(The Napa County, CA., Sculpture of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, by Napa sculptor Mario Chiodo. Photo by the Napa Valley Register)
I woke up the morning I learned the news and couldn’t catch my breath.
No, it wasn’t because of my age; it wasn’t because almost daily now, I hear of another old friend or former colleague getting a debilitating disease or disability, or dying.
It wasn’t because another school full of young, innocent Muslim girls was obliterated, or a high-rise residential apartment tower in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon, blown to bits by Israeli terrorists—masquerading as a government—with each floor pancaking upon the one below it, crushing into dust any humans still inside.
It wasn’t because something bad had happened, God forbid, to one of my granddaughters or my son or my partner of 54-years. Those are a steady drumbeat of worries, which always come in bunches, and not as single spies. That is the background music to my life; a constant hum.
And, no, it wasn’t because of another all-too real series of night terrors of mine, where I raced against time to prevent a bomb from going off, or spent the darkness loudly cursing out Trump or Bondi or Bibi or Hegseth or a long litany of monsters, until my shouts awakened others to how conscious my unconscious had become.
What made me gasp for air this time, was a headline in the on-line New York Times confirming disturbing rumors we heard about Cesar Chavez, the day before, but tried to dismiss because there no credible sources for those rumors, and we know how anything can be made up by anyone, anywhere at anytime and become what passes for fact, instantly.
Only this morning, the source could not be more credible: it was Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ co-leader of the United Farm Workers union, and, at 96, the living heart and soul of the movement for social & economic justice for more than 65 years.
There was the New York Times headline: “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years.” And there were the sources: Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas—two women raped by Chavez when they were young girls in the 1970’s; and Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ most prominent female ally in the Farm Workers Movement, and a labor-movement icon in her own right.
Dolores Huerta, 96 years old, who suffocated a secret for 60 years, of having been raped by Cesar Chavez, on more than one occasion, resulting in two pregnancies—which she hid—and the birth of two daughters, whom she gave away to be raised in more stable family settings. This was Cesar Chavez. This was Dolores Huerta. Two pillars of my life from my early years of college; two symbols of the urgency of struggle to bring about sweeping social change; two working-class heroes.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Melinda Henneberger was eloquent in her excruciatingly painful description of the torment which Huerta had hidden for six decades, in her Substack column entitled Kansas City Stack, headlined: “Why did Dolores Huerta wait 60 years to accuse César Chávez of rape? I hope I know the answer:
‘Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing’
From the Times story:
“Ms. Huerta said he abused her not only physically but emotionally. Union records document an argument at La Paz between the two of them over missing financial receipts during a board meeting in 1979. Ms. Huerta demanded respect and pushed back against his suggestions that she had stolen money. Mr. Chávez responded by shouting at her with curses and insults, repeatedly calling her a stupid bitch, according to the audio recordings of board meetings The Times listened to.
Ms. Huerta struggles to reconcile the César Chávez she knew, who inspired so many and achieved so much, and the man who assaulted her and publicly humiliated her. She said she was unaware of any sexual abuse of teenage girls. Moments after some of that abuse was described to her, Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing.”
Hennenberger: “That made me want to wail, too. According to the story, both times Chávez abused Huerta resulted in a pregnancy she said she concealed “by wearing baggy clothes and ponchos.” She gave birth both times, too, to baby girls, “and then arranged for them to be raised by others.” In her statement today, she said that even though she’s been able to stay close to those children, who know her other children, “no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.” That’s so enormous, for everyone involved, that there’s no way to overstate it.”
If that’s what happened, every single piece of this — being raped by your boss and work partner, whose brother later became your life partner — and then having to hide two children you could not raise or tell how they came to be — is so painful that if only those who’d walked that mile could judge, no one would.”
I re-read the New York Times investigative report on Cesar Chavez several times in disbelief. How could all of us not know that Cesar Chavez was Jeffrey Epstein before there was a Jeffrey Epstein? How could this God-like man rape little girls? Exactly because he wasn’t a God.
