Odious attitude long pre-dated Epstein

In some ways, the saga of Jeffrey Epstein and his long-term girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell is almost a morality tale for our time.

Epstein, who exploited young girls for sexual purposes, flying them to various spots in America on an airplane jokingly known as ‘The Lolita Express’ is, of course, dead. It’s widely known that Prince Andrew was his friend, and may face charges of being, in some way, complicit in these crimes – although he denies such allegations.

But Ghislaine Maxwell is in the frame as an accessory to Epstein’s odious practices, and many ugly claims have been published to the effect that Maxwell acted as a ‘madam’ or procuress for these Lolitas – some as young as 14. She is facing charges that she groomed young girls for Epstein’s pleasure, and sometimes joined in with the sexual abuse herself.

Victims

If convicted, the 58-year-old Maxwell faces a long stretch in a tough New York ‘correctional penitentiary’. Virginia Robert Guiffre, one of Epstein’s victims who claims she was manipulated by Ghislaine Maxwell, has said that “she belongs in jail. She ruined so many lives.” The young woman, photographed with Prince Andrew’s arm around her waist at Maxwell’s mews house, says the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell was “one of the best days of my life”.

Yet, only last year, Maxwell attended a charity event in London where she was numbered among “the world’s most successful women”. It’s but a short time ago since she mingled with a global elite, including Bill Clinton and the Trumps, and was photographed larking around on the actual throne at Buckingham Palace. Her ‘contacts book’ – of renowned people on the international circuit – was said to be legendary.

Now all that glittering lifestyle is turning to dust, and many celebrate her downfall and call it well-deserved. St Paul’s terrible warning “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” is enacted before our eyes in such public cases.

It is for the law to decide whether an accused is guilty as charged, but the morality of the Epstein narrative is certainly pretty appalling. Yet it should be added, the sexual licence that prevailed in these circles had been ‘normalised’ for some time.

The ‘Lolita’ syndrome – the sexualisation of young teenage girls – was well embedded in the culture. Nabokov’s novel of that name was sold and marketed with a child-star image.

Even now, much sex education material is constructed to encourage early sexual activity”

A supermarket chain in Britain, not long ago, was selling sexualised underwear for pre-teen girls with a ‘Lolita’ brand-name. The British Family Planning Association had campaigned vigorously to allow under-age girls to ‘make their own choices’ in matters of sexual activity.

Even now, much sex education material is constructed to encourage early sexual activity, not to empower the young to defend values of personal integrity or to affirm their right to chastity.

Jeffrey Epstein is deplored as a corrupt person, but the milieu in which he moved was altogether permissive towards that corruption.

****

Barber shops opened in England last weekend, and a friend of mine decided to go to the barber’s at 6.30am. The salon was already full, with a queue outside, proving that men are as keen on having their hair ‘done’ as women.

Hair-cutting is a very old profession – it was carried out by priests 5,000 years ago in Egypt. The barber-shop jokes are very old too. “How would you like your hair cut?” asks the barber. “In silence,” answers the customer. This particular banter goes back to ancient Greece – possibly attributed to Socrates!

Precious cathedral’s close call

Spain’s most-visited monument is the stunning Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and, after a long period in lockdown, the beautifully unusual basilica designed by Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi is now opening up again to visitors.

The Sagrada Familia is designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, but it might well have been destroyed during the Spanish Civil War by the Republican forces, as so many others were.

According to George Orwell, when he got to Catalonia, “almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt”. The only church the Republicans and Anarchists decided not to destroy was the Sagrada Familia – “spared because of its ‘artistic value’”, he wrote. Fighting alongside the ‘reds’ himself, the English author decided to take a look at the basilica that had, exceptionally, escaped destruction.

He pronounced it “one of the most hideous buildings in the world”. The anarchists, he proclaimed, “showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance” (although they did hang a red and black banner between its spires).

Orwell showed precience, later, in his fabled novels 1984 and Animal Farm, but not much judgement about Gaudi’s masterpiece, which is now widely regarded as one of the most artistically original places of worship in the world. The 1936 anarchists seemed to grasp that, and it is now Spain’s pride.