Megyn Kelly’s defence of Epstein is a new low for MAGA supporters

Amid the lies, bombast and bias that is US media in the time of Trump, there isn’t much that shocks me any more.

Well, there wasn’t, until I caught up with US right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly’s recent comments on paedophilia. I know I should expect this popular former Fox News host to toe the MAGA line like the others of her ilk. However, this time it’s too much. I still can’t believe what I’m hearing – from a woman no less.

Following the house oversight committee releasing more than 20,000 emails sent to and from deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein this week, Kelly couldn’t shut up. And she should have.

It started with this gem on her YouTube show: “He was into the barely legal type,” Kelly said of Epstein as some sort of qualifier. “Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realise this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, eight-year-olds.”

Er, thanks. I’m sure the victim survivors are grateful he didn’t traffic and rape them earlier. But there’s more.

The following day, she told her audience that “somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything” said they had thought Epstein “liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were but would look legal to a passerby”.

Oh phew, he only liked girls who looked legal. And here I was thinking the man was perverted. But still, Kelly continued.

Later the same day, feeling the heat of her comments, she made a point of stressing Epstein’s behaviour was “sick” when interviewed on a podcast. But then she added, “I don’t know what’s true about [Epstein], but we have yet to see anybody come forward and say, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview. You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a five-year-old, you know?”

Here’s what I know, Megyn Kelly, you are a traitor, not only to your gender but to every victim of sexual assault past, present and future. What’s worse, you are a mother and an attorney, so you know better on both fronts.

But to answer your question as to the vagaries of age, well, I’ll leave that to actress Christina Ricci who posted in reaction to Kelly’s comments: “There’s definitely a difference between a five-year-old and a 15-year-old. But that difference is not ‘whether or not sleeping with them makes you a paedophile’.”

I have listened to interviews of victim survivors of Epstein and still recoil hearing one fragile voice refer to Epstein’s penis as his “pee pee”. I have reported on family violence and youth issues my entire working life and seen the reality of rape. I have also been a lost and scared kid out of home at 16, desperately seeking a sane adult to trust. At that age, you always think it’s your fault. That there is something inherently wrong with you. It’s hard to shake.

Epstein’s victims were young, troubled girls. His pimp Ghislaine Maxwell could sniff out their vulnerability when she procured them from school gates like a hyena circling a pack. These victims – some aged 14 at the time they were abused – live with the trauma of what was done to them every day. No one can judge how they feel. There is no comparison for them.

What’s more, they see the commentary, they read the debate. They hear it is all a “Democrat hoax”, that Epstein was a nice guy who liked women “on the young side”, a bit of a creep but nothing more to see here. If no perpetrators exist, then where does that leave the victims?

There is not a moratorium on pain. Listen to the Epstein victims in this video released this week and tell me how their suffering is going? Look at the pictures the victims hold of themselves at the age they were molested and tell them to be grateful it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Suggesting there is a rape-light category of victims is obscene, immoral and devastating to victim survivors. To mollify, reframe or reduce sexual abuse against women and girls is how misogyny thrives. Megyn Kelly, with her pious, supercilious bile, has shown she might call herself a journalist, but from now on I’ll call her out for what she really is – a disgrace and, worse, an enabler.

Wendy Squires is a writer and author.

Lifeline 13 11 14; Beyond Blue 1800 512 348; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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