Henneberger and I did the same thing: ran to an authority we both knew on the Farm Workers Union and Cesar Chavez, the journalist/historian Miriam Pawel, who wrote two books on the union and Chavez. Melinda seized upon a telling paragraph written by Pawel:
“As Miriam Pawel relates in her authoritative biography—the second of two books she has written about the UFW’s rise and fall—Chavez’s personal obsessions, combined with his sudden fame and power, and some of the more malign elements of America’s culture in the 1970s, gradually caused him to turn narcissistic and to encourage a cult built around him.”
Perhaps because of my professional background as a labor organizer for national teachers unions—which I was practicing at the very same time that Chavez and Dolores Huerta were organizing Farm Workers—I was drawn to another powerful passage written by Pawel in : “The Union of their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement,” Bloomsbury Press, NY., NY, 2009:
“Those who once dedicated their lives to Cesar Chavez’s crusades now wince when they drive past farmworkers, hunched over rows of vegetables or trimming grapevines in the bitter cold. Once so certain they could change that world, the UFW alumni rue their failure. They applaud each other’s individual accomplishments, but lament the lost opportunity to collectively achieve even more. The memories still cause pain.”
Now, the pain is multiplied, and much, much more profound than the failure of a union or an organization or a government or a leader to live up to its, or his or her, promise, and our hopes. Those of us who have worked for unions, or non-profit organizations, or socially conscious corporations or good-government Administrations have all known that deep level of disappointment and disillusionment when things do not turn out the way we wanted.
But, the rape of young children, and of co-workers, and the decades long destruction and those lives, is something far more devastating, and damaging, than mere disappointment and disillusionment.
It’s enough to make all of us “break down, sob and wail,” and gasp for air.
Illegal, immoral, lawless “preventive” bombing attacks on Irans & Lebanon’s civilian populations by Israel and the United States, have violated all laws, ethics, and any semblance of humanity.
( Israeli Ultra-Nationalists and warmongers National Security Minister Ben-Gvir (l.), Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and Finance Minister Smotrech, far right.)
(US officials Trump & Hegseth (not pictured) are conducting an illegal war with Israel against Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank.)
At long last, after decades of blocking any peace agreement between the Unite States and Iran, pleading for US support for “decapitating” (assassinating) Iranian leaders; undermining all efforts for a two-state solution with Palestinians; and succeeding in securing an endless stream of American armaments to annihilate 20,000 innocent Palestinian children and turn Gaza into a mass graveyard, Israel, under the totalitarian leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, has unveiled it’s secret weapon against the Muslim world: the United States military, led by a Christian Nationalist extremist who hates Muslims as much as the Netanyahu gang does, and green-lighted by an American Golem of a President who would do anything toescape jail, and the Epstein files.
Netanyahu and his extremist Ultra Nationalist government—driven by convicted terrorist Meir Kahane’s disciples Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli’s National Security Minister and Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Finance Minister— chose to respond to the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas of more than 1200 innocent Israeli citizens and the forced kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, by grinding Gaza into the dust, and killing more than 75,000 Palestinian non-combatants. Such a genocidal counter-attack also blew up the most fundamental Jewish ethical standard of “proportionality of response,” which guided the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since it’s inception.
Critics of the Netanyahu’s genocidal and disproportionate response to Hamas’ horrible murders and torture of innocent Israelis were instantly assailed as Anti-Semites—including Jews in Israel and abroad , if we questioned not only the Israeli government’s utter annihilation of Gaza, but Netanyahu’s sinister track record of previously providing funding to Hamas for the terrorist organization to torpedo any Palestinian hopes for a two-state solution—an outcome which Netanyahu and his extreme right wing supporters violently oppose.
Overnight, any semblance of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF), Code of Ethics for the IDF was obliterated by the Netanyahu government. Before BiBi bastardized the highly regarded Israeli Military and transformed it into his own ICE-like hit squad, the Code of Ethics for the IDF—based upon fundamental humanitarian principles of Judaism— commanded the IDF to adhere to specific rules of combat.
That Code of Ethics, required as part of basic training for IDF soldiers for decades, consisted of four essential principles:
· NECESSITY: “to apply force only for the sake of the mission;”
· DISTINCTION: “aim your fire at those who pose a threat, NOT at combatants indiscriminately;
· RESPONSIBILITY: “since you know there will be collateral harm of civilians, you have to do whatever you can to MINIMIZE the expected collateral harm.”
