The widening fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein files is the subject of a column this weekend by Jennifer O’Connell.
She writes that while we’ll talk about Epstein all day long in Ireland, nobody is talking about the countless, nameless victims of the culture of sexual violence that has permeated Irish society for decades.
The revelation of a more far reaching and consequential sex abuse scandal closer to home went virtually unremarked upon this week, she notes.
“The Justice Indicators report, published by the Law Society’s Centre for Justice and Law Reform, found Ireland has a 43 per cent higher rate of recorded sexual violence – incidents reported to the gardaí and officially entered into the criminal justice system – than other EU countries.
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“Read that again, and then imagine that 43 per cent figure refers to something else. Ireland has a 43 per cent higher rate of joblessness. Ireland has a 43 per cent worse rate of flooding. It is impossible to imagine any one of those statements not making headlines, not leading to a clamour for answers and for aggressive Government action.”
Naomi O’Leary looks at the names of Epstein’s friends and acquaintances, ranging from top politicians to business magnates to royalty, which have emerged in the most recent release of files. Epstein leveraged these connections to do favours and gain further access.
“A collector of people” was how Epstein was described in a fond birthday message from the former prime minister of Israel Ehud Barak and his wife in 2016, at a time when the financier had already been imprisoned for soliciting a child for prostitution.
“You gather the most extravagant, influential, bright thinkers, magicians, musicians, linguists, philosophers and mathematicians, the most affluent people in the world,” the couple wrote.
Daniel Geary, in his column this weekend, notes that while the release of nearly three million files by the US department of justice revealed more details of the astonishingly large number of elite men – and women – connected to Epstein, one group has escaped mention.
“While the shock waves from the Epstein scandal continue to reverberate on both sides of the Atlantic, one group of figures have escaped accountability: those associated with right-wing politics.”
How, asks Geary, “have those on the right escaped comeuppance while others have not?”
This weekend also features an extensive interview by Denis Walsh with former Cork hurling manager Pat Ryan, who guided his team to two All-Ireland finals in three seasons.
Speaking about his decision to step down Ryan noticed that “seven or eight” of the Cork football team from the late 1980s had gone to the trouble of seeking him out.
“Those fellas were on to me about sticking at it and driving on,” Ryan says. “They were saying, ‘We were like this in ’87 and ’88, drive on again, go again, you’ll get it done, don’t give up’. But it wasn’t a case of me giving up, it was just a realisation that I couldn’t do it.”
The role of British special-forces in Northern Ireland is the subject of a conversation between Mark Hennessy and three men who served in the Special Air Service (SAS), and a veteran of dozens of operations there.
Throughout the Troubles, the SAS faced allegations that it was key to the operation of a British government-ordered “shoot-to-kill” policy.
This, former SAS solider George Simm tells Hennessy, is “nonsense”, describing the view as a “mantra; it’s a slogan”.
Finally, neuropsychologist and author Prof Ian Robertson looks at our relationship with happiness. “In the 20th century, survey after survey identified a hump of unhappiness in the mortgage-burdened and career-stressed middle-aged.
“The young and the old, in contrast, were as happy as sandboys. But suddenly, all that has changed. Now research finds that the young are as miserable – in some studies more miserable – than their middle-aged parents, uncles and aunts.”
He is not sure why this has happened, but suggests “social media use – constant comparison, doomscrolling, cyberbullying – almost certainly play a part”.
Robertson suggests how we look at anxiety can be reframed as an opportunity to build resilience.
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