Every woman will recognise the same awful thing from these latest Epstein photos

I can recall men who have sought to hurt me and my friends, and who have taken pictures of us a little like this, says Victoria Richards

I spent time with a bunch of British teenagers aged 13 and 14 this weekend – and this is what I noticed about their slang du jour: every time one of them does something jokingly inappropriate, the others all shout “Epstein!”

“Don’t Epstein me,” said one of the boys, when his mate tried to stuff a chocolate bar down his trousers.

“Get off, Epsteins!” one of the girls retorted sassily when the rest tried to form a human pile-on of writhing bodies on the sofa.

Epstein as a byword for assault, for lack of consent, for misconduct, for predatory behaviour; for the woolly, half-conscious awareness of power dynamics and youth and vulnerability and unwanted physical contact.

Epstein as a way of calling it out, of saying “no”. Epstein as a warning, as a way of signposting, “I recognise this for what it has been for others – and what it could be”. Epstein as “I see you…”

As a mother standing by, rolling her eyes and tutting a lot, it felt to me like a classic teenage “joke” with serrated edges. Distasteful, certainly. Yet still, the only way kids can make sense of the very real, human horror they have heard and seen and read about. The only way they can process what adults have done – and in some cases, continue to do – to other young people like them.

Can’t handle the nauseating dread of the latest Epstein file dump, full of famous names these teens recognise as well as their own? Make a joke about it.

What, then, of the name Andrew?

I look at the latest, lurid photographs of the former prince, hunched on all fours over a prone, seemingly unconscious body of a much younger woman, and I want to weep. I want to scoop up my daughter and her friends, to protect them from harm at the hands of men like this.

Because I have known men like this. Now in my forties, I can recall (though I rarely want to) men who have sought to hurt me and my friends; who have taken pictures of us, a little like this. And if I throw it outwards, we see men like this... well, everywhere.

The faces of men exactly like this were found in the line of defendants winding out of court in Mazan during the Gisèle Pelicot rape trial, and in the sentencing – a year ago – of her former husband Dominique Pelicot and 50 others: men who were husbands, sons, grandfathers.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, too, has been a husband, a son and a grandfather. And if you sense an eerie similarity between the details we know from the Pelicot trial and these newly released images of him caught in the flashbulb of a camera lens over the body of a woman, like a deer in headlights, then you’re not alone.

In fact, my very first thought when I saw the images, with all of their stark intimacy of detail (the former prince’s bare feet, the casual polo shirt, the hand resting on the stomach of the unknown young woman), is that it feels like a violation. Not dissimilar, perhaps, to the 20,000 photos and videos we now know were taken of Gisèle Pelicot while she was drugged unconscious. And we all know what happened to her after that.

Perhaps what makes this photograph of Andrew so troubling is that we don’t know precisely what happened after that. There are no captions, no time or date stamps. We don’t know where they were taken. They appear as part of three million other documents, almost as collateral damage: we don’t know the identity of the woman, we don’t know why the photograph was being taken in the first place, or who took it; whether it was posed or casual, set up as role-play and fooling around, or downright predatory.

We don’t know whether the woman in the shot gave permission for it to be taken, whether she’s even awake. We are left in the dark, wondering if we should shout “Epstein” as a “joke” or whether it is all too real.

And so, we just have to cling to what we do know. We know that the former prince has been accused of “hiding” by US officials after he was invited last year to appear before the US House oversight committee. We know that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, has said Andrew should testify before Congress about his links to Epstein. We also know that Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied any wrongdoing.

We know... and we don’t know. And so, we are left with the word “Epstein” – with all of its darkness, its unsavoury connotations – echoing around an empty room, long after any laughter has faded away.