Read as part of CBR15Bingo: on air. This true crime story is rocking the news right now because the police believe they have apprehended the killer of the girls written about in this book, among others.
When it comes to the evils of non-consensual sexual abuse by men, I tend to avoid stories that are mainstream. The vast majority of abusers are your next door neighbor who have opportunity and privilege to get away with it. Needless to say, I haven’t read a ton on Jeffrey Epstein. But I did see the Netflix doc and it did reveal something I wish others picked up on: Epstein preyed on lower class girls from the other side of Palm Beach. They weren’t beloved daughters who were plucked from a playground or lured at a club. They were young women trying to earn money that they needed for the essentials of life.
In other words, Epstein is just like every other predator: finding those who are vulnerable.
And that’s what the strength of Lost Girls is, a book I finally sat down to read just a month after police believe they’d apprehended the Gilgo Beach killer. The young women of the story, all of them sex workers who advertised their services on Craigslist, had one thing in common: they were from their own town’s wrong side of the tracks. They needed money fast for whatever reason and they got it by doing sex work, just as many women and femmes have before them. And part of why the Suffolk Police was so sluggish during the initial case is because they didn’t take seriously the fact that one of the girls was missing, due to her background.
Referring to my first paragraph: I don’t read a lot of true crime about murdered girls, male serial killers, etc. Not judging, it’s just not for me. I only read this because it was recommended as something that focused on the lives of the women themselves and what was lost. And I’m glad I did. Kolker does a fine job telling their stories, helping us to get to know them, their joys and triumphs, their sorrows and tragedies. They are fully formed human beings, not oversexed nymphs struck down in titillating fashion.
Kolker wrote a kind of new postscript for the book in The New York Times talking about how much society has changed regarding its views on sex workers since the book was first published. It has but it hasn’t gone far enough. These people were mothers, daughters, wives and girlfriends. They had hopes and dreams like the rest of us. They chose the path for reasons that were their respective own. And they deserved better in this life.
