I am a real fan of the “Delhi Crime” series, an Indian police procedural, livestreamed on Netflix. The film ficitionalizes three well known crimes committed in India, including the infamous gang rape and torture-murder of 23 year old Jyoti Singh on a bus. The current third season focuses on sex and human trafficking in India, which includes the kidnapping of orphans and other very vulnerable children, including toddlers. Also true but tragic is the fact that some impoverished parents (invariably illiterate and starving), sell their children for money--but after being promised that the child will have a much better life. Deputy Commissioner (”Madam Sir”), Vartika Chatorvedi, is played by the great Shefali Shah. Oh, how I want her in my corner. She is strong, serious, almost grim-faced, unstoppable, but also maternally compassionate even as she remains utterly determined to rescue the the enslaved, to capture their tormenters and to find justice for those murdered. Some gangs maim the toddlers and children and turn them into beggars. Some teach these totally innocent pre-adolescents how to wear makeup, prance about like strippers or models, and then sell them to pimps. In other words, they get paid for sending their captives to Hell. “Delhi Crime’s” third season features the women who buy the girls and prepare them for a life of sexual slavery. They are very physically--almost unbelivably cruel to those in their clutches. The main Madam/Pimp, the ringleader of the criminal enterprise, is smart, fearless, reckless, beautiful, and as hard as they come. She is, essentially, a slaver: selfish, homicidal, and quick-on-the-trigger; her character is also a very good liar, a weaver of tales, a good actress. Her name is Meena and she is brilliantly portrayed by Huma Qureshi. Meena is an Indian street version of every Madam that has ever lived in every country on earth, including America. How is Ghislaine Maxwell “allegedly” any different? How are the teenagers whom Maxwell “allegedly” drafted into procuring other and sometimes ever-younger girls any different from the formerly young Indian children whom the cinematic Meena trains and controls; their job is to train the latest batch of victim, ready them for Hell? In a sense, how far apart are they from the American mothers who eroticize their four to six year-old daughters into competing on TV in something called “Toddler and Tiaras?” They, too, teach their little girls how to prance about like adult strippers and 1950’s era Playboy centerfolds; they apply heavy, adult makeup on their daughters. Someone suggested that I see this--and so I did, but only once, and for no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I’d seen enough. Even as a psychologist and the author of “Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman,” I must admit: I do not fully understand these mothers. Do you? Is trying to re-live their own youth by obscenely exploiting their children a form of madness--or is it also a rather pathetic form of evil? And so, the reigning Epstein drama is only a drop in the bucket in terms of the world-wide exploitation of children (mainly girls but also boys); their being trafficked by enormous poverty, family abuse, including incest, and sent right into the arms of both male and female pimps--and/or into forced and arranged marriages? “Delhi Crime’s” Meena, the ringleader of the criminal trafficking gang, defiantly, cleverly demands that “Madam Sir,” the Deputy Police Commissioner, answer just such questions.

How would you respond?