Claire Wilmot

So I was looking through the Epstein files to try to understand how these powerful men were responding to Me Too in real time.

So my academic background looks at the aftermath of seemingly progressive legal reforms, specifically around gendered violence.

and tries to see what's happening in the wake of those reforms on a sort of practical level.

So how are people being believed and disbelieved when they go to report a crime at police stations, but also, you know, the other places that they might talk about what's happened to them.

So yeah, my work follows sort of how doubt functions and how doubt can kind of derail those cases, either before they enter the criminal legal system or through the criminal legal process.

So I wanted to see, you know, how were women being believed, disbelieved, doubted in the Epstein files?

And so I was looking for references to whether or not women were being called liars, how the testimony of Epstein's victims were being undermined.

But through that process, I found some very interesting correspondences between Epstein and his vast networks of allies.

Where they were basically responding to a number of high-profile Me Too cases and trying to sort of sow seeds of doubt around the testimonies of all survivors that were coming forward during this period.

No, they're very, very rare.

You know, like plane crashes, they're an extremely unusual event that ends up attracting a huge amount of press attention.

But they make up a very, very small proportion of overall reports.

It's a really good question.

Yeah.

And the short answer is that I don't know.

My work asks what doubt and disbelief tell us about different forms of structural power.

So I'm interested in what you can learn about the persistence of patriarchy, of racism, of class oppression through these kind of moments of doubt and disbelief.

So, you know, I think when it comes to social movement, structural change is really hard and it takes a really long time.

And so I think what we're seeing with the outsized attention that these false reports garner in the media and also in sort of, you know, everyday discourse is.

is this sort of resistance to the kinds of structural change that a lot of these movements are seeking to bring about.