Those cases involving underage kids who are in their teens, but not pre-pubescent kids, has to be a prosecutorial and law enforcement nightmare.
I mean, if you’re 14 or 15 years old, and from a fucked up home and your life is going sideways, it exponentially increases your odds to even be in that situation to get molested/raped. Then such a large percentage of those kids will end up being fucked up because of their upbringing and the fact that they got singled out by predators like Epstein, which makes them easy to demonize 15 years later when they’re a mess or living in a trailer park somewhere.
So many legal cases in general are well-served by taking the case on an individual basis and common sense rather than some ballpark sentencing guideline or vague statute, but none more than these cases. Trying to parse how old the perpetrator is, how much the victim played into their own victimization, etc, has to be incredibly difficult. A dude like Epstein lives in that grey area.
In a world of common sense you just take him out behind the courtroom and put a bullet in his head. The guy is a straight predator who cultivates troubled teen age girls as playthings and has demonstrated a pattern of that shit for decades. Anything but a bullet is illogical.
Trying to make laws that drop the hammer on these old powerful men while not swooping up some 23 year old incel who lives in his mothers basement and caves to the hotpants 15 year old next door is why sex crimes has to be the nut low to deal with if you’re in law enforcement.
It’s one of those areas of the law where the system would be so much better served if you just empowered a dozen reasonable people to listen to cases and give the perpetrator anything from probation to the death penalty. You legit need that wide of latitude. Some panel of common sense individuals would almost always be better than some solo judge or prosecutor who can be corrupted or politically biased and influenced. Every time I read about these cases it tilts the fuck out of me and I think some dictatorships that can just arbitrarily make up laws as they go are actually preferable to our current system.