If we’ve learned anything from the presidency of Donald Trump, it’s that more often than not rich men get away with it—whatever it is.

For all the overdue justice that #MeToo secured, the last 20 or so months have seen countless men scrutinized and then…exonerated. From Trump to Brett Kavanaugh, the process tends to follow a familiar script: Justice is invoked, press conferences are held, social media is ablaze, and then the outrage fades—or worse, it never quite materializes in the first place.

When the dust settles, the man tends to retain his position (or in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, is rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court). From time to time, he’s forced to slink off for a little like Louis C.K. (whose eventual comeback seems inevitable) or Charlie Rose. But a lot of the powerful men of are able to ride it out. There’s some fallout, the word “allegations” is sprinkled into 10,000 news stories, and then people like Eric Bolling or Bill O’Reilly recover; as popular in conservative circles as ever. It’s been hard to see #MeToo as a triumph or as all it was supposed to be, especially when people like Donald Trump, Jr. use it as a punchline.

But on Saturday the Daily Beast broke the news that Jeffery Epstein had been arrested as soon as he stepped off his private jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. He was taken directly to a prison cell. When his indictment was unsealed, it revealed that Epstein had been charged with “one count of sex trafficking of minors” and “one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors.” It feels like a strange victory. In a time when rich men seem to have a separate justice system all their own, what does it mean for a powerful person to be treated like what he really is—a man who’s been accused of sex trafficking children for over a decade?

But it’s not so simple. I wish the fact that Epstein could face an actual sentence commensurate with his crimes means the dawn of a new era. The bad guys get caught! They suffer for it. Instead, Epstein feels not even like an aberration, but like proof: the system is broken and unfair. He isn’t just some guy who made one mistake; the charges against him paint him as a serial sexual predator. When prosecutors made their case that Epstein should be denied bail, Bloomberg reports that the team pointed to the “vast trove of lewd photographs” it uncovered in a search of Epstein’s New York mansion (once valued at $77 million) over the weekend. The images, the government said, show he is a danger to the public. But if you’ve read the Miami Herald investigation that revived the allegations against Epstein, you already knew that. And so did all the other powerful men who decided for years not to do anything about it.

In 2008, Alex Acosta, who is now the secretary of labor and was then a district attorney in Miami, secured for Epstein a non-prosecution agreement that allowed him to plead guilty to a fraction of what he was accused of; he ultimately served 13 months, most of it in a private wing of a county jail that permitted him to leave for work almost every day. This week, Acosta addressed the new charges on Twitter, writing, “The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence.”

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