Virgin Sacrifices: The Texas Flash Floods and Epstein
Two current news threads highlight the perils of growing up female in this country. The first weaves around the nearly 30 young girls, most only 8 or 9, who died when catastrophic flash flooding overtook their beloved Texas summer camp. We’ve viewed images of their smiling faces, winced and can’t bear to think of the horrific existential terror they must have suffered in their final moments. Knowing they won’t have the chance to grow up, we can only hope the rising waters took them quickly. The second thread twists around the vicious, manmade (literally) disaster perpetrated by the Epstein-Maxwell pedophile sex trafficking ring on the lives of as many as 1,000 (!) young girls only a few years older (some as young as 14). They survived physically, but were traumatized, their passage from girl to woman blighted, thrown off track, by “too much too soon” entry into a depraved “adult” world they were too young to handle. And now, adding insult to injury, their lived experiences are being largely “erased” in the rush to fend off/minimize political fallout. Later in life, some of them died too—suicide, drug overdose—after struggling to integrate what had been done to them. “You never really heal,” said one victim, two decades after.
Who Pays the Price?
Not surprising that both these narratives have generated efforts to reframe/manage/manipulate surrounding public conversation. Hard to admit to and confront our failings. The “Virgin Sacrifices” title references the trope/archetype of young girls offered up as martyrs, in ancient myths and modern fantasy tales, to placate dragons, angry gods, dark forces in some human psyches, so communities could live. This raises questions: Why are young girls with absolutely no power expected to shoulder such heavy burdens? Do they have a choice, the option to refuse? Related assumptions persist in cultural frames around gender roles. In both cases, view the girls as innocent, naïve, unworldly, impressionable. They were also entirely dependent on adults in their lives to interpret the world, care for, guide them, make decisions, keep them safe. The sheltered Camp Mystic girls trusted their mothers and the folks who ran the camp. And well-meaning mothers trusted camp operators, based on their own fond memories and legacy histories that for many go back generations. The place has been described by former campers as a magical “little slice of heaven,” a space out of regular time. How could anything bad happen there? That apparently extended to the belief nothing in the magical place would ever change. But this contradicted a backstory of flooding in a similar storm system, with 10 campers drowned, in 1987. And almost 40 years later, while Texas “culture” has continued to ramp up denial, the risks have soared with growing effects of climate change. Camp owners and operators were not forthcoming regarding dangers of location in the river floodway. They made short-term choices, cutting corners, to persuade FEMA to allow expansion in and not show existing structures on flood maps to avoid the expense of carrying flood insurance. (NPR, WSJ).
Evil Intentions
The Epstein gang were, of course, neither well-meaning nor trustworthy. Their playbook seems a mirror image of rampant Catholic priest sex abuse scandals and coverups or the notorious elite Hellfire Club of 18th century London, with vulnerable girls groomed, taken in by and trusting Maxwell’s “big sister” persona. Assume there was an underlying “deflowering virgins” element. I reflect on girls I met in a storytelling project I conducted a few years back at a Catholic girls’ school. In 6th grade, just 12 or 13 and beginning to think about dating, yet boys they flirted with online were already pressing them to send nude photos. And one had had to change schools when her face was superimposed on another girl’s naked body. I shudder to imagine how easily they might have been lured in, dazzled by shiny glitz, fake glamor, gifts. Rebecca Solnit has recognized another, deeper, underlying story (The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein. The Guardian. August 3, 2025.) “Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence again women.” The common theme with Epstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, is “patterns of extensive staff (co-conspirators), deep pockets, banks, and elite connections.” And because “cases are talked about individually, [they are] often treated as shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society….” And “Law enforcement and the legal system have often been more interested in protecting perpetrators and society has often normalized and even celebrated violence against women.” And that seems to explain how they were able to “get away with it” for so long, until a few victims found their voices because no one else would speak up for them.
Losing Power
We have seen women steadily lose political and cultural power since the brief surge of Second-Wave feminism in the 1970s. “The kind of power [now] being fetishized in popular culture…wasn’t the sort you accrue over a lifetime, in the manner of education or money or professional experience. It was all about youth, attention, and a willingness to be in on the joke, even if we were ultimately the punch line.” (Sophie Gilbert. Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation on Women Against Themselves. Penguin. 2025). So, the Epstein model was perfect, cycling through a set of interchangeable young bodies and then moving on to the next. And we see a variation manifest in the current administration. Michael Wolff, who has made a career of profiling the president, has noted that all the women look like Melania, who mostly absents herself. The model: “long hair worn down, skirts above the knee, high boots, and, in his [Wolff’s] opinion, not always qualified.” (Daily Beast). And then there’s Mar-a-Lago face, due to extensive application of Botox and plastic surgery. And there’s a limited “shelf-life,” after which women who do manage to grow up are expected to step into the roles of wives, mothers, “helpmates.” And national policy choices will continue to “rely on [them] to hold it together for their families, their communities, the whole economy, [while] denying them the support they deserve.” (Jessica Calarco. Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net. Portfolio/Penguin. 2024). This while as, in this country and around the world, “women [continue to] carry a disproportionate share of unpaid caregiving” and do much of the emotional heavy lifting. I think of the suffering of Texas mothers grieving and perhaps second guessing the loss of the daughters they sent to Camp Mystic with confidence they would return happy, healthy, alive.
