After reviewing nearly 3.5 million pages of files about the convicted late pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation still concludes that no one other than Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, should be in jail.

This is an astonishing miscarriage of justice. The documents the fbi reviewed included 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, indicating that Epstein abused at least 1,000 women and teenage girls.

Most of these victims were under 18 years old. Some were as young as 14.

Internal documents list up to eight potential “coconspirators” who helped Epstein procure these hundreds or thousands of girls for sexual abuse, as well as 180 “associates” who may have been involved in the abuse. Maxwell claimed in court documents filed this year that 25 unnamed “associates” reached “secret settlements” with victims to avoid litigation or prosecution, but the fbi has made no charges against anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell.

Every angle of this sickening story highlights the terrible sickness of America.

The 3.5 million pages of files released to the public were not vetted, so surely not everyone mentioned in the Epstein files is guilty of a crime. Yet some undoubtedly are guilty. The Department of Justice has a compelling moral duty to investigate and prosecute the Epstein “associates” who committed crimes. Yet Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche indicated on February 1 that the Justice Department’s comprehensive review of the Epstein files was over and that there was no basis to initiate new prosecutions against additional individuals.

Ten days later, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before Congress to answer questions about why her Department of Justice is handling these crimes in the way that it is. She responded to questions about the lack of prosecutions by emphasizing that the Dow Jones is over 50,000 right now and that is what we should be talking about. What a shameful statement! Bondi is not the treasury secretary or the commerce secretary—she is the attorney general. Her job is to investigate and prosecute crimes, not to distract people from crimes by talking about the stock market.

As they came into power, conservatives, including Bondi and fbi Director Kash Patel, emphasized that something was very wrong with the Biden Department of Justice and its handling of the Epstein evidence and prosecutions. Yet now the Trump Department of Justice is strangely uninterested in justice for the victims, punishment for the guilty, and deterrence against such abominable crimes in the future.

Part of the reason is that our elites, liberal and conservative, are deeply, morally sick.

Part of the reason is that we are too.

Millions of Americans engage in sexual sins and crimes. There are an estimated 1 to 2 million prostitutes in the U.S., and another 1 to 2 million, or more, who sell pornography of themselves online. Most of these are adults, but at least 100,000 children and teenagers are trafficked for sex in the U.S. each year.

There are child rape victims in this country right now!

Many of these child victims are smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border, and many more are lured by sex traffickers like Epstein and his associates into one of the nation’s 9,000 illicit massage businesses.

Some estimate that up to 20 percent of online pornography involves minors. It is often difficult to determine who is under age 18 and who is over just from images. Once you start investigating which of Epstein’s associates were sexually involved with teenagers, you open up a very uncomfortable conversation for millions of Americans guilty of sexual sin if not sexual crime.

CyberPsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed academic journal, published that 15 percent of boys and 9 percent of girls have seen child pornography online.

How many millions of people do you think are guilty of supporting the sex trade—directly or indirectly, wittingly or unwittingly?

Our government should prosecute Epstein’s coconspirators, but it appears that even under President Donald Trump, Bondi and Patel, the Department of Justice won’t even do that.

In the larger sense, arresting and prosecuting a few more people and enacting a few more age-verification measures won’t solve America’s terrible sickness. Trafficking teenagers for sex is one of the many tragic “ripple effects” that inevitably come from our society’s embrace of extramarital sex. Until the American people repent not only of our crimes but of our sins and embrace the biblical truth that all usage of sex except that between a lawfully married husband and wife is wrong, there will always be a demand for prostitution—and there will always be children victimized.

What President Trump calls the “Epstein hoax” is not some conspiracy theory about an elite cabal that has hijacked the American government. Rather, it is a damning testament about where the “spirit of fornication” leads the leaders and the people of entire nations. Any culture where 92 percent of men are enslaved to pornography cannot help but produce multiple Epsteins! America will never face the reality of the Epstein scandal until it has not only prosecuted and convicted those who have broken the law but also dismantled the culture that glorifies pornography, fornication, adultery, homosexuality and pedophilia.

Scandals like the ongoing dishonorable handling of the Epstein evidence reveal a deep sickness in our country.

They reveal the depravity of breaking God’s law.

These files should provoke a call to national repentance.

The Creator of sex gave it to human beings as a wonderfully beautiful, unselfish expression of love between a husband and wife within marriage. Used in any other way, it is an act of lust, which is sin. Unless we constantly fight and constantly repent of sin with God’s help, it will persistently, inexorably lead to more and greater sin. This is why God has to “bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins” (Leviticus 26:21). It would have been far easier for America to repent back in the 1950s, when fornication was the front line of the sexual revolution. It will be harder now that the nation has gone far past adultery and fornication into homosexuality and other extreme sexual perversions.

For the inspiring purpose of sex and the motivation to fight sexual sin wherever it might appear, request your free copy of The Missing Dimension in Sex, by Herbert W. Armstrong.