· PROPORTIONALITY: “Is the expected collateral harm proportionate to the military achievement?”
Netanyahu and his megalomaniacal, anti-Judaic cabinet— hell-bent on driving Palestinians and Muslims from all parts of Israel and from surrounding lands in the Middle East— negated all of that moral and ethical guidance for Israel’s soldiers, which had gained the IDF world-wide respect for decades. Unarmed Palestinian women and children—either in Gaza or the West Bank—were considered sub-human by the Ultra Nationalists controlling the Israeli government and its’ armed forces. Fanatical, law-breaking Israeli settlers were permitted to randomly kill Palestinians and to destroy life-sustaining olive-tree orchards of Palestinian families living in the West Bank for decades, while the IDF stood by silently and did not act to protect human life.
Instead of abiding by the IDF’s historic ethical code, Bibi and his band of extremists justified dropping 2,000 pound bunker-buster bombs—provided by the UnitedStates—on civilian populations by claiming, suspiciously, that Hamas or Hezbollah combatants had hidden themselves underneath non-combatant populations and structures, like hospitals, schools, day-care centers, or apartment buildings.
Just this week in Iran, the exact same bogus argument was used when US Tomahawk missiles, obliterated an all-girls school where some 150 young Iranian girls were massacred.
By its’ own actions, the Netanyahu government has not only trashed the humanitarian underpinnings of Judaism—an ethical, spiritual and religious standard that existed thousands of year before Israel did—but has single-handedly undermined the credibility of any statements or videos coming from the IDF or the nation of Israel, much as the Trump Administration and the US Defense Department under former Fox-News commentator Pete Hegseth has done. Facts and any concern for humanity have been suffocated completely in the fog and fury of of an undeclared, illegal war with extraordinarily high personal and political stakes for both Netanyahu and Trump.
Under the spurious “self-defense” definition defiled by Israel—and used as a fake shield to justify military attacks upon others— any civilian population in any country in which anti-Israel terrorists may be hiding is fair game for any indiscriminate—and non-proportional— IDF attack. National borders, international law, or individual state sovereignty do not matter under this new formulation of “self-defense” by the Netanyahu government, and echoed by the most anti-democratic, fascist government in United States history. To phrase it differently, “we have seen the enemy, and it is everybody else, but us.”
Netanyahu and the Ultra Nationalists ruling Israel, have effectively used the “self-defense” trap to ensnare the US and other allies in its illegal military actions, expanding it’s unending crusade for revenge for the murders of October 7, 2023, well-beyond retribution against Hamas, or the boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank.
Prior to this week’s unprovoked attack upon Iran by Israel and the United States, and Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon which has, so far, driven 700,000 Lebanese citizens from their homes, Bibi launched a Regional “Ring of Fire” War against the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Anyone Netanyahu perceived to be a threat to Israel was fair game for a “disproportionate”attack, without any reason required, except those manufactured by BiBi. The Trump Administration has adopted the same nationalistic, militaristic approach to all other countries it deems a threat in the Western Hemisphere, includingVenezuela, Cuba, and at times, Mexico.
Before using the United States military as a shiny, new blunt instrument of terror against Iran over the past few weeks, Israel had already dangerously expanded it’s “Ring of Fire,” across the national borders of Lebanon, Yemen & Syria.
The first Israeli/American missile strikes against Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities in June, 2025—which failed to take them out, despite Trump’s claim they were “obliterated”— was, the Israeli’s said, to retaliate for Iranian missiles being launched into Israel. In truth, Iran’s missile attack was done in response to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah strong holds in Southern Lebanon, the assassination of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, and the maiming of thousands of Hezbollah operatives and Lebanese citizens with exploding personal communications devices—an illegal act on Israel’s part, considered by some, to constitute terrorism against the nation of Lebanon and its people. This week, Israel stepped up its acts of terror against the non-combatants of Lebanon by carpet-bombing Beirut.
