Virginia And Shamima And Female Agency

Two odious women have been in the news recently, both for some time. For much of that time, the mainstream media has not reported objectively on the case of Shamima Begum, while over the past decade and more there has been hardly any objective reporting at all on the case of the former Virginia Roberts, indeed she hasn’t really been asked any hard questions at all.

Both these women claim to have been groomed by older men – Roberts for sexual reasons; Begum for ideological reasons relating to terror. 

Roberts had sex with men for money and by her own admission, on camera, claimed to have recruited other, younger girls for Jeffrey Epstein. She has claimed most notoriously to have had sex with Prince Andrew and has adduced in support of that claim a now notorious photograph of the two of them together with Ghislaine Maxwell. If it is genuine, and it may not be, but let us assume that it is, it was taken in March 2001 and was revealed to the world a decade later with the media comment that there was no suggestion Prince Andrew had done anything wrong. Four years later, Virginia Roberts (by then Virginia Giuffre) claimed to have been sexually abused by the Prince. She claimed too to have been sexually abused on several occasions by the legal scholar, author and pundit Alan Dershowitz. This latter allegation led to litigation between the two. Dershowitz called her a prostitute, said she was still a prostitute, that he could prove he had never met her, and said further he wanted to see her prosecuted for perjury.

Recently, she backed down from her allegations against him, claiming unconvincingly that this may have been a case of mistaken identity. The real cause of her backing down was clearly the realisation that in the court of law if not in the court of media manufactured opinion she would lose heavily. With extraordinary magnanimity, Alan Dershowitz has decided to let this go. Prince Andrew may not though.

Shamima Begum is an entirely different kettle of fish. In February 2015, she left England with two other girls and travelled to Syria. She was 15 years old at the time. When she arrived there, she joined the Islamic State and married a white convert. In Syria, the age of consent is 15, so the issue of statutory rape does not arise, whatever her lawyers in England may claim. Begum became pregnant and gave birth three times in quick succession. All her babies died, which is probably a testament to the conditions under which she was living.

Now that the romance of being a jihadi bride and cheering the beheading of infidels has worn off, she wants to return to Britain. The Government has ruled otherwise, and thankfully the courts have sided with it.

How credible are the claims of these two women, that they were groomed, and just because they were groomed, they should neither of them be held accountable in any way, manner, shape or form for their bad acts?

Neither of these cases is really about “groomed” youth, rather they are about female entitlement. If you are not familiar with the five fails of feminism you can find details of them here, but the golden rules can be summed up as follows:

1) Anytime a woman does anything bad, it is always a man’s fault.

2) If in doubt, refer to rule 1.

The man concerned can be an individual man, a type of man, a class of man, or every man on the planet – the mythical patriarchy. As Don Lemon discovered to his cost, that includes black homosexual men, although to be fair, he did overstep the mark with his comment about Nikki Haley.

Virginia Roberts was 16 when she began recruiting underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein, or possibly 17, not 15 as she claimed because she was working at the time and would not have been so employed had she been only 15. The age of consent in Florida at that time and now was and is 18. In England it is 16; she was 17 when she allegedly had sex with Prince Andrew. The claim she was “trafficked” to have sex with him is bunk as is the claim that she was trafficked – travelling alone – to Thailand to take a massage course and bring back a girl for Epstein on her return journey. She didn’t complete her mission but was obviously a trusted co-conspirator. This woman has told so many lies that she wasn’t trusted to testify against Ghislaine Maxwell, although one of Epstein’s victims told the court Roberts had recruited her for him rather than Maxwell, which begs the question why wasn’t she in the dock with Maxwell?

Begum was only slightly below the age of consent when together with two female friends she travelled to Syria and joined Islamic State. Does anyone think if a 16 year old boy had recruited underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein or a 15 year old boy had joined Islamic State as an auxiliary, does anyone think they would have been forgiven their crimes?

Of course not! Eric Smith was 13 years old in 1993 when he murdered a 4 year old boy. He was paroled only last year. Granted, that crime was far worse than anything Virginia Roberts did (although many feminists would have you believe otherwise), but he was punished for his crime. 

One more example will suffice, in 2019, a 17 year old boy was convicted of raping a 13 year old girl. An Indian court sentenced him to 3 years in reform school. That was clearly a heavy discount for his age; a man of 23 could have expected a much longer sentence.

What punishment has been meted out to the former Virginia Roberts who again (by her own admission) facilitated the sexual abuse of underage girls? None, indeed she has been rewarded for her crimes and for lying about many people – including Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz. 

Begum hasn’t been rewarded but she certainly hasn’t been punished. The idea that she was groomed is nonsense. One more time, she joined Islamic State on her own volition, but even if she had been groomed by a terrorist, the law should forgive only so much, and that does not include joining a terrorist organisation of this nature, betraying her country and the world in the process.