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VIOLENCE DECONSTRUCTED: JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S VICTIMS DESERVE BETTER  
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Kylie Cheung
October 2, 2025
Prism
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_ 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. _

Haley Robson, victim of financier Jeffrey Epstein, speaks during a
press conference to discuss the Epstein Files Transparency bill on
Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Sept. 3, 2025, (Evelyn
Hockstein/Reuters).

 

In September, the House of Representatives released
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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 [[link removed]] 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
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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
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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
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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
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believe Epstein’s victims, but their lives are still very much at
risk
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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
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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
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who have been found dead after accusing or being associated with
Epstein. Last September, numerous Epstein survivors filed a lawsuit
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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
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since 2023. About two dozen women
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accused him of rape, sexual assault, and harassment—including his
ex-wife Ivana, though she went on to retract
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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
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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
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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
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“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
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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
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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
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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._

* sexual abuse
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* Jeffrey Epstein
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* Donald Trump
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* sexual predator
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