Two years ago, in a remarkably prophetic piece, the Jewish publication The Forward outlined several military options Israel might take against Iran, which would shatter any hopes for a ceasefire, any chance of peace in the MidEast, and destabilize democratic nations and economies around the world, which is precisely what is happening right now during this current assault on Iran and Lebanon:
· “A tactical strike on Iran: A more substantial response could involve direct military action against Iranian assets, such as oil facilities or military installations. This would aim to inflict real damage on Iran’s infrastructure, forcing it to reconsider further provocations.
An attack on an oil installation, for instance, could disrupt Iran’s economic lifelines and send the clear message that Israel will not tolerate continued missile strikes. The goal here would be to create enough pain for Iran to deter future actions, without pushing the region into a full-scale war.”
· “A strategic overhaul of the region’s balance of power: This option is far more ambitious, and fraught with risk, but could reshape the Middle East. It would involve Israel somehow pushing the West to lay down the law with Iran, demanding not just an end to its missile strikes, but a full dismantling of its nuclear program and an end to its sponsorship of proxy forces across the region”.
The Forward goes on to point out that the most extreme option poses a serious, not hypothetical, risk of starting World War III:
“If Iran responds forcefully, the U.S. would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict to protect Israel. This could trigger a chain reaction, with Russia and China, both of whom have strategic relationships with Iran, seeing an opportunity to exploit the chaos. China could use the distraction to finally make a long-threatened move on Taiwan, while Russian President Vladimir Putin might take the opportunity to expand his war in Ukraine, or press into neighboring countries.
The global balance of power would be thrown into disarray, with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
The stakes here, at this very instant in human history, are extraordinary, and not just for the future existence of Israel, nor the existence of Iran, nor the entire Middle East, but for all of us.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, in his final speech delivered at a Peace Rally where he was assassinated by an Ultra Nationalist Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995, stated clearly one of the fundamental principles upon which the State of Israel was built:
“The path of peace is preferable to the path of war. I say this as a military man…and see the pain of the families of the IDF soldiers. For them, for our children, in my case for our grandchildren, I want this Government to exhaust every opening, every possibility to promote and achieve a comprehensive peace.”
Netanyahu and the terrorist clones of Kahane now surrounding him, campaigned against every peace initiative put forth by Rabin going back 30 years–especially regarding a Two-State solution as outlined in the original UN Charter which created Israel. Cowardly US members of Congress—who received an extraordinary amount of money from the American/Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC)— enabled Bibi to directly undermine US National Security interests and Barack Obama’s Nuclear Peace Treaty with Iran in 2014, and again in 2024, when they facilitated BiBi’s bullying and bloviating before Congress to scuttle American cease-fire efforts in Gaza, tied to the freeing of the remaining hostages.
Netanyahu and his nationalist war-mongers never entertained any exit plan from Gaza nor the West Bank that involved Palestinian self-determination, or contradicts the fever dreams of the Ultra Nationalist coalition keeping Netanyahu in power, and out of prison.
The same nihilistic “no-exit” strategy applies to the brutal and illegal war being waged right now against Iran and Lebanon. But now Bibi has all-to-willing accomplices in the President of the United States—as eager to stay out of jail for crimes he has committed as Netanyahu is— and a messianic Christian US Secretary of Defense out to rid the world of, ironically, non-Christian infidels, who simply clutter the path to Armaggedon, the return of Christ to the Holy Land, and the forced conversion of all Jews to Christianity.
Ironically, Pope Leo, the Christian leader who heads the single largest Christian group in the world—1.39 billion baptized Catholics—has a far different take on the destruction of Gaza, the violence in the West Bank, the incessant bombing of Iran and Lebanon, and the Nationalist fiction that nations—like Israel and the United States—had the right to launch “preventive wars:”
“Let us raise our humble prayer to the Lord that the roar of bombs may cease, that weapons may fall silent, and that space may be opened for dialogue in which the voices of peoples can be heard.”
Two of Pope Leo’s most prominent representatives in the United States, Cardinal Blase Cupich, from Pope Leo’s hometown of Chicago, and Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, have strongly denounced the latest War in Iran, with Cupich calling it:
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening.”
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, told the Associated Press just this week that the U.S. and Israel had failed to meet the minimum criteria for the war to be considered morally just:
“Lebanon may fall into civil war. The world’s oil supply is under great strain. The potential disintegration of Iran could well produce new and dangerous realities. And the possibility of immense casualties on all sides is immense. For all of these reasons, Catholic teaching leads to the conclusion that our entry into this war was not morally legitimate.”
