Epstein victims say the Trump administration’s handling of the case adds to their anguish

They really feel, as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims put it, like they’re “being erased.”

While a civil struggle rages in MAGA world over President Donald Trump’s choice to disavow conspiracies that his most ardent supporters stoked about Epstein being half of a deep state intercourse trafficking cabal, the girls who have been victimized by the billionaire say their struggling is being sidelined by uncooked politics.

Four Epstein victims who spoke with NBC News say the Trump administration must be exposing any highly effective males who shared Epstein’s penchant for weak younger girls, not placing the brakes on any future prosecutions.

“You never really heal,” mentioned Danielle Bensky, 38, who was a budding ballerina when she mentioned Epstein abused her 20 years in the past. “And with what’s happening now, it feels like we’re being erased. All the brave women who came forward … all the work that we did to tell the world what happened to us, it’s all being erased.”

The victims spoke with NBC News lately as Trump tried to mollify supporters angered by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement that the “client list” she claimed to have on her desk didn’t exist, and that Epstein’s demise in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking expenses was a jailhouse suicide and never a homicide to silence him, as many imagine.

Faced with what critics and allies are calling a severe threat to his presidency, Trump has alternately dismissed the furor as a “hoax” ginned-up by Democrats and ordered Bondi to launch “pertinent” grand jury transcripts and different paperwork that would shed extra gentle on the scandal.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump wrote a bawdy birthday letter for Epstein greater than 20 years in the past. NBC News has not seen the unique letter, and Trump has known as it “a fake thing.”

Bensky mentioned her coronary heart sank earlier this month when Bondi, who had amplified Trump’s marketing campaign guarantees to “demolish the deep state,” released a two-page memo stating there was no proof of an “incriminating client list” of males who had intercourse with younger girls procured by the financier and that her workplace wouldn’t prosecute anybody else in the case.

“I felt a wave of sadness,” Bensky mentioned. “All those years of trying to gain justice just negated. It was just two pages saying they were done investigating with no details about what happened to all of us. It’s like we never existed.”

For different victims, Epstein’s reappearance in the information is like tearing the scab from a wound.

“The reality is, trauma is never a one and done,” Epstein sufferer Teresa J. Helm mentioned by electronic mail to NBC News. “It’s complex. It can take a lifetime to repair oneself. Various things can initiate a trauma response, and that’s just daily life.”

Helm, who mentioned she was employed to give Epstein massages and was sexually assaulted by him in the early 2000s, now works with sexual assault victims for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. She mentioned no matter hope she had for getting a measure of justice is now gone.

“When a person’s abuser(s) are repeatedly flashed in view at any given moment, and especially when promises of justice, and promises of structures of power finally being held to account — to then essentially have the door shut in your face and no longer open for business — then what?” Helm wrote in her electronic mail.

Attorney David Boies represented one of Epstein’s best-known accusers, the late Virginia Giuffre, who claimed in a 2016 deposition that Epstein and his now-imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell pressured her to have intercourse with a number of highly effective males, including Prince Andrew.

The British royal acknowledged associating with Epstein and agreed to a settlement with Giuffre however denied the allegations.

Maxwell has filed a petition with the Supreme Court to vacate her 2021 conviction for recruiting and grooming teenage ladies for Epstein to sexually abuse.

Boies mentioned Trump, Bondi and others in the administration have solely themselves to blame for reviving the Epstein saga.

“It’s coming up now because the administration made such a big deal that they were going to release a list of clients and, all of a sudden, they did a 180-turn saying we will not release anything,” Boies mentioned. “If they never said anything there would have been only middling interest and conspiracy thinking. It’s the inconsistencies that fueled things.”

Boies mentioned that so far as he is aware of there was no doc in the raft of proof he reviewed that was labelled a “client list.”

“I think they ought to release the material after promising, and if they don’t, people will believe they are hiding something and that cannot be tolerated,” he mentioned.

Alicia Arden was a 27-year-old mannequin and aspiring actress when Epstein assaulted her in 1997 at a resort in Santa Monica, California, she mentioned.

“I get upset when I hear his name,” Arden mentioned of Epstein.

Arden mentioned Epstein had recognized himself as a expertise scout for Victoria’s Secret and he or she needed to meet him. Epstein was a prime adviser to former Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner however was not a expertise scout for the retailer.

“I really wanted to be in the Victoria’s Secret catalog,” mentioned Arden. “But then he grabbed me, tried to tear off my clothes, and said he wanted to ‘manhandle’ me. I ran out of there and he chased after me.”

Arden, who filed a police report after the encounter with Epstein, mentioned she helps Trump however believes “there’s a cover-up of some kind going on.”

“Pam Bondi was saying back in February there was a list and then she said the list was on her desk and now there is no list,” mentioned Arden, who lives in Santa Monica. “She doesn’t want something to come out and I don’t understand why. Maybe the list is more horrifying than we think.”

Another sufferer, who has spoken publicly about how Maxwell recruited her to give Epstein erotic massages, informed NBC News she was “terrified” when Bondi introduced there was no “client list” and that she wouldn’t prosecute anybody else.

“In the past, I was out there talking about what happened, and now I don’t want my name out there in connection with anything to do with Epstein because I’m afraid of what they could do to me and my family,” mentioned the lady, who agreed to converse to NBC News on the situation her identify not be used as a result of she fears retribution from the Trump administration.

“I am not surprised Trump is now saying we should stop talking about Epstein,” she mentioned. “These people are trying to protect themselves.”

Bensky mentioned that what’s taking place now could be like “Ground Hog Day for the #MeToo Movement” and threatens the strides all victims have made in confronting their abusers.

“We need transparency and accountability for the sake of our daughters and future generations of young girls,” she mentioned.

Now a choreographer who works with teenage dance troupes, Bensky mentioned she has for a few years discovered solace through the use of “some of the same tools I use in my choreography to get into a meditative state.”

“Of late, I’ve been working with a group of young dancers in Hawaii and I sometimes think about how there are so many girls out there being victimized,” Bensky mentioned. “I find myself thinking, how do I tell my students that the world isn’t always dark and painful? Because I sat in sadness for a long time.”