Different in Texas?
We can see events at Camp Mystic as representative of a softer feminine, denial, side/counterpart that dovetails with the Lone Star State’s fiercely masculine culture of cowboy “rugged individualism” that strives to deny and overcome and conquer physical, geographic, climate realities. The big, strong, men will take care of the girls. But in this case, they did not and the most vulnerable became casualties of the cultural and ideological wars. The state “faces hurricanes, heat, drought, rising seas and [of course] deadly floods. But despite the clear need for preventive action, that is not the political mood.” (Ed Pilkington. The Texas way: why the most disaster-prone US state is so allergic to preparing for disasters. Guardian. July 13, 2025.) When questions were raised, Gov. Greg Abbot pushed back and used sports metaphors (Derek J. Collins. Guest Columnist. Texans deserved empathy, not Abbott’s “Winner vs. Losers” Talk. Austin American-Statesman. July 10, 2025.). The tragedy has been described as an act of God, too fast-moving to be predicted, and warning systems proved woefully inadequate. Did DOGE cuts reduce National Weather Service prediction and warning capacity? (Aamna Mohdin. Monday briefing: The ‘toxic cocktail’ of climate denial, federal cuts and the Texas floods. The Guardian. July 14, 2025.). But, as noted above, it had happened before in a similar storm system. “Abbott’s response so far has been notably lacking in one regard: any assurance that Texas will tackle the problems that contributed to the calamity in Kerr County over the Fourth of July weekend, when the Guadalupe River rose like a torrent 26ft in 45 minutes. Accosted by reporters, the governor has indicated he will allow debate in the Texas legislature on the state’s flood warning systems but has given no guarantees on the outcome.”
Through the Looking Glass?
Epstein’s is a tangled tale. Though never graduating from college, he taught, age 21, at an elite private school in Manhattan, where he already showed an interest in young female students and a gift for making contacts. He used those to move into the investment industry. From the inside, he embarked on both elements of his career path. Along the way, he claimed to be an undercover, “intelligence agent” and thus untouchable and photographed and videotaped interactions, perhaps with a view to blackmail, in conjunction with investment activities (Wikipedia). And now, he too is dead. By suicide, we’re told, but questions won’t go away. Though he was on suicide watch, guards did not regularly check on him as required, and there’s a gap in surveillance footage from the night he died in his cell. And on what can be seen, a shadowy orange figure moves down the stairs toward his cell. And now, his handmaid/accomplice Maxwell has been moved to a minimum-security, “country club,” prison in Texas, and a pardon may be in the works. Meanwhile, “Even as the case now dominates political discourse, the focus has been not on the crimes committed but the much more trivial matter of the partisan political fallout and the various strategies politicians are adopting to exploit the controversy.” (Adam Reiss and Corky Semanski. Epstein victims say the Trump administration’s handling of the case adds to their anguish. NBC News. July 18, 2025; Jeff Heer. Jeffrey Epstein’s Victims Are Again Being Wronged by Donald Trump’s Circus. The Nation. July 18, 2025).
Resolution or Not
All coverage of the Epstein crisis I’ve read includes the disclaimer that there is no evidence the president took part. And as usual with rape, there are denials. Maxwell’s brother claims she’s the true victim, that the young women who accused her are liars. There are also questions around “protecting” those same victims. (Tanner Stening. Transparency vs. victim safety? Experts say it isn’t a case of either/or in the Jeffrey Epstein files. Northeastern Global News. July 31, 2025). The Attorney General has stated the Department of Justice has in its possession “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.” But a July memo stated there is “no evidence to pursue uncharged third parties and that no ‘incriminating client list’ exists.” Really?! “The Trump administration’s mixed signals on the case have drawn widespread criticism — even from within the MAGA base.” Apparently they expected all the slime would splash on “radical left Democrats,” along with a plot to cover treasonous acts by Obama. Think Pizza gate. The optics remain highly problematic. “In any sexual assault prosecutions involving children or underage victims, you are always conscious of the victim…yet concerned about holding the perpetrator accountable once you have proved your case beyond a reasonable doubt.” In this context, “Pardoning or providing clemency to Maxwell, who acted as [Epstein’s] fixer, who acted in such a way as to seduce the girls so that he could then rape them, any way in which she as an accomplice doesn’t serve the sentence that she got, it is a betrayal of the victims.”
Seeking Answers in Texas?
