Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal

When studying human trafficking, there are some realities of studying a person (such as Jeffrey Epstein), or a specific group (such as 764), as opposed to the general phenomena. First of all, for obvious legal reasons, you don’t have a direct window into the truth but can only rely on others’ descriptions of it. Second of all, these are criminals, and you don’t want to be in their crosshairs or the crosshairs of their network, God forbid. Third of all, the subject matter is highly traumatic. Fourth, public victims may still be blackmailed, threatened, bribed or mind controlled and operating from a script—you don’t want to be manipulated. (Actually in my experience they get angry when challenged.) Fifth, the people writing about these things, journalists or not, may have an agenda. You don’t want to consume their propaganda. I prefer to document what I can, then step back and look for patterns. Once you know the pattern you can see the dysfunction clearly, and refer to the pattern even if all the evidence is not immediately available.