Widespread denial accompanied the public exposure of Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long sexual abuse and trafficking of girls and women.
After the U.S. Justice Department released millions of case documents on Epstein in January 2026, billionaires, politicians, heads of state and academics proclaimed their ignorance of Epstein’s global network of sexual exploitation.
Why would so many intelligent and powerful people repeatedly trumpet their lack of awareness, especially after Epstein’s 2008 plea agreement to underage prostitution charges?
And what about all of Epstein’s staffers and business associates who kept quiet about the suspicious behavior they observed?
As a human rights researcher who has conducted genocide research on four continents, I think denials of human rights atrocities can help people understand the denial of crimes like child sexual abuse and trafficking.
Avoiding accountability for atrocities requires two types of denial: by the perpetrator and by the community. It’s easy to understand why mass murderers and child rapists deny their horrific actions. More perplexing is why bystanders, law enforcement, colleagues, family and institutions claim ignorance.
Society understands that staying quiet after witnessing impermissible crimes is a form of complicity. Bystanders are likely to deny an atrocity when acknowledging it requires action, both morally and legally.
As sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel has noted: “Like silence, denial involves active avoidance. Rather than simply failing to notice something, it entails a deliberate effort to refrain from noticing it.”
US and international law
A network of international and domestic laws considers certain crimes so horrific that there are no extenuating circumstances for committing them. Other laws stipulate that everyday observers of certain crimes have a legal responsibility to report them and to protect victims if possible.
The 1987 United Nations convention against torture emphasizes: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war … may be invoked as a justification of torture.” And the 1948 U.N. genocide convention holds all signatory nations responsible for their inaction against genocide.
In the United States, the 1974 Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act mandates that states have provisions requiring certain people – doctors, teachers, clergy and law enforcement – to report known or suspected cases of child abuse.
About a quarter of states go further and stipulate that “all persons who have cause to suspect that any juvenile is abused, neglected, or dependent or has died as the result of maltreatment shall report” to the authorities.
Perpetrator denial
In the context of government human rights abuses, sociologist Stanley Cohen in 2001 classified denial into three strategies: literal, interpretive and implicatory.
With literal denial, Cohen wrote, the perpetrator simply claims the event never happened. If successful, this form of denial makes the problem disappear.
During the U.S. war on terror after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, human rights groups accused the George W. Bush government of torturing detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
Applying Cohen’s typology illuminates how the Bush administration cycled through strategies of denial, beginning with literal denial. Responding to evidence of U.S. torture of detainees in Iraq in 2006, Bush denied the accusations: “This country doesn’t torture; we’re not going to torture.”
After the failure of literal denial, the Justice Department employed interpretive denial, which admits to something having taken place, just not something that rises to the level of a crime. The DOJ redefined torture and referred to acts such as waterboarding – legally classified as torture – as “enhanced interrogation methods.”
Following his guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from a 14-year-old, Epstein used interpretive denial by comparing the severity of his crime to shoplifting: “I’m not a sexual predator,” he said. “I’m an ‘offender.’ It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”
When interpretive denial fails, perpetrators turn to what Cohen calls implicatory denial. It accepts the facts – torture of detainees, forced expulsions, mass killings – but denies the psychological or moral ramifications that follow.
In his memoirs, Bush did not deny the use of torture; he denied the immorality of the torture. “The choice between security and values was real,” he wrote.
Community denial
Research that I’m currently conducting revises Cohen’s typology to understand why bystanders to crimes like Epstein’s don a veil of ignorance.
Denial of child sexual abuse occurs within a community – a citizenry, a family, a congregation. The community establishes the parameters of morality, the relative power of each member, and which actions constitute crimes.
In cases where accepting the truth has a high communal cost – a reordering of the power structure, more egalitarian institutions, eradication of prejudice or social disgrace – many people calculate that the cost of justice is not worth reordering the structure of privilege from which they benefit.
In the case of institutional abuse, powerful groups, such as the Catholic Church, prioritized the reputation of the institution over the victims.
Much like perpetrators, a community adheres to its preferred version of reality by denying abuse at the literal, interpretive and implicatory levels.
With literal denial, bystanders negate the experience of one particular child. This is so prevalent among mothers of incest victims that the legal community is exploring criminally charging the mothers who fail to protect their children.
Community interpretive denial tells the victim they did not experience what they thought they experienced. This occurred repeatedly for many victims of Larry Nassar, a former physician who sexually assaulted hundreds of gymnasts in the guise of medical treatment.
Gymnast Larissa Boyce described what happened when the then-16-year-old reported Nassar’s abuse to her coach. “She just couldn’t believe that was happening. She said I must be misunderstanding what was going on.”
Community implicatory denial negates the moral implications of the atrocity by blaming the victim for the perpetrator’s actions.
During the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal that erupted in the late 1980s, Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland admitted that sexual activity had taken place between some of his priests and their young parishioners, but he dismissed the notion that the priests were entirely to blame.
“Sometimes not all adolescent victims are so ‘innocent,’” he told The Catholic Herald in 1988. “Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often quite streetwise.”
Communities blinded by the perpetrator’s stethoscope, billion dollars, clerical collar or Ivy League degree often refuse to acknowledge the stereotypes that protect privileged predators.
And that willful ignorance of child sexual abuse equals complicity. Through denial, members thus absolve themselves for inaction in the face of atrocity.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Sarah K. Lischer is an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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