Dirty linenFlorida under-age sex scandal continues to reverberate

Fifty years ago, a tawdry affair rocked Britain. In 1963 the British Minister of Defense John Profumo was forced to resign after it was discovered that he shared the services of a 19-years old escort girl named Christine Keeler (Profumo started his relationship with Keeler two years earlier, when she was only 17) with Yevgeni Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy.

The Profumo affair damaged the credibility of Prime Minister Harold McMillan – based on Profumo’s reassurances, he told Parliament that his defense minister had no extramarital affairs – and he resigned a few months later.

There is a tawdry affair now unfolding in Florida, which similarly involves young girls, sex, and people in high places.

Six years after financier Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to charges involving soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14-years of age, the case has resurfaced with recent allegations that late last year, Britain’s Prince Andrew and American politicians, business people, and society high-flyers had sex with a 17-year old girl paid for by Epstein. Virginia Roberts, one of four women who claimed to have been victimized by Epstein, has submitted a 23-page affidavit detailing dates and locations of the times Epstein forced her and other women to have sex with his friends.

Roberts first met Epstein in 1999, when she was 15-years old, through one of his associates. According to her, the following three years involved paid sex abuse, travel, and sexual encounters with many of Epstein’s powerful friends. “I was trained to be everything a man wanted me to be,” she said in her affidavit. “They said they loved that I was very compliant and knew how to keep my mouth shut.”