More True and More False

An honest accounting of the documented record — between facts too terrible to credit and conspiracies too easy to dismiss.

Dr. Yamicia Connor, MD, PhD, MPH

I want to tell you something I am not proud of.

When the first Epstein stories broke—when the Miami Herald published Julie K. Brown’s investigation in 2018, when Epstein was arrested again in 2019, when Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021—part of me remained skeptical. Not about whether sexual abuse had occurred. I believed the survivors completely. But the scale of the conspiracy—the network, the island, the politicians, the royalty, the scientists, the billionaires—felt almost too large to be real.

It felt like the kind of story that gets embellished. The kind that, in the retelling, becomes something larger and more organized than it actually was.

I was wrong to feel that way. And I think a lot of people who consider themselves thoughtful, skeptical, evidence-based thinkers felt the same way.

In that gap—between the documented reality that is almost too terrible to credit and the conspiracy theories that are too easy to dismiss—accountability disappears.

Keep reading →

Also in this series

The Epstein Files · Part One

Stop Doing Pedophile Math

Stop letting clinical terms become an escape route for abusing children. Read →

The Epstein Files · Part Two

They Are Girls. And They Were Treated Like Currency.

The documented record of how a trafficking operation turned children into currency. Read →

The community is open

You're not subscribing. You're co-founding.

A guided map through the whole of women's health — and our work dropped where you see it first.

Come inside the community →