They feel, as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims put it, like they’re “being erased.”
While a civil war rages in MAGA world over President Donald Trump’s decision to disavow conspiracies that his most ardent supporters stoked about Epstein being part of a deep state sex trafficking cabal, the women who were victimized by the billionaire say their suffering is being sidelined by raw politics.
Four Epstein victims who spoke with NBC News say the Trump administration should be exposing any powerful men who shared Epstein’s penchant for vulnerable young women, not putting the brakes on any future prosecutions.
“You never really heal,” said Danielle Bensky, 38, who was a budding ballerina when she said Epstein abused her two decades ago. “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 recently 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 did not exist, and that Epstein’s death in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges was a jailhouse suicide and not a murder to silence him, as many believe.
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 release “pertinent” grand jury transcripts and other documents that could shed more light on the scandal.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump wrote a bawdy birthday letter for Epstein more than two decades ago. NBC News has not seen the original letter, and Trump has called it “a fake thing.”
Bensky said her heart sank earlier this month when Bondi, who had amplified Trump’s campaign promises to “demolish the deep state,” released a two-page memo stating there was no evidence of an “incriminating client list” of men who had sex with young women procured by the financier and that her office would not prosecute anyone else in the case.
“I felt a wave of sadness,” Bensky said. “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 other victims, Epstein’s reappearance in the news is like tearing the scab from a wound.
“The reality is, trauma is never a one and done,” Epstein victim Teresa J. Helm said by email 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 said she was hired 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 said whatever 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 email.
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 forced her to have sex with several powerful men, including Prince Andrew.
The British royal acknowledged associating with Epstein and agreed to a settlement with Giuffre but denied the allegations.
Maxwell has filed a petition with the Supreme Court to vacate her 2021 conviction for recruiting and grooming teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
Boies said Trump, Bondi and others in the administration have only 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 said. “If they never said anything there would have been only middling interest and conspiracy thinking. It’s the inconsistencies that fueled things.”
Boies said that as far as he knows there was no document in the raft of evidence 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 said.
Alicia Arden was a 27-year-old model and aspiring actress when Epstein assaulted her in 1997 at a hotel in Santa Monica, California, she said.
“I get upset when I hear his name,” Arden said of Epstein.
Arden said Epstein had identified himself as a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret and she wanted to meet him. Epstein was a top adviser to former Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner but was not a talent scout for the retailer.
“I really wanted to be in the Victoria’s Secret catalog,” said 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, said she supports Trump but 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,” said 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 victim, who has spoken publicly about how Maxwell recruited her to give Epstein erotic massages, told NBC News she was “terrified” when Bondi announced there was no “client list” and that she would not prosecute anyone 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,” said the woman, who agreed to speak to NBC News on the condition her name not be used because she fears retribution from the Trump administration.
“I am not surprised Trump is now saying we should stop talking about Epstein,” she said. “These people are trying to protect themselves.”
Bensky said that what’s happening now is 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 said.
Now a choreographer who works with teenage dance troupes, Bensky said she has for many years found solace by using “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 said. “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.”
