Contributor: In all the uproar over Epstein, remember the victims - Los Angeles Times

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On Thursday morning, I awoke before dawn to the news that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, had been arrested in England on suspicion of misconduct related to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. I immediately thought of the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the brave survivor of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking ring, who’d won a civil settlement from Mountbatten-Windsor after she accused him of rape (and whose memoir I co-wrote).

My next thought was this: So far, only about half of the 6 million documents that comprise the Epstein files have been released, but in the UK their contents are already causing heads to roll. Why isn’t that happening here in America? I know at least part of the answer.

Since the Jan. 30 release of 3.5 million pages of Department of Justice investigation files, many concerned citizens around the globe have been trying, in earnest, to wade through the muck. It’s not an easy job. Part of that seems to be by design. The documents are not organized to help readers understand their context. Instead, each page is just one fragment of an exploded jigsaw puzzle, and trying to assemble that puzzle without all the pieces (and without knowing what a complete picture should look like) is proving difficult for even the most seasoned experts on Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes.

In the ensuing avalanche of news stories, boldface names have grabbed the spotlight — Epstein helped director Woody Allen’s daughter get into college, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent time with his family (and nanny) on Epstein’s island, supermodel Naomi Campbell asked to fly on Epstein’s plane. But, despite the valiant efforts of so many outspoken survivors, the heart of this vile conspiracy has been oddly pushed into the background: the brutal reality of what it felt like to be a girl caught in Epstein’s web.

Imagine you’re a 14-year-old girl, recruited by an older female, who is being led into an upstairs room in Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., mansion. The man you’ve been told to call “Jeff” enters wearing only a towel and tells you to take off your clothes. You are afraid. Trapped. So you eventually strip down to your underwear. He orders you to do things to him. He masturbates. He gives you $300 and tells you to leave your phone number so he can summon you again. Imagine that you later get into a fight at school with a classmate who calls you a prostitute. Imagine that you are later involuntarily admitted to a juvenile-education facility “because of disciplinary problems that recently escalated.”

I worked for four years with Giuffre on her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” and the scenes I’ve just asked you to imagine are in her book. But Giuffre is not the girl at the center of that story (Giuffre was 16 — two years older — when Maxwell lured her into their den). No, the story above describes the experiences of one of more than 30 underage victims that Florida investigators interviewed in 2005 and 2006, which led to Epstein’s first arrest and, ultimately, his conviction as a sex offender. The girl in that story had her life ruined two decades ago. Imagine.

Now we know that hundreds if not thousands of girls and young women were abused by Epstein and Maxwell and their crony friends. And yet the cruel undoing of these young people keeps falling off the front pages. Is it because it’s too upsetting to imagine? Is it because it’s old news?

I’m a journalist, so I understand news cycles. But I’m still bothered by the way the visceral suffering at the core of this rotten story isn’t consistently claiming its rightful place at the front of our minds. I get it: There is so much to read about Epstein these days. But by letting our attention be drawn toward talent agent Casey Wasserman’s sexting with Maxwell, say, or by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s meltdown about the high-flying Dow Jones Industrial Index being what really matters, we risk losing the plot.

This, for the record, is the plot: In 1996, a 14-year-old girl named Annie Farmer was flown to Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, where Maxwell told her to undress and began to massage her breasts; later, Epstein jumped into bed with her, saying he wanted to cuddle. This kind of grooming behavior was experienced by scores of girls and young women, many of whom reported it to the authorities. And this abuse often escalated into rape.

For Giuffre, what followed was being forced to sexually service Epstein and Maxwell’s influential friends. In sworn depositions that have been made public, Giuffre named Mountbatten-Windsor and several others of these men, all of whom issued strong denials. Some of these co-conspirators’ names have popped up in the latest tranche of public files, but Giuffre is no longer here to hold them to account, having died by suicide last April.

Only by holding our focus on what these girls and women endured will Americans have the fortitude to demand that the Trump administration give us our due. Some survivors say they can’t find their interviews in the files that have been released so far, which proves that the Department of Justice has still not met the requirements of the Epstein Transparency Act. The solution is clear: Release the remaining 2.5 million pages in the Epstein files, with only the survivors’ names redacted. Next, law enforcement must rigorously interrogate the men and women who exchanged chummy emails with Epstein and played in his hideous sandbox. Until these two things occur, basic accountability and justice will remain out of reach. Even just based on what we already know, we should all find that unimaginable.

Amy Wallace is a journalist and author who collaborated with Virginia Roberts Giuffre on her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl.”

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Ideas expressed in the piece

• The Epstein files release has shifted public attention away from the victims themselves toward celebrity figures and powerful men named in the documents, with coverage focusing on connections like Woody Allen’s association with Epstein and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s visits to his island rather than the experiences of survivors. [1]The documents have been released in a fragmented, poorly organized manner that obscures the context necessary to understand the full scope of the crimes, making it difficult even for experts to piece together a coherent narrative of the abuse.[2]Some survivors report being unable to locate their own interviews within the released materials, indicating that the Department of Justice has not fully complied with the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.[1]The cruel suffering endured by victims—including detailed accounts of grooming, manipulation, and sexual abuse of underage girls—deserves more consistent attention than it currently receives in news coverage.[1]To achieve meaningful accountability, the remaining 2.5 million pages should be released with only survivor names redacted, and law enforcement must rigorously investigate the men and women who communicated with Epstein.[1][1]

Different views on the topic

• The Department of Justice maintains that it has taken victim protection seriously through a rigorous review process, with 500 reviewers examining millions of pages to meet the requirements of the law while protecting innocent parties, noting that only 0.1 percent of released pages have been found to contain unredacted victim information. Officials argue that the more than 3.5 million pages now made public represent a comprehensive release that allows the entire world to review the materials and determine whether investigative conclusions were correct, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche indicating that the Department had reviewed the files in July and found nothing that would allow prosecution of additional individuals.[2]Redaction issues that have been identified are being actively remedied, with the Department working around the clock to fix problems and republish appropriately redacted pages as soon as possible.[2]DOJ representatives contend that they neither protected nor failed to protect any particular individual in their approach to releasing the documents, and suggest that public dissatisfaction with the release may be inevitable regardless of the volume of materials disclosed.[2][1]