Jeffrey Epstein, a serial sex abuser, showed parallels to serial killers
Sitting in the stack of photos Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate are images of young women whom many believed to be minors and survivors of the financier’s crimes. For a forensic psychologist, Epstein retaining those images is a common move seen with serial killers.
Images the Democrats released sparked sharp reactions, with people calling Epstein “disturbing” and some recoiling at the images kept — and sometimes displayed. But forensic psychologist Dr. Joni Johnston sees qualities of a serial killer in the deceased sexual abuser.
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Federal officials are estimated to have reviewed only 1% of the more than 2 million Jeffrey Epstein documents.
“It’s kind of like a combination of trophy keeping and reliving,” Johnston told Straight Arrow News.
Serial killers, she said, often keep something from their victims or the crime scene to remind them of the killing. Ted Bundy infamously kept victims’ heads after decapitation. In Epstein, it was retaining photos of women. They are seen in Democrats’ disclosures and on Epstein’s own desk, where he’s photographed with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
Epstein also kept photos of several people’s passports.
“When Epstein was in his heyday, he probably didn’t wait long for his next ‘excursion,’” she said. “Serial killers, they’re not killing every day or every week. So it probably doesn’t serve quite the same function in terms of fantasy life. It’s more about a memento and a reminder.”
A method of power, control
Several images centered around the book “Lolita,” which the University of Notre Dame has said Epstein adored, and quotes that were written on presumably one woman’s body. Cornell University professor Vladimir Nabokov wrote the controversial book in 1955 about a man who falls in love with, and later sexually abuses, a 12-year-old girl he nicknamed Lolita.
Someone writing quotes on a person’s body, Johnston said, is a way of establishing ownership over a person. She added that it also depersonalizes survivors where they’re treated as a means to an end rather than a human being.
“It’s a sense of domination and ownership to be able to write something on somebody’s body,” she said.
In an extreme case with sexually sadistic murderers, Johnston said they “completely dehumanize” victims.
Johnston isn’t alone in her assertions on Epstein keeping the photographs. A team of researchers wrote in the “Aggression and Violent Behavior” review journal that serial sexual offenders sometimes also have collections of items from their victims. Researchers wrote that these people take counterintuitive approaches as the items are “irrefutable proof of their responsibility for multiple serious crimes.”
The researchers — University of Virginia professor Janet Warren, forensic expert Park Dietz and FBI profiler Robert Roy Hazelwood — found that serial offenders’ artifacts would more often than not create a profile of future victims through those items.
“While the generation of these materials undoubtedly begins with sexual fantasy,” they wrote, “in each of these collections we discern the overarching desire of the perpetrator to possess and control the archival materials as a way to prolong the vulnerability of the victims and to enhance the offender’s power over them. Once a victim is added to the archive, the crime becomes unending and the victim is captured in a perpetual state of victimization.”
Survivor list grows through failed accountability
Epstein isn’t the only serial sexual abuser in modern times. He joins the ranks of Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, R. Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell who were either accused or convicted of sexual crimes against more than one victim. Whether they retained collections about their survivors isn’t known.
But Johnston said serial offenders, especially those who are well-known in American culture, exhibit high degrees of narcissism, psychopathy, entitlement and superiority as they believe they won’t get caught and can continue their actions. That has an opposite effect on society, Johnston said, showing survivors lack protection and justice won’t be rendered.
“There’s this kind of prioritization of reputation or skill over protection and safety,” she said.
That appeared to be the case for Nassar, who worked with USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic Committee and Michigan State University as a doctor for two decades. He’s serving a 60-year federal conviction for possession of child sexually abusive material, and at least 80 years in Michigan for 10 counts of sexual assault. More than 200 survivors have come forward with claims against Nassar, according to a Senate investigation report.
Johnston said she has come across similar situations where there were opportunities for offenders to be caught or hit with longer prison sentences but they weren’t punished. She said people would protect the assailants, harming survivors or seeing that survivors are fearful of coming forward.
“It’s not that it’s this big secret,” she said. “It’s just that the people who do know are either participating in it, or they’re turning a blind eye and helping cover it up.”
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