21 February 2026

My mother had a story about her childhood. It was 1 September 1939. War had just been declared. The news was so absorbing that everything around her had changed! She had to do something! She went to the kitchen and found a packet of chocolate digestives, a rare treat in those days. She ate one and then another. A third followed.

Her thinking was interesting. Because we were at war, she thought her mum would understand why she had eaten all these biscuits. But her mum did not! What she did understand was that her daughter had been tempted by greed to eat more than her fair share of chocolate digestives and had deprived her mother and three brothers of their fair share!

The changed context made it easier for my mum to succumb to temptation. It proved an easy way in to justify her greed and her inability to resist temptation. We are all experts at changing the context and living in a more conducive environment whereby we can justify our actions and, in particular, our inability to resist temptation and fulfil our desire.

Jeffrey Epstein did exactly this for his friends. He created a context where it was legitimate to play out sexual fantasies and fulfil sexual desire with young women who had been trafficked for the purpose. But when the context was removed, everyone and everything was exposed for what it was as on that day when ‘nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known’. (St. Matthew 10;26)