Jewish organizations in the US and worldwide, like the American Council for Judiasm, and the Jewish Voice for Peace have offered an alternative voice for Jews, offering “Judaism beyond Zionism,” which, according to a March 2026 article in The Nation by Joseph Dana (“The Long Shadow of the ‘Jewish Question’”) points to a growing collection of:
“Synagogues, study groups, and ritual communities whose identity does not depend on an attachment to any state…These groups argue that thriving diaspora life is not a deficiency awaiting a territorial cure, but a legitimate form of Jewish existence that predates and will outlast the current crisis—and is, in fact, necessary to resolving it…these movements share a refusal to let the Israeli state define what Jewish identity means.”
Dana goes on to point out that, “In 2024, the Jewish Council of Australia was formed to explicitly challenge the claim that established Zionist organizations spoke for all Jews. When the council called for sanctions on Israel and an end to military ties, it framed its position as emerging from rather than contradicting its members’s Jewishness.”
Perhaps the merging of Israeli and US nationalist, militaristic and totalitarian ambitions will finally force American Jews to face the future of our continued connection to Israel, to mainstream Jewish organization, to AIPAC, and to public officials who pretend to be acting in our best interests, when, in fact, they are acting against the fundamental humanitarian teachings of our Judaism.
Writing about many of us Jews, worldwide, seeking a different, more just and humane definition of Judaism, Dana concludes in his article in The Nation:
“They are proposing an identity that doesn’t need to be defended through domination. The answer to what it means to be Jewish need not come at Palestian (nor Muslim—my edit) expense.”
The wisdom of Rabbi Hillel, the Elder, has never been more necessary for American Jews, and Jews worldwide to heed:
Trump & Bibi wave missiles and bombs around the world like like they’re comparing erections. The prescient folk-singer Phil Ochs warned us about this kind of rape & pillage of nations 60 years ago.
(60 years ago the War in Vietnam was raging. US troop levels had just leaped from 16,000 in 1963 to 180,000 in 1965—a ten-fold increase in less than two years. Americans and other citizens of the world were paying the price with our lives for over a decade of arrogant American destabilization of nations around the world, brought about by the American Colonialist foreign policies of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen, who headed the CIA.
Democratically elected governments in places like Iran, Guatamala, & Cuba—to name just a few—were overthrown through covert operations of the CIA throughout the early and mid-1950’s. Vietnam, long a target of plunder for Western colonizers, soundly threw out French invaders at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, ending the First Indochina War, after up to one million people were killed during eight long years. That bloody battle led the French to withdraw its badly battered troops from Vietnam, and to a Geneva Peace Treaty that divided Vietnam into two countries—North and South—at the 17th parallel.
Despite the devastating defeat of the French by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam forces under Ho Chi Minh in the mid-1950’s the Dulles brothers and US corporate and military interests were obsessed with regime-change throughout Vietnam, pouring enormous amounts of money and military support into South Vietnam, setting the stage for the American War in Vietnam through 1975. Estimates of deaths in Vietnam from 1955-1975, including some 300,000 bombing deaths of Vietnamese and Cambodians, range from a low of 2.4 million to a high of over 3 million people. United States Military fatalities during the American War in Vietnam totaled 58,220 soldiers.
Against that backdrop, American folk singers like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs used their music and their voices as sharp instruments of protest against the War in Vietnam and against American military arrogance. Phil Ochs (1940-1976) wrote and performed some of the most biting songs against US Military intervention around the world. One of those songs, written in 1966, ten years before Ochs death, was entitled “Cops of the World.” The lessons of Ochs’ remarkable songwriting are once again timely and poignant, as the Trump Administration has picked up where the Dulles brothers left off, in their quest to dominate, bully and plunder the natural resources of the world.
Recognizing that, and in tribute to Och’s fearless intelligence and foresight, I have written a parody of “Cops of the World” for the our present time, and have renamed it, “We’re the Cocks of the World.”)
