Status and power can make women lose their morals, too

Nasty business, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. It’s not just the names involved, from Prince andrew to Donald trump, that conspire to paint a picture of a sleazy, self-entitled elite utterly convinced of its own invulnerability.

It’s also the fact that it feeds into other recent disgraces involving sex and power — not least, of course, Harvey Weinstein — and the general perception of a world replete with predatory males.

Wherever men have money and status, it seems, vulnerable young women end up being at best exploited, at worst abused.

But — vile as the accusations levelled at Epstein and Weinstein are — it is perhaps worth remembering that women are also capable of abuses of power. If the allegations against Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell hold any truth, she is just as tainted as any of the men cited.

But it’s not Maxwell I’m interested in here. this week, male model Josh Kloss accused singer Katy Perry of sexual harassment during a night out almost a decade ago, after he played a starring role as her love interest in the video for her hit teenage Dream.

according to Kloss, Perry pulled at his trousers and underwear to expose his nether regions to a group of people at a mutual friend’s birthday party.

HE says he was left feeling ‘pathetic and embarrassed’. and in echoes of the experiences young female victims recount, he tells how not only was he paid a pittance for his part in the success of that video — just £540 —but also how he was manipulated and ‘lorded over’ by Perry’s team.

any man behaving in an equivalent way towards a woman would, quite rightly, attract a ton of criticism. Repulsively, Donald trump once said it was OK to ‘grab them by the p***y’. If Kloss’s story is true, and Perry has not commented on it, then what she did was almost as demeaning.

Explaining his decision to speak out, Kloss wrote: ‘I just say this now because our culture is set on proving men of power are perverse. But females with power are just as disgusting.’

He has a point. sexual harassment is sexual harassment, regardless of whether you’re a sexy young pop star or a paunchy movie producer.

It’s not gender that defines a sexual predator; it’s status, power and money — and the inequality between those who have it and those who don’t. Put simply,

if you’re rich and famous it’s all too easy to think you can do what you want — regardless of the consequences.

Hence the alleged behaviour of Katy Perry. Hence, on a much lesser scale, the way billionaire Philip Green’s daughter Chloe segues from hunk to disposable hunk as she sails the Med aboard (one of) her father’s yachts. and hence the bizarre conduct of pop star Miley Cyrus, whose brief marriage has been tossed aside like yesterday’s Deliveroo in favour of snogs with another man’s ex-wife.

If a man behaved like these women, he’d be accused of sleazy moral bankruptcy. But because they are women — rich, famous, beautiful woman at that — they get away with it. In fact, some consider their actions ‘empowering’.

No doubt Katy Perry’s people will dismiss Josh Kloss’s accusations as the embittered ravings of a gold-digger — just as countless women in his position have been dismissed.

But it’s a salutary reminder that, as women, we cannot have it both ways.

We can’t let the strength and passion of the #Metoo movement blind us to our weaknesses. Women are just as capable as men of behaving like cads; it’s just that men traditionally held all the power, so had a head start. as that changes, we’ll find ourselves subject to the same temptations. We must do better.