“I’m the story of one of 1,000 people. Think of the number 1,000,” said Daniel Benski, who was 17 when he first met Jeffrey Epstein in 2004.
Khanna and Massey urge release of Jeffrey Epstein files
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ro Khanna, and Thomas Massie joined survivors in urging the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s files.
According to the Department of Justice, Jeffrey Epstein victimized at least 1,000 women and children. His survivors don’t want it to be forgotten.
“I’m telling the story of one of 1,000 people. Think about 1,000 people,” said Daniel Bensky, who was 17 when he met Epstein in 2004.
“We represent women across America,” she said at a Nov. 18 press conference. “We come from different backgrounds, we have different religions, we have different races, we have different creeds, we have different ethnicities, we have different political affiliations.”
Between federal indictments, police investigations, civil lawsuits, and public allegations, Epstein is accused of running an international sex trafficking ring that recruited more than 1,000 girls as young as 14 to participate in sex with him, his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and other men.
The women said they were abused all over the world, including in California, Florida, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, the United Kingdom and the Virgin Islands. Many of these are done in the name of providing massage services to earn extra money, or to get well-connected men to support their modeling careers.
Some whistleblowers say they contacted the FBI and local police in the 1990s but were not taken seriously.
Six years after Epstein’s death, hundreds of women calling themselves the Survivor Sisters have become the driving force behind a renewed public push to identify Epstein’s associates who they say have assaulted or participated in human trafficking rings.
Their support pushed the House and Senate to vote to release the Justice Department’s investigative file against Epstein, but in the months leading up to the vote, the issue increasingly became a political fistfight and partisan blame game.
President Donald Trump has pressured Republicans not to participate in the dossier effort, calling it the “Epstein hoax” and calling Republican lawmakers who are calling for his release “traitors.” When it became clear that the bill would pass, he suddenly switched to supporting it. Trump signed it late on November 19th.
Survivors who have come forward say they are furious that their trauma has been politicized and their experiences undermined.
“None of us here joined in this political war. We never wanted to be drawn into a fight between people who weren’t protecting us in the first place,” Wendy Avis said at a press conference before the Nov. 18 vote. “We are exhausted from surviving trauma and then living through the politics that swirl around it.”
“I don’t know if anyone knows the exact numbers.”
Only a few dozen of Epstein’s accusers have spoken publicly about their experiences, but fear of retaliation or attacks on their careers or families has prevented them from doing so.
But every day more women are coming forward and publicly sharing their experiences in hopes of getting their files released.
They include an emotional public service announcement video released just before the House and Senate votes urging Americans to call their representatives to release the Epstein files.
Marina Lacerda, who said she met Epstein when she was 14, told her story for the first time outside the Capitol on September 3. Lara Bram McGee, who said she was lured into Epstein’s world through modeling, said at a press conference on Nov. 18 that this was her first time speaking publicly.
The FBI said in a July 2025 memo that a review of the files found that Epstein harmed more than 1,000 victims.
Gloria Allred, an attorney who represents some of the survivors, said at a press conference on Nov. 17 that one reason the accusers want the files released is because they don’t know the full picture of what happened. Rather, they only know what they have assembled from those who have come forward.
“I don’t know if anyone knows the exact number (of victims),” she said.
Survivors who came forward in the 1990s were often ignored, threatened with career damage, and encouraged not to provide police reports, statements or evidence.
Annie Farmer, who was 16 when she met Epstein, said her sister Maria Farmer, another Epstein victim, was fired when she called the FBI in 1996.
“They hung up on her and there was no follow-up,” she said. The FBI contacted them in 2006 to become witnesses against Epstein, but they also did not respond, she said.
Maria Farmer is suing the FBI to hold the agency accountable for not investigating her claims more thoroughly.
