What The Epstein Files Reveal About Control Disguised As Protection

Every time an adult woman in India is reported missing, a familiar public script unfolds. Concern quickly gives way to speculation. Speculation hardens into judgment. Before we know it, the conversation shifts from where she might be to why she made the choices she did. The ongoing discourse around the Epstein Files fits neatly into this pattern. While the case itself continues to evolve, what has already become clear is not just how we respond to women’s safety, but how uncomfortable we remain with women’s autonomy.

This is not a story about crime alone. It is about control.

As a matter of fact, it is about how women’s personal decisions are routinely reframed as danger, how consent becomes conditional, and how the language of protection is often used to justify surveillance.

Unfortunately, in a country like India, safety and freedom are rarely discussed together when it comes to women. The assumption is simple and deeply ingrained.

If a woman steps outside social expectations, she must either be misguided or in need of rescue. The idea that an adult woman might knowingly make a choice that others disapprove of is still treated as implausible.

The Rescue Narrative and Its Blind Spots

The urge to “save” women is not new. It has shaped laws, policing, and social responses for decades now, but the underlying assumption remains that women are safest when their choices are filtered through institutions that claim to know better.

In many cases, the woman herself is never treated as the primary stakeholder in decisions about her own life. This becomes particularly visible when women leave home voluntarily.

The contrast with how missing men are discussed is telling. Men are described as individuals who have disappeared. Women are described as problems to be solved.

When Safety Turns Into Surveillance

India’s approach to women’s safety is overwhelmingly reactive and restrictive. Curfews, moral policing, bans, and family control are presented as protective measures. What they actually do is limit women’s mobility while leaving structural violence intact.

Data from the National Crime Records Bureau consistently shows that crimes against women are most likely to be committed by people known to them.

Homes, workplaces, and familiar social environments remain primary sites of harm. Yet public anxiety focuses disproportionately on women who step outside boundaries. Safety becomes a justification for constant oversight rather than systemic reform.

Cases like the Epstein Files trigger this reflex almost instantly. The focus is often shifted away from the “so-called” institutional accountability and towards controlling behaviour, and therefore, instead of asking how systems failed to protect women’s rights, we ask why the woman was there in the first place.

Consent Is Still Conditional

But look at the irony. Legally, adult women in India are recognised as individuals capable of making decisions, but socially, that recognition collapses the moment their choices challenge family norms, caste boundaries, or moral expectations.

Consent is respected only when it aligns with what society considers acceptable. When a woman’s decision disrupts social order, consent is reinterpreted as confusion or immaturity. This selective acceptance reveals a deeper discomfort with women exercising agency.

The judiciary has repeatedly affirmed that adults have the right to choose their partners and their lives. Yet social responses remain resistant. Families often invoke safety to reclaim control, while institutions comply in the name of welfare.

The result is a paradox. Women are told they are free, but only within tightly drawn limits. The moment they cross those limits, freedom is withdrawn in the name of protection.

Who Decides What Is in a Woman’s Best Interest?

Panels debate. Experts analyse. Authorities decide.

One of the most agitating aspects of public discourse around women’s safety is how rarely women are allowed to speak for themselves.

Listening to women would require accepting outcomes that society finds uncomfortable. It would mean accepting that women can make choices that are risky, imperfect, or unpopular and still deserve dignity.

In cases framed around rescue, the question of best interest is almost never asked of the woman involved. It is answered on her behalf. This paternalistic approach treats adult women as permanent minors and reinforces the idea that autonomy is a privilege, not a right. 

The Cost of Moral Panic

Fear-driven narratives have real consequences. They shape policy, policing, and public behaviour. They normalise restrictions while diverting attention from long-term solutions such as safe housing, accessible legal aid, mental health support, and survivor-led interventions.

They also discourage women from seeking help. When every disclosure is met with judgment, surveillance, or forced intervention, silence becomes safer than honesty. This is particularly true for women navigating family conflict, relationships outside social approval, or economic independence.

The mockery is hard to miss. In the name of protecting women, we create conditions that make them less safe.

Rethinking Protection

A feminist approach to safety begins with a simple principle. Women are not problems to be managed. They are individuals with the right to make decisions about their own lives.

Protection that ignores consent is not protection. It is controlled. True safety expands choices instead of narrowing them. It trusts women instead of monitoring them. It addresses structural violence instead of disciplining behaviour.

The conversation sparked by the Epstein Files offers an opportunity. Not to amplify panic or reinforce stereotypes, but to ask better questions: Why does women’s autonomy still feel threatening? Why is control so easily mistaken for care? And why do we struggle to imagine safety without surveillance?

Perhaps the most radical shift we can make is also the simplest. To believe women. To listen when they speak. And to accept that not every woman needs saving. Sometimes, what she needs is to be left free.

Authored by Media Analyst, Quality Council of India | Views expressed are the author's own.