“WE’RE THE COCKS OF THE WORLD” (with acknowledgement and gratitude to Phil Ochs, writer and performer of “Cops of The World,” 1966; Appleseed Music Inc; Electra Records)
Bow, get out of our way, boys,
Scrape, get out of our way;
We’re hot and you are passe, boys,
We’re big and you’ll have to pay.
We’ve sunk all your boats and killed all at your ports;
Trigger fingers so itchy, and attention spans short;
So give us your oil and we’ll grab us a snort,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys,
We’re the Cocks of the World.
We pick and choose as we please, boys—
Pick and choose as we please;
You’d best get down on your knees, boys,
Best get down on your knees!
We’re tattooed and liquored and hot to attack.
Venezuela or Cuba, Iran or Iraq,
Just take off your clothes and lay down on your back,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys,
We’re the Cocks of the World.
Egos need Epstein massage, boys
Be sure to rub us with lube;
We’ll obliterate you with a barrage, boys
It makes for good vid on the Tube.
We’ve got to protect all our citizens fair
So we’ll send drones and missiles for everyone there,
And maybe we’ll leave when we strip your land bare—-
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, Boys;
We’re the Cocks of the World.
We’ll dump all your children in a pile, boys;
Dump your dead kids in a pile.
Targeting schools is our style, boys,
Hospitals, schools it’s our style.
We’ll piss on the streets of the cities we wreck,
And find you a leader that we will select;
Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys
We’re the Cocks of the World.
So, clean your johns with a rag, boys
Clean your johns with a rag.
If you like you can use your own flag, boys
If you like you can use your own flag.
We’ve got so much money but we want so much more,
We’ll pummel it from you, with your blood and gore
But we’ll stop the terror when you are our whore—
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys
We’re the Cocks of the World.
Please, throw up your hands, boys
Please, throw up your hands.
We’re raping your land, boys,
We’re raping your land.
We’ll smash down your doors, we don’t bother to knock;
The public response to the words and testimony from Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre’s book “Nobody’s Girl is a powerful war cry vs. the monstrous, entitled rich.
(The Pedophile formerly known as Prince Andrew (l), puts his arm around the waist of Jenna Roberts Giuffre (center), while Ghislaine Maxwell, who also sexually abused Gioffre, looks on, in a photograph taken on Giuffre’s camera by Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein & Maxwell—who both raped Giuffre— sexually trafficked the young Giuffre to Prince Andrew and hundreds of other “clients.” (From the book “Nobody’s Girl.)
My mind has been completely blown.
Earlier this week, I wrote an article that contained many direct quotes from Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s explosive book, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice.”
My decision to pack the piece full of direct quotes from the Giuffre book was purposeful: I wanted people who had not yet read “Nobody’s Girl” to get raw exposure to the sexual abuse, rape and sexual trafficking this young girl experienced at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their accomplices.
My piece was entitled “How Cute! She still wears little girl’s panties,’ Epstein laughed to Maxwell, as they stripped Jenna.” I intentionally used a photo of Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre at 16 years of age, (which was published in her book) to increase public interest.
I am still reeling from what happened next, and has been happening since I posted my piece:
THOUSANDS of people have read it; hundreds of readers have “restacked” it all across social media; dozens of readers have left comments, and I’ve spent hours responding to all those comments. In my decades of writing and in public service, I have never encountered anything which people have responded to so viscerally.
I thought I was aware of the power of the “Epstein Files” issue, but until I posted the exact words of Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre, I had no idea of the depth, breadth and intensity of the emotions and feelings uncorked by her actual words and walloping witness of her constant physical and emotional torture by Epstein, Maxwell, and a line-up of wealthy & influential men who brutalized her, and thought they could get away with it.
I’ll be re-publishing more from “Nobody’s Girl” because the story must be told and told and told again. Revelations printed in the book are monstrous crimes vs. humanity and must be shared as far and wide as possible. This is not a snapshot of a horror story of child abuse, child sex abuse, sex trafficking, sex abuse, bribery, extortion, money laundering, and the perversion of our courts, US Attorney’s Offices, the FBI, the DOJ and our justice system to cover up crimes of the arrogant, wealthy, criminal Epstein class. It is, and has been, a never-ending nightmare for the the past several decades.
