Steven LaChance Blog

A civilization is only as good as its capacity and willingness to care for its weakest and nurture its youngest. Both things can be true at once.

Imagine this scenario.

You have a twelve-year-old child. You send them to school every day. You do everything in your power to protect them. You teach them to trust adults, to listen to authority, to believe they are safe in places that are supposed to be safe.

Then you hear on the news that a teacher at their school has been brought in for questioning related to child sex trafficking because their closest friend has been charged with the sexual abuse of children and running a child prostitution and pornography ring.

What do you do?

Do you shrug and say, “Well, they were only questioned”?
Do you tell yourself it is probably nothing and move on?
Do you decide that asking questions is inconvenient or uncomfortable?
Do you worry more about reputations than about children?

Or do you demand answers?

Do you pull your child close and listen more carefully?
Do you insist on transparency?
Do you accept that proximity to harm matters, even before guilt is decided?
Do you understand that when children are involved, caution is not hysteria and vigilance is not paranoia?

This is not about politics.
This is not about parties.
This is not about witch hunts.

This is about basic parental instinct and moral responsibility.

If we cannot agree that children deserve an abundance of caution, then something is deeply broken. If protecting the vulnerable makes us uncomfortable, that discomfort is the price of decency. And if we are more afraid of being wrong than of failing a child, then we have already failed.

A society that hesitates here has lost its moral compass. And a civilization that cannot put children first has no future worth defending.

At this point, it should be clear that I am looking at the Epstein case and the disturbing number of people with wealth and power who were connected to him.

The President of the United States has been repeatedly and publicly linked to Jeffrey Epstein, whom he described as a friend. There are photographs. There are documented associations. There are recorded statements made long before his election that many people found disturbing. These include comments about attraction to very young girls, remarks about entering beauty pageant dressing rooms while contestants were undressed, sexualized comments about his own daughter, and a recorded statement describing sexual behavior without consent.

Taken together, these are not isolated moments. They form a pattern of statements, behavior, and associations that reasonably raise questions.

There are accounts describing parties involving Epstein and powerful figures. There is video that, at minimum, raises questions about gatherings at Mar-a-Lago involving Epstein and other men, with young girls present. I am not repeating graphic details. Most people are already familiar with them.

So ask yourself, honestly.

If this were your daughter, what would you do?

Would you look the other way?
Would you minimize it because it is uncomfortable?
Would you tell yourself it is probably nothing?
Would you protect power instead of a child?

Or would you demand answers?

Because this is not about certainty. It is about responsibility. When children are involved, proximity to harm matters. Patterns matter. Silence matters.

And choosing comfort over caution is not neutrality. It is a failure of moral duty.

So the question for you and me is this: where do we go from here?

The obvious answer is accountability. If someone’s name is connected to these materials in a way that raises credible concern, then access to power should be paused until the public can be assured they are not a threat to children, or to the country as a whole. When the stakes are this high, accusation backed by pattern and evidence is enough to demand transparency and safeguards, even before guilt is decided in a court of law.

I think of people like Gary Hart, Richard Nixon, and Al Franken. Careers were derailed, brakes were applied, investigations were demanded, and consequences followed for far less than what we are being asked to shrug at now. That is what responsibility looks like. Accountability is not punishment. Accountability is the guardrail.

And then we hit the wall that should bother every citizen, regardless of party.

We are told there is more material, more documentation, more that the public will not be allowed to see. We are told there are limits, delays, denials, and reasons we should accept without question. Even when courts, journalists, and citizens push for disclosure, we keep hearing some version of: not yet, not this, not for you.

So the question becomes simple.

Why?

What are we protecting?
Who are we protecting?
And why does the protection always seem to tilt upward toward power instead of downward toward children?

At this point, each of us has to ask ourselves what we are willing to accept and what we are willing to demand. Because if we stay naive about where this should end, we will end up exactly where we started, with the vulnerable paying the price and the powerful insulated from consequences.

This is the moment that tests a society.

Not by what it says.
By what it will tolerate.

The call is coming from inside the halls of power.

We are living in a moment that history will record, frame, and judge by what we choose to do next. This is not a future problem. It is a present test. And it will not be measured by our outrage, but by our willingness to act with integrity when it is uncomfortable.

Anyone credibly connected to these allegations, across all parties and affiliations, should have their access to power limited until the facts can be fully and transparently investigated. That is not punishment. It is precaution. It is the minimum standard when children, national trust, and moral authority are at stake.

That standard cannot stop at the doors of the White House.

If justice means anything, it cannot bend or cower to power. If accountability is real, it must apply upward as easily as it applies downward. No office, no title, no political convenience should place anyone beyond scrutiny.

This is not about revenge. It is not about removal for the sake of removal. It is about safeguarding the country and its children while truth is pursued through lawful, constitutional means.

Justice is not blind if it looks away.
And democracy does not survive if it protects power more fiercely than it protects the vulnerable.

History is watching what we tolerate.
And it will remember what we chose to defend.

This is your child’s teacher.
This is your child’s doctor.
This is your child’s mayor, governor, congressman.

What would you do?

You would not dismiss it.
You would not minimize it.
You would not say it is inconvenient to ask questions.
You would not prioritize reputation over safety.

You would demand answers.
You would insist on distance from power until clarity is reached.
You would choose caution over comfort every single time.

So when this question reaches the highest office in the country, the standard does not change. It becomes more urgent.

This is our children’s president.

And the only question left is this:

What are we going to do?

Because history will not judge us by what we believed.
It will judge us by what we were willing to tolerate.
And whether, when it mattered most, we chose power or we chose children.