Optics, outrage, and unanswered questions can sometimes shift political moods and discourse, at least for a while. Families of the Texas victims, in classic search for meaning after tragedy (think of grieving mothers who started MADD), have announced funding of memorials and foundations to support favorite causes. Will they move on to lawsuits, raise issues that left Camp Mystic so vulnerable in an area known as “Flash Flood Alley?” Probably not, given the camp’s utopian history so central to the state’s narrative. But folks do need someone to blame. And there’s plenty to go around. An after-action hearing conducted by the “Texas Senate and House’s Select Committees on disaster preparedness and flooding [came] after weeks of mounting frustration from members of the community and other leaders over a lack of answers from the emergency management coordinator.” (Melissa Chan. Kerr County emergency coordinator says he was sick and asleep when floods hit Texas. NBC News. July 31, 2025). Big strong men supposed to be in charge were MIA, on vacation, sick in bed, asleep. The warning only reached the Sheriff around 4:20 am, when the waters had already risen. Questions were raised regarding the “protocol…when all three leaders are unreachable as a disaster unfolds… was [there] a way for Camp Mystic to alert officials or for officials to have warned the camp?” Answer: emergency office was not notified that Camp Mystic had flooded, adding that the camp’s protocol is to alert the sheriff’s office. The sheriff said he had no notifications from the camp.” But the camp had lost power. So, how was that supposed to happen?
Disaster Management and Rebuilding?
When it comes to disasters, I also have personal experience, living and working in a high-risk state, not always well prepared. My bookcase holds a book titled There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster. (Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires, editors. Routledge. 2006). Risk all comes down to where and how we build. And that encapsulates the story of Camp Mystic. Pre-Katrina, I also worked on a disaster preparedness plan for my then home parish “at the bottom of the [Louisiana] Boot.” Folks whose homes had flooded would say it never had before. But every storm is different, and once it happens, it’s always a possibility in the future. A key lesson: if you issue a warning and nothing much happens, folks will be much less likely to heed future warnings. And if nothing extreme happens for a long time, folks tend to assume nothing ever will. Call that disaster amnesia, and again it’s another key piece of the Camp Mystic tragedy. And the idea of 100-year floods the president seized on when he visited Texas leans on the comforting assumption it won’t happen again for another century. But that’s not the way these things work. In fact, a severe weather event could hit the next year or the year after. So, will Camp Mystic rebuild in the same place? Unknown, but given reverence for the history, it’s not unlikely. Rebuilding might even be couched as a “living memorial.” But if sentiment does draw folks back, will camp operators learn the lesson and take the opportunity to build better, higher, and take more account of the topography, the river, the risks? That too remains unknown.
Hoist on Their Own Conspiracy?
Meanwhile, the Epstein controversy grinds on and seems to have “legs.” This though the president “…has long been able to deny and push away issues that might have sunk any other politician.” But now, he “is facing a crisis with his online influencer supporters over the so-called ‘Epstein files.’ [And] there appear to be limits, even for him. An explosive Wall Street Journal article “…revealing a ‘bawdy’ birthday letter purportedly from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein (the president denies the letter in question is from him), has sent shock waves through Maga-world.” (Poppy Coburn. Suddenly, Donald Trump is in trouble. The Telegraph. July 18, 2025.) The president is now suing the WSJ and Rupert Murdoch individually. But it seems he may have lost control of this narrative. And this is the result of his and “his allies play[ing] with fire in letting the conspiracy-obsessives grow their power for so long.” And so, the saga continues for now.
Duty of Care
View both these narrative threads as demonstrating top-to-bottom failure and breach of Duty of Care obligations to vulnerable young girls. Google AI definition: “This is a legal and ethical obligation to avoid acts or omissions that could reasonably be foreseen to cause harm to others. It essentially means taking reasonable steps to protect others from injury or damage. In legal contexts, a breach of this duty, combined with other factors, can lead to negligence claims and liability for damages.” Key factors: “Foreseeability: Harm must be reasonably foreseeable as a result of the action or inaction; Breach of Duty: If the standard of care is not met, it is considered a breach; Causation: The breach of duty must be the direct cause of the harm suffered. A breach of duty can lead to lawsuits and financial penalties. Understanding and fulfilling [this] duty of care is crucial for risk management in any organization.” What we might call the Texas effect seems to combine denial, inadequate performance, and unintended neglect that led to foreseeable consequences. Camp Mystic’s beloved leader died while heroically trying to save young campers. But presume he was also involved in negotiations with FEMA over the flood maps. No insult to balance the two and acknowledge that he made some poor, short-term, choices before. And if such questions cannot be raised and asked, how can better decisions be made? The Epstein effect is, of course, a whole other matter, representing a combination of malice, and covert, but “hiding in plain sight,” in-crowd, secret keeping. And in both cases, young victims unable to protect themselves were essentially abandoned and left on their own. And now, they may continue to be shoved aside in adults’ scramble for political cover. A good first step in doing better and allowing for future improvement, would be admitting to these failures. Will that happen? It remains to be seen.