Despite Epstein’s death by suicide or murder in prison; despite the imprisonment of Ghislaine Maxwell for rape, sex abuse and child sex trafficking; despite the suicide in a French Prison of Jenna’s repeat rapist Jean-Luc Brunel the modeling agency big shot who procured thousands of underage girls for Epstein to rape; and despite, the eventual suicide of Virginia Roberts Giuffre who could not, in the end, escape the unspeakable trauma inflicted upon her, THIS IS A STORY WHICH IS STILL HAPPENING.
Maxwell is still lying about and denying her heinous crimes, and cruelly continuing the criminal cover-up with her banal blackmail of Donald Trump for a pardon or clemency.
Thousands of sex tapes meticulously recorded by Epstein over the years to use as leverage over his wealthy accomplices and friends having sex with underage girls are in the possession of the FBI, and could rip this case wide open if they are ever released.
And, despite a federal law passed overwhelmingly by Congress requiring the complete Epstein files to be released, millions of pages of Epstein File materials containing information about public officials, foreign leaders, corporate executives, banks, international businesses, governments and global intelligence agencies are being dangerously & illegally redacted–covering up the names of pedophiles and their enablers, hiding such monsters from all Americans.
Each of us must make certain that nothing remains hidden from us that has anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein and his filthy-rich friends who still believe they operate above-the-law, and without consequences for their actions.
(Virginia “Jenna” Roberts (Giuffre) as a teenager, around the time she met Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell. From: Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse & Fighting for Justice, by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 2025, Knopf, A Division of Penquin Random House, NY)
I am a non-violent human being, but would castrate any man who sexually abused, raped, or sexually trafficked my daughter or one of my granddaughters. I would cut off every single one of the fingers off anyone who used any single one of those fingers to abuse my child or grandchild. I know I am fully capable of that kind of justice.
If, after reading these excerpts from the book Nobody’s Girl, by Virginia Roberts Giuffre—about the barbarism and brutality Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and their wealthy collaborators committed against the hundreds of child sex abuse victims they raped and sex trafficked to the world’s elite—you don’t believe you are capable of the same kind of response to such horror inflicted upon children, talk to me.
Here are the excerpts from the book, Nobody’s Girl, in the words of Virginia “Jenna” Roberts Giuffre, who committed suicide in April, 2025:
“Epstein liked to share with me what he insisted were ‘scientific’ justification for his yearnings for young girls. For example, he would only have sex with girls who had started menstruating . Why? So that he could assert that—they were biologically able to bear children—they were ‘of age.’ (p. 109)
“No matter how young a girl looked, or how sexually inexperienced she was, if she had her period, he felt he could defend his abuse of her as part of the natural order of things.” (p. 109)
“He (Epstein) took a certain glee in what he saw as a loophole in society’s moral code, and no one could convince him sex with minors was wrong…” (p. 109)
“Epstein asked me questions: ‘Do you have siblings? Two brothers, I said. ‘Where do you go to high school? I told him I quit after 9th grade, but I was only 16—I hoped to get my GED. “Do you take birth control? Epstein asked. (p. 71)
“Maxwell peeling off her clothes a mischievous look on her face; Maxwell behind me, unzipping my skirt and pulling my Mar-A-Lago polo shirt over my head; Epstein & Maxwell laughing at my underwear, which were dotted with tiny hearts. ‘How cute—she still wears little girl’s panties,” Epstein said. (p.72)
“Go down on him,” Maxwell said…Eventually, Maxwell ordered me to straddle Epstein so he could penetrate me.” (p. 73)
“Yes, I was sexually abused. My body was used in ways that did enormous damage to me. But the worst things Epstein & Maxwell did to me weren’t physical, but psychological…From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.” (p. 75)
“Abusing me in a therapeutic setting jibed with how Epstein though about sex. He would soon explain that he needed to climax at least three times a day. It was a biological imperative, he said, like breathing or eating. For him, sex wasn’t connected to intimacy or love. It was purely a physical release. Epstein viewed sex almost as a procedure—one that he preferred to be performed by nubile young girls, like me.” (p. 79)
