Getting to the bottom of the Jeffery Epstein story -- and addressing his victims' pain

Writer feels personal stake in bringing details to light

Let’s talk about Jeffrey Epstein. Or more importantly, about the victims he left behind. As a person affected by exposure to child sexual abuse, the news has been hard lately. A part of me wants to curl into myself, find a spinning wheel, and live out my days in some idyllic countryside without a cell phone.

In 2023, the principal and founder of my high school, the Jubilee Performing Arts Center, in McComb, was sentenced to 240 years in prison after being found guilty of abusing his students for years.

For me, the recent news cycle has brought a storm of information that feels all too close to home.

Trump is going to release the Epstein files. Actually, there are no Epstein files. Why are you so obsessed with the Epstein files? There’s a minute of footage missing from Epstein’s cell the night he died. What if Jeffrey Epistein isn’t dead at all? Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved from Florida to Texas to minimum-security facility. Virginia Giuffre has died.

These questions, facts and rumors bring a whirlwind of feelings. I can’t imagine what the victims of Epstein and Maxwell are feeling right now.

Jeffrey Epstein trafficked and abused hundreds of minor girls. And like most abusers, he targeted girls who had difficult home lives or came from traumatic backgrounds. He knew how to manipulate them masterfully – offering things that they needed such as money, free education, career leverage. But he also had another advantage — Ghislaine Maxwell.

It's fairly common for male abusers, including cult leaders, to use a woman to lure their victims. Our society views women as nurturing, caring – and thus we (especially fellow women) subconsciously tend to trust that they have good intentions. If a woman tells another woman that a situation a safe, we are far more likely to believe it than if a man says so. In the Netflix documentary “Wild Wild Country” we see this scenario play out as controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh uses his assistant, Ma Anand Sheela, to maintain control among his followers.

Ghislaine Maxwell was responsible for recruiting girls into Epstein’s abuse system. The most frequent way that she did this was by telling girls that she had a job for them. This was how she recruited Virginia Giuffre, who was 16 at the time. Giuffre got a summer job at Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s estate, just two miles from the Epstein home. She came from a background of previous sexual abuse and poverty and when Ghislaine Maxwell approached her about becoming Epstein’s personal massage therapist, Giuffre saw the offer as a opportunity to better herself.

As authorities began to piece together the similarities of abuse reports connected to Epstein, Giuffre became one of the leading voices in the case against him. Her claims included Epstein trafficking her to numerous of his wealthy friends, including, allegedly, Prince Andrew – though he denied knowing her, there is photographic evidence. Following the lawsuits, Giuffre used a portion of the financial compensation she was awarded to begin a nonprofit to support victims of sexual abuse. She advocated for other survivors and submitted to numerous interviews, which helped expose the depths of the Epstein conspiracy.

During the period that the White House wavered in its stance on releasing the Epstein files, Giuffre suffered from a traumatic car wreck. And then, just weeks later, on April 25, 2025, she died. Though her death was ruled a suicide, several of her close family members have expressed concern about that ruling.

In all the Epstein news flurry, what I have not seen discussed is the upcoming release of Giuffre’s memoir, set for publication in October of this year. This leads me, with all of my anxieties, to wonder what fowl play may have been involved in Giuffre’s death. Accounts that she was separated from her husband at the time of her death point to alleged domestic violence. We know that abuse victims are more likely to be abused again, as their vulnerabilities are repeatedly raised to the surface. Regardless, Giuffre died fighting a system that wanted her to be quiet, to forget what had happened to her. She raised the flag for other survivors. She undoubtedly saved lives.

In 2024, Donald Trump indicated during his campaign that he would consider releasing the full Epstein files and client list. In February 2025, Fox News reported that U.S Attorney General Pam Bondi had the files on her desk, claiming that Trump had directed her to review them. However, calls for transparency in the matter culminated this summer with Trump claiming there was no client list. Interestingly, this statement came just days after Sean “Diddy” Combs was acquitted of a separate set of sex trafficking charges.

When I look at the news these past few weeks, I see one thing: Our government has little regard for victims. Our society has only recently begun to understand the long-term effects of abuse on an individual. If you’ve never experienced it, you don’t know how serious it is.

Amid my self-inducted retreat from the world, my partner let me know this week that Epstein survivors were planning to gather in Washington, D.C. Their aim was not only to put pressure on the government to release the files, but, importantly, to ensure that each victim had full access to records pertaining to her case.

I will be transparent: Reading through these types of records is hard. But it also has the power to confirm one’s own narrative of what was done to them. In therapy, the goal of the practitioner is often to help the client reach a clear narrative of their trauma. The belief is that with these facts in order, the client is able to come to terms with this reality. Due to the manipulative nature of abuse, victims often have a hard time trusting their own perceptions of the world. For me, writing has played a major role in allowing myself to place events in a chronological timeline. Just being able to read through the court transcripts related to the Jubilee Performing Arts Center has allowed me to confirm my own memories. In other words, I know I’m not crazy.

If only for this reason, I strongly believe that the Epstein files should be released. We need to know that our government will handle these cases properly. For the healing of the hundreds of women whose lives were affected by the heinous actions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell. For the hundreds of people who may currently be vulnerable to abusers listed in the Epstein files. And for all the people whose lives have been altered by exposure to sexual abuse.

Parts of this story also appear in Victoria Richard’s Substack.

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Image: Lisa Phillips speaks during a news conference with fellow alleged victims of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein outside the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 3, 2025. (via Creative Commons/Yahoo News)