The Epstein case and its cover-up by state and federal authorities are, in many ways, a carbon copy of a child trafficking network that was covered up 35 years ago by state and federal authorities in Nebraska. I wrote a book about the latter trafficking network: The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal.
According to a Florida grand jury, Jeffrey Epstein never molested a minor. And though I have a list of 60 alleged victims, compiled by a Nebraska State Senate subcommittee, who had been abused and/or trafficked by the “Franklin” network, a Nebraska state grand jury and a Nebraska federal grand jury concluded that the network was nonexistent and not a single child had been harmed.
The mainstream media, like the grand juries, called the “Franklin” network a “hoax.” Despite an abundance of evidence demonstrating that numerous children in Nebraska were trafficked, the Wikipedia page on the Nebraska network, “Franklin child prostitution ring allegations,” continues to refer to the trafficking network as a “hoax,” even though many people have attempted to introduce a modicum of reality to it. Finally, in March of this year, a mainstream media magazine, Omaha, had the courage to publish a truthful account about the Franklin network: "UNSILENCED: Franklin, Epstein, and the Patterns that Protect the Powerful.” But, unfortunately, additional media haven’t followed in the wake of Omaha.
At the center of this perverse tale is a brave young woman, Alisha Owen, who at 20 years old risked her life by refusing to recant accounts of her abuse by influential powerbrokers and businessmen.
Alisha comes from a religious, blue-collar family, but at the young age of 13 she develops a rebellious streak. When invited to a party by a teenage boy at a luxury apartment building in downtown Omaha, the impressionable teen is groomed and enticed into a parallel universe that will encompass sexual abuse, trafficking, and the destruction of scores of children by a massive cover-up perpetrated by state and federal authorities.
Alisha is not only trafficked in the mid-1980s from the age of 14, but she is also trapped in a conspiracy that ran from the heartland of America to the highest levels of government in Washington D.C. Alisha forcibly attends sadistic pedophilic orgies in Omaha and elsewhere. When she starts to balk at the abuse, henchmen beat her and threaten the lives of her family members.
Two pimps run the nationwide child trafficking network that ensnares Alisha. One is Lawrence King of Omaha, Nebraska. King is a rising African-American political powerbroker and the manager of Omaha’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union. King recruits vulnerable children who have fallen through the cracks, children in corrupt foster-care homes, and children from Boys Town, the venerable orphanage near Omaha.
A second ringleader lives in Washington, DC: lobbyist Craig Spence. Like Jeffrey Epstein, Spence’s source of wealth is obscure, and his DC mansion is wired for audio-visual blackmail. Unbelievably, Spence arranges midnight tours of the Bush White House for underage trafficking victims as gifts for their services.
In 1988, Nebraska social services personnel inform both federal and state law enforcement about King’s nationwide pedophile network, but they’re ignored. Finally, in 1989, Nebraska state senators form a subcommittee: the “Franklin Committee.” The Franklin Committee starts to investigate the trafficking network as well as King’s plundering of millions from the Franklin Credit Union.
After the formation of the Franklin Committee, Alisha and fiveother victims who were trafficked as minors summon the courage to come forward and name Lawrence King as a pedophilic pimp to the Franklin Committee’s investigators. Five of the victims, including Alisha, discuss being flown to different locations around the country where they were abused.
Alisha’s sworn testimony implicates Omaha luminaries, including a judge, the publisher of the Omaha World-Herald, Harold Anderson, department store billionaire Alan Baer, and Omaha police chief Robert Wadman.
The FBI pressures victims to recant their stories of abuse, but Alisha refuses. Extremely corrupt Nebraska state and federal grand juries release reports on their findings after ostensibly investigating King-related child abuse. The grand juries remarkably proclaim that the allegations by the victims are a “carefully crafted hoax,” but the hoaxster is never named. The grand juries exonerate King and the other alleged perpetrators, and Alisha is indicted on 16 counts of perjury. She is staring at 200 years in prison, but she refuses to recant her accounts of abuse. Alisha becomes a victim on trial, an enemy of the state, because she refuses to recant.
During Alisha’s 1990 trial, the FBI, US Department of Justice, and two grand juries viciously assassinate her character. The state deployed dirty tricks to rig Alisha’s trial, because it represented much more than a simple case of perjury: her jurors would also be deliberating on the findings of the grand juries that disavowed the existence of a pedophile network. In essence, Alisha’s guilt would protect the rich and powerful men who had been provided with children.
Big-time media outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ Magazine, and CBS News take their cue from the government and trumpet the government’s smear campaign. A United Kingdom documentary team got wind of the grave injustices that had occurred in Nebraska, and they produced a film about the case for the Discovery Channel. But the filmmakers are thwarted at every turn and ultimately the documentary is shelved and never airs.
Throughout her ordeal,Alisha also endures the mysterious deaths of her 17-year-old brother, the Franklin Committee’s investigator, whose private plane explodes in mid-air, and the mysterious deaths of other people who are affiliated with the network. The pedophilic pimp Craig Spence in DC also commits suicide before Alisha’s trial.
On August 8, 1991, a kangaroo court finds Alisha guilty of 8 counts of perjury and sentences her to between 9 and 15 years in prison. Alisha’s trial is fraught with numerous injustices, and her attorneys file numerous appeals. She is released from prison as her appeals are litigated. But even before her appeals are exhausted, she is returned to prison in 1996.
The authorities try to destroy 20-year-old Alisha by confining her to solitary for two years, but, conversely, she undergoes a profound metamorphosis from a fragile victim to a confident young woman with a steely will who refuses to knuckle under to the crooked system. Finally, on September 20, 2001, after serving a total of four and a half years in prison for perjury, Alisha, an exemplary prisoner, is granted parole, even though she never recants her innocence. Her treatment by federal and state law enforcement is one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the annals of American jurisprudence.
Today, despite experiencing trauma that would drive most people to ubiquitous despair and hopelessness, Alisha is a productive member of society and also the Associate Director of Epstein Justice.
She is an inspiration to all survivors, and her life demonstrates that the human spirit can be indestructible.
