Violence Deconstructed: Jeffrey Epstein’s Victims Deserve Better
In September, the House of Representatives released a trove of materials from convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, including a shocking book of letters from his friends for his 50th birthday. A letter bearing President Donald Trump’s signed name appears to be written under the silhouette of a naked, adolescent female body.
The book is brimming with images like this: sexual drawings, photos, cartoons. These images depict sometimes faceless, nameless women and girls, whose naked bodies have become sensationalist fodder and even punchlines that minimize and overshadow their own testimonies.
Even as few people at this point deny Epstein’s sexual crimes and the culpability of his associates, for his victims, the outcome remains the same: nothing. Nothing has changed for the Epstein survivors whose lives remain threatened for speaking up. Nothing has changed for survivors writ large. Massive wealth inequality and pervasive gender-based violence continue to render women and girls vulnerable to sexual predation from ultra-wealthy men who continue to operate with near-total impunity and know that they can successfully run for president.
It’s rare, if ever, that survivors of sexual violence are near-universally believed. Epstein is unique in this way, and this is no accident. Unlike a figure like Johnny Depp or Trump, two towering figures in pop culture and politics, Epstein had no built-in base of devoted fans and propagandists. As a shadowy financier in an economic climate of extreme distrust toward figures like him, it was easy for the general public to latch on to the notion of Epstein as a predator. But that doesn’t equate to justice or accountability. Nor does recognition of Epstein as a sex criminal equate to supporting his victims, and victims writ large.
Even when the public and powerful institutions seemingly do believe survivors, we encounter another issue: Their experiences aren’t taken seriously. As conservatives’ excuses and denials of Trump’s relationship with Epstein become increasingly absurd, this entire case has increasingly become memeified—reduced to jokes that inadvertently obscure the gravity of what these men are allegedly linked to: the most prolific and overt child sex trafficking networks in modern history. Across the country, Epstein’s name is a byword for sexual predation and violence against women. But at the same time, in the same way that gender-based violence so often is, it’s also treated as a joke.
As Prospect magazine’s Diane de Vignemont argues, the now-notorious birthday book “is not a meme or a punchline or a political prop, but an artefact of the misogyny and abuse that very real girls—now women—lived through.”
Some aspects of this horrific scandal are undeniably absurd—namely, how overt and careless all of the men involved seemingly were. The crude birthday letters to Epstein quite literally draw out his heinous sexual crimes, recruiting little girls and grooming them into sexual enslavement. It illustrates a classic, disturbing case of men who hold such immense wealth and power that they feel comfortable not just flaunting their awareness but leaving a paper trail of openly joking about alleged sex crimes. This behavior doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s a product of a broader rape culture that normalizes gender-based violence and reduces it to a punchline—and a capitalist-patriarchal system that insulates ultra-wealthy abusers from any consequences.
“I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, to see us for who we are and to hear us for what we have to say,” Epstein survivor Haley Robson said at a September press conference on Capitol Hill of several women victimized by Epstein. Fellow survivor Wendy Pesante also addressed the group: “Being a survivor is not a headline. It’s our life. … It’s panic in a grocery store. It’s smiling at work while my hands tremble,” she said. “It’s waking up at 3 a.m. with my heart racing and not knowing why.” Another survivor, Jess Michaels, declared, “We are not the footnotes in some infamous predator’s tabloid articles. We are the experts and the subjects of this story.”
Today, the public may (mostly) believe Epstein’s victims, but their lives are still very much at risk. Just earlier this year, Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent women who spoke out against Epstein and who inspired others to join her, died by suicide. “Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” her family said in a statement. “In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.” Giuffre is one of at least three women who have been found dead after accusing or being associated with Epstein. Last September, numerous Epstein survivors filed a lawsuit against the FBI, claiming that they’ve received threats from Epstein’s associates and accusing the FBI of failing to protect them.
The president has been a court-recognized sexual abuser since 2023. About two dozen women have accused him of rape, sexual assault, and harassment—including his ex-wife Ivana, though she went on to retract her alarming rape allegation. Trump’s ties to Epstein are no aberration from what we already know about him, including from his own statements boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy.” His policy positions and behavior follow the playbook of abusers, framing the marginalized classes that he and the state have victimized—trans people and immigrants, for instance—as the real abusers. We don’t need Trump to admit to being a sexual abuser to know what he is. We can simply believe women and survivors.
Yet, all too often, we find that that alone is too much to ask. Not only are large swaths of the public making light of this horrendous case of gender-based violence, but we’re still encountering highly influential voices questioning the basic premise of whether Epstein and his associates abused women and girls. As journalist Kat Tenbarge has noted, writer and conservative thought leader Jessica Kraus has questioned whether Epstein’s adult trafficking victims can be victims at all, and openly mocked their experiences, writing, “‘I was raped 25 times on the island’ Maybe stop boarding the flights that take you to island” and “Participating in a sexual experience at 26 with two other adults is called a threesome not rape.”
In July, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein seemed to question whether the men in Epstein’s orbit should be deemed guilty by association. Despite the fact that numerous Epstein survivors have named his business associates as their assailants, Klein wrote, “If you forced me to give you my best guess, I think this guy had a lot of powerful friends, and that he was a predator and a pedophile, and those sides of his life were mostly separate.”
Last week, Trump openly questioned whether domestic violence in the home should be classified as criminal: “Things that take place in the home, they call crime. … If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?” For decades, this is exactly how gender-based violence was treated, both culturally and in state, local, and federal policies: as a private, non-criminal matter. By 1993, all 50 states recognized marital rape as a crime.
But today, the legacy of political and cultural dismissiveness of gender-based violence persists. Victims are disbelieved, or mistreated by a legal system that systematically protects abusers, or the violence they’ve survived is treated by the public as “not that bad.” They watch their assailants become even more powerful, ascending even to the nation’s most powerful political office. Or perhaps they are believed, their assailants widely reviled for exactly what they are, only to still be forced to watch the unthinkable violence they survived largely reduced to fodder for online comedy, attention-grabbing headlines, and societal inaction.
Public willingness to believe the victims in the Epstein case hasn’t translated into meaningful change or support for other survivors. Epstein and his trafficking ring of ultra-wealthy figures expose how patriarchy and oligarchy conspire to crush victims, then empower men like Trump with such staggering impunity that they can become president.
Kylie Cheung is a freelance writer reporting on politics and culture. She is the author of Survivor Injustice: State-Sanctioned Abuse, Domestic Violence, and the Fight for Bodily Autonomy.
When Prism was established in 2019, it was because we knew that the status quo media landscape wasn’t reflecting enough of the truth—and it wasn’t bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and justice. We saw a different path forward, one that we could forge by disrupting and dismantling toxic narratives, uncovering the hard truths of injustice alongside the people experiencing the acute impacts of injustice, and providing a platform for people of color to tell their own stories, and those of their communities.