In recent weeks, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse have received some of the attention they were long denied. Maybe the conversation about them even came up over the Thanksgiving holiday.
For most of us, conversations like these serve as a kind of moral palate cleanser. Once we've reached our quota of empathy, we feel free to return to the soft glow of our loved ones, NFL commentary, and tryptophan, feeling proud that we've exercised some moral clarity during the day.
But caring about survivors means caring about exploitation, not just the victims of the most prominent predator.
The same forces that failed Epstein's victims continue to fail thousands of others.
Here's an example that probably didn't come up during pumpkin pie: According to federal and tribal data, about 5,700 Native American girls are reported missing each year. (To put it in perspective, one of Epstein's victims estimated that he was “one story among a thousand,“, but most estimates say “dozens.” Whatever number you choose, the story is tragic.)
The disappearances of Native American women (many of whom are presumed murdered, raped, or trafficked) receive only minimal media attention and barely register in the public consciousness.
However, the crisis is so widespread that it has its own acronym: MMIP“Missing or murdered indigenous people.”
Last November, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, wrote an opinion piece noting that “40 percent of all sex trafficking victims are identified as American Indian and Alaska Native women.” Forty percent. For context: only 2.9% of people in the US they identify as native.
Simpson also noted that nearly three-quarters of the Native American women who went missing in 2023 were girls. Girls.
A The Associated Press exposé reported that At the end of 2017, Native women were nearly twice as represented in missing persons cases.
And even these revealing statistics likely understate reality, in part because Native women are often identified as Hispanic or loosely categorized as “other” on official forms.
But why are Native American women disproportionately victimized? Several possible explanations conspire. Higher crime rates certainly correlate with poverty and decades, if not centuries, of systemic abuse. But there are other, more bureaucratic reasons.
For decades, the tribes had There is no authority to prosecute non-native people. for acts committed on reserves. Meanwhile, jurisdictional overlap creates a kind of Bermuda Triangle: Is a crime the responsibility of tribal police, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the county sheriff or the FBI?
One story illustrates the problematic nature of this clear responsibility gap. Eugenia Charles-Newton, chairwoman of the Navajo Nation law and order committee, says that when she was 17 years old they took her to a hut where they beat and raped her for a week. “Since I didn't know where they were holding me, where the shed was located, they were never able to identify the jurisdiction,” he said. “And the man, who I knew, I said his name, they never prosecuted him.”
Recent reforms have sought to address these problems.
The Not Invisible Act of 2019 (signed in 2020) established a commission focused on “identify, report and respond to cases of missing and murdered indigenous peoples (MMIP) and human trafficking.”
Law of the savanna —named after a 22-year-old woman who was murdered in 2017 while eight months pregnant—was approved in 2020 and signed into law by President Trump, with the goal of standardizing protocols and improving data collection.
And grants distributed last year under the Violence Against Women Act sent more than $86 million in programs intended to help survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and trafficking.
These efforts are commendable, but the promise has outweighed the impact, as the overall numbers have not changed: approximately 5,700 Native women were reported missing in 2016. In 2023, the number was around 5,800.
It is reasonable to blame the long tail of American history. But there's also a simpler explanation, one that fits Epstein's story and correlates with human nature: Predators choose vulnerable people who they believe no one will believe them (or will spend energy searching for them or seeking justice).
That's where the stories diverge.
You don't have to be a hardened cynic to suspect that one of the reasons the Epstein case finally came to light is because some of the victims were young, blonde, white women, the ultimate embodiment of what Gwen Ifill once called “missing white woman syndrome.” (And keep in mind that Epstein's victims still had to spend decades trying to get us to pay attention to them.)
Tragically, Native American women are still treated by many as disposable characters in the long national narrative.
So, as we emerge from a holiday commemorating a feast between English settlers and Native people and dive headlong into Black Friday (also known as Native American Heritage Day), it's worth pausing to consider one question.
If our national interest extends only — reluctantly — for certain types of survivors of a high-profile predator, how many other victims and predators remain invisible?
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy rich politicians” and “Too dumb to fail.”