“I would come to see Epstein & Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole.” (p. 87)
“A germaphobe, Epstein was meticulous about what he touched. He mostly refused to shake hands, and he required his sheets be changed every other day. And yet, he relentlessly sought sexual contact with young girls who were strangers to him—some who lived rough, terrible lives outside his gated compound—and he never wore a condom…Epstein believed he didn’t have to follow the rules that everyone else did.” (p. 88)
“Epstein often preferred girls with little to no sexual experience. Many victims often described how he seemed to enjoy watching inexperienced girls suffer the discomfort of being introduced to sex by him, an older stranger.” (pps. 95-96)
“One thing that was happening, and with increasing regularity, was that I was being sexually trafficked by Epstein & Maxwell…I came to be trafficked to a multitude of powerful men—candidates for Governor, Senators, billionaires…(pp. 110-111);
“French modeling Agent Jean-Luc Brunel raped me repeatedly in NY and on Epstein Island. Brunel ran MC2, a modeling agency Epstein invested in. Epstein liked to boast that he’d had sex with more than 1000 girls supplied by Brunel. On one occasion Epstein told me, Brunel sent him three French 12-year olds—I think they were triplets—for his birthday.” (p. 112)
“On another occasion, Brunel had a group of “talent” scouts fly to Brazil in Epstein’s jet to recruit underaged girls off the soccer field there. They were delivered to Epstein for his use and then returned to Brazil.” (p. 112)
“Just like Cinderella, I was going to meet a handsome prince. Maxwell’s old friend, Prince Andrew, would be dining with us. When Prince Andrew arrived at the townhouse that evening, Maxwell was more coquettish than usual. ‘Guess Jenna’s age,’ she urged the Prince after she introduced me. The Duke of York, who was then 41, guessed correctly: 17. ‘My daughters are just a few years younger than you..” (p. 122) EDITORS NOTE: (the famous photo circulating on social media of Prince Andrew with his arm around Jenna’s waist, with Ghislaine Maxwell standing in the doorway and smiling, was snapped on Jenna’s camera by Jeffrey Epstein.)
“When we get home, you are to do for him (the Prince) what you do for Jeffrey,” Maxwell said. Maxwell told me the following morning, ‘You did well. The Prince had fun.’ Soon, Epstein would give me $15,000 for servicing the man the tabloids called “Randy Andy”—a lot of money. I hadn’t wanted to have sex with the Prince, but felt I had to.” (pp. 123/4)
“Epstein trafficked me to a man who raped me more savagely than anyone had before. We were on Epstein Island when I was ordered to take this man to a cabana—a well-known Prime Minister, as I described him in legal filings. He repeatedly choked me until I lost consciousness and took pleasure in seeing me fear for my life. Horrifically, the Prime Minister laughed when he hurt me…I emerged from the cabana bleeding from my mouth, vagina and anus. (p. 139)
“Afterward, I tearfully begged Epstein not to send me back to the Prime Minister. I got down on my knees and pleaded with him. I don’t know if Epstein feared the man or if he owed him a favor, but he wouldn’t make any promises, saying coldly of the politician’s brutality “You’ll get that sometimes.” (p. 140)
“Today i know that Epstein liked to tell friends that women were merely ‘a life-support system for a vagina.’”
“I know that Epstein made the following chilling distinction: ‘I’m not a sexual predator; I’m an offender. It’s the difference between a murderer, and a person who steals a bagel.’”
“At that point, I hit bottom. I now knew I wouldn’t survive. I saw only two possible options: either someone Epstein trafficked me to would kill me, or I would take my own life.” (p. 140)
“About 8 weeks or so after my encounter with the Prime Minister, Epstein informed me, as he often did, that he wanted me to service an important friend on one of his jets. Epstein told me what time to be at the private airport in Palm Beach and said I’d only be up in the air for an hour…I had no idea who I was meeting that day as I climbed the stairs that led to the plane. Then I ducked my head and stepped inside. ‘Hello again,’ said the Prime Minister, the man I feared more than any other. The blood rushed to my head and I could barely breathe. Will he kill me this time?…I thought I might faint. For the next hour, I was on high alert, braced for a fatal blow. As it turned out, this second encounter with the Prime Minister was more typical of those I’d had with other men—his only goal was ejaculation…” (p. 141).
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 Shutterflywas mentioned, Lifetouch wasnot. 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.