Palm Beach, Florida, police first began investigating Epstein in 2006, but the investigation ended in 2008 with a non-prosecution agreement that exempted Epstein from prosecution on the most serious charges.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who said Epstein raped and trafficked her between 2000 and 2002, was the most outspoken person to tell her story. She sued Mr. Epstein in civil court under a false name in 2009 and made her name public in 2011. Before her death by suicide in April, she had sued Mr Maxwell and the former Prince Andrew in civil court.
Her brother Skye Roberts said justice begins with recognition.
“I want them to acknowledge that this happened in front of the survivors,” he said at a press conference on Nov. 18. “These survivors are not political props for you to use. These are real stories, real trauma, and it’s time to stop just talking about it and act.”
Teresa J. Helm told USA TODAY that she hopes the files will provide new information about those who worked with Epstein and Maxwell in sex trafficking and those who profited or benefited in some way from it. She said Mr. Epstein assaulted her in 2002 during what she thought was a job interview.
“I think it’s important for people to know because… knowing what he did means knowing what everyone else did with him,” Helm said.
She said hundreds of women “have to rebuild their lives” while too many of the powerful people involved continue to live and run their businesses with impunity.
“I think we’re all willing to continue to take and speak and push for whatever steps are necessary to navigate the political arena and move past the series of Epstein files and so on. But what we need…is more investigation,” Helm said.
“Impossible to ignore”
Helm said the survivors are still looking for each other.
“For 17 years, I thought I was the only one,” she said.
They want justice for themselves and change the justice system they say did not protect them as children and young people.
“The truth is simple: We were victimized as children and repeatedly failed by the very systems that were supposed to protect us,” said Ashley Rubright, who met Epstein when she was 16. “The Epstein case was consistently and seriously mishandled over many years. Epstein should have been stopped decades ago.”
Rubright said some survivors are still afraid to come forward. And some of those who spoke out have been inundated with threats.
Rubright said she had not planned to speak at the Nov. 18 press conference, but intervened after another accuser who had repeatedly told her story said she was unable to attend because she had received threats.
“When you threaten one of us, you threaten all of us. We are in this together now, and that will never change,” she said.
Rubright said survivors have dealt with years of civil lawsuits filed before hostile judges, delaying tactics, intimidation and public relations efforts “aimed at smearing us in the public eye.”
When law enforcement was first investigating Epstein in the mid-2000s, his accusers said his lawyers dug dirt on them and accused them of being prostitutes. Alan Dershowitz said in the 2019 documentary Surviving Jeffrey Epstein that a criminal defense attorney’s job is to “obtain the best possible outcome ethically and legally” and that “it is entirely appropriate to investigate the complaining witness.”
“We were treated as a problem to be managed, not as victims to be protected,” Rubright said.
But now that so many people have found each other, they are no longer fired.
“Personally, our voices were whispers. Together, we couldn’t ignore them,” she said.
Create your own Epstein files
Lisa Phillips, who said at a previous news conference that if the government does not release the files, the survivors will create their own list of people involved with Epstein, said on Nov. 18 that they are starting to work on that list and are being approached by additional women from across the country.
“Many more survivors across the country and around the world are reaching out to us through text messages, emails, DMs, first-hand reports and evidence,” she said. “Many people are still afraid to speak publicly because the people involved are in power. They are connected and, as we know, they are protected.”
But decades after the abuse, many survivors are no longer willing to wait for permission to talk about what happened.
“The survivors who are now coming forward have entrusted their stories to us. We are sharing that information with the appropriate authorities and it will be released when it is safe to do so,” she said.
Phillips told CNN on November 19 that survivors want the files to build a complete picture of what Epstein was able to do to 1,000 women and children in multiple locations inside and outside the United States over several decades.
“We’re still finding out more information every time we get together and new survivors come forward and we have pictures of us from that time. So it’s just confusing for all of us,” she said. “We want the files… just to know our full story.”
Sarah D. Wire, senior national correspondent for USA TODAY, can be reached at swire@usatoday.com.
