Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” for $120 million, was the long-time CEO of Apollo Global Management, a multi-billion dollar investment fund, which purchased Lifetouch’s parent company Shutterfly one month after Epstein’s death in 2019.
While Black was all over the Epstein files, and Shutterfly was mentioned, Lifetouch was not. I read the USA Today story of February 13 to my granddaughter, which spelled all of this out.
When I mentioned Shutterfly, she told us that the name Shutterfly was printed on every student portrait photo produced in her school. I told her how the timing of Apollo’s purchase of Shutterfly, which owns Lifetouch, made it impossible for her photos, or the photos of her classmates or others were done by Lifetouch, to be passed on to Epstein.
While USA Today reported that Leon Black met continuously with Jeffrey Epstein from 2010 (the year after Epstein’s sex crime conviction) into 2017, when Trump was first elected, Apollo Global Management would not buy Shutterfly/Lifetouch for another two years, after Epstein was already dead.
To calm my granddaughter’s fears, I read to her the official statement which came out from Lifetouch CEO Kevin Murphy, because the company was immediately experiencing pushback from local school districts across the country. Students and their parents (and grandparents) were justifiably upset that the privacy rights of their children may have been violated:
“When Lifetouch photographers take your student’s picture, that image is safeguarded for families and schools, only, with no exceptions. Lifetouch does not – and has never provided – images to any third party.
“Lifetouch images are shared only for the purposes of school records and to allow parents or guardians to purchase them. Additionally, as part of our decades long relationship with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Lifetouch prints SmileSafe cards free of charge for each student we photograph that families can use with law enforcement if a child goes missing.
“Lifetouch follows all applicable federal, state, and local data privacy laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). In fact, Lifetouch was the first school photography company to sign a voluntary and enforceable privacy pledge—reaffirming our deep commitment to protecting school communities.
Funds managed by subsidiaries of Apollo Global Management are investors in Shutterfly, the parent company of Lifetouch. Neither Apollo nor its funds are involved in the day-to-day operations of Lifetouch and therefore no one employed by Apollo has ever had access to any student images.
Lifetouch is not named in the Epstein files. The documents contain no allegations that Lifetouch itself was involved in, or that student photos were used in, any illicit activities.”
It was a remarkable statement for an American company to make in 2026—”Lifetouch is not named in the Epstein files.” The CEO of Lifetouch was compelled to issue that statement because his company’s owners— Apollo Global Management—and its immediate parent company Shutterfly were mentioned throughout the Epstein files, along with the name of Apollo’s longtime billionaire CEO, Leon Black.
In the USA Today article entitled, ”What we know about Lifetouch, school photos and the Epstein Files” reporter Melina Khan wrote that:
“Black is also mentioned in an email thread between FBI employees. The email says someone “stated Epstein told her to give Black a massage while Black was naked and that someone stated another female gave Black a massage and he made her perform oral sex.”
That kind of information, along with reports in the Financial Review that Epstein, “the convicted sex offender had helped Leon Black manage an angry mistress and IRS questions about gifts showered upon another woman,” wasn’t very comforting to school districts still under contract with Lifetouch for Yearbook services this year.
USA Today reported that:
“Prescott Valley Charter School in Arizona announced on Feb. 10 that it was canceling upcoming picture days “out of an abundance of caution,” citing “recent media coverage and online discussion related to the photography company Lifetouch.”
“While we do not have any information indicating a direct impact on our school or our students, our highest responsibility is always the safety, security, and trust of our families,” the school said.
In Salinas, California, Mónica Anzo, the superintendent of Alisal Union School District, addressed unfounded rumors that Lifetouch “has shared photos with unauthorized third parties without consent, for nefarious purposes” in a letter to parents on Feb. 11.
“The safety and security of our children is the District’s most important concern, and we want to reassure you we verify our third party vendors adhere to the same safety standards,” said Anzo, who also shared a copy of Lifetouch’s statement.”
To Lifetouch’s credit, the 80-year old company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, addressed the “Epstein Files,” issue directly; something which Shutterfly, parent company of Lifetouch, failed to do.
Still, the statement exonerating Lifetouch didn’t satisfy one very smart almost 17-year old.
“Why do billionaires think they can get away with everything?” my granddaughter asked. “It’s always about money, isn’t it?”
“ They think they are above all the rules,” I said, “That’s why we have to keep insisting on the truth.”
I knew that I had not completely convinced her that justice would be forthcoming, especially since I’ve struggled with convincing myself. I want to believe it for her sake, and for all her friends and classmates whose lives are far more challenging than ours were, when I was 17, in 1966.
The great Nevada Independent writer John Smith, in a February 15, 2026, column entitled “As Epstein sleaze spreads, the specter of former Apollo CEO Leon Black reappears,” described it this way:
“Like the overflowing sewer that it is, the ooze boiling up from the vast investigative files of the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein continues to splash on the billionaire class and the political elite.”
It’s hard to feel sorry for the school Yearbook company Lifetouch, and how it’s reputation is getting torched because it’s parent company, Shutterfly, fell into the dark orbit of Apollo Global Management and Leon Black, Jeffrey Epstein’s biggest source of money in the final years of his life.
It’s hard to feel anything for them, since money is the company’s first thought, and mine is building a world of love and honesty, compassion, trust and beauty for a granddaughter who has every right to expect all of that, and much, much more.