A Jeffrey Epstein accuser says victims will make their own list of people in the sex-trafficker’s orbit

While there’s no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list” exists, one of his accusers said that survivors may create a list of their own.

At a pair of events in solidarity with Epstein’s sexual abuse victims, accuser Lisa Phillips said the victims were considering taking matters into their own hands.

“We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” Phillips said at a rally organized by World Without Exploitation, an organization that fights human trafficking.

“Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world,” she continued. “And it will be done by survivors and for survivors. No one else is involved.”

The two events — one organized by World Without Exploitation, another by several members of Congress — were hosted Wednesday morning in Washington, DC.

Each featured speeches from Epstein accusers and their family members, with some sharing their accusations in public for the first time. Three members of Congress urged their colleagues to vote for legislation that would force the federal government to make its files about Epstein public.

Lauren Hersh, the national director of World Without Exploitation, said that Epstein accusers wanted to seize a moment where the public demands answers about how the government treated the well-connected sex trafficker.

Phillips’s idea for accusers to create their own list of people affiliated with Epstein demonstrated that “survivors are done with waiting for other people to do what they are able to do,” Hersh told Business Insider.

“When we rely on systems to take care of things, sometimes that takes a very long time, and sometimes that means it doesn’t get done,” Hersh said. “And what they’re saying is, ‘This needs to happen, it needs to happen urgently, and if it’s not going to successfully happen within systems, we’re going to do it ourselves.'”

‘Why do we have to say the names when the government knows the names?’

Earlier this year, the Trump administration backtracked on earlier commitments to publish government documents about Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of trafficking girls to Epstein for sex.

Epstein was permitted to plead guilty in 2008 to minor prostitution solicitation charges in Florida, even though law enforcement officers collected evidence that the well-connected pedophile had sexually abused dozens of girls. In 2019, he killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial for more severe sex-trafficking charges.

Over the summer, Maxwell was moved to a more lax prison to serve the remainder of her 20-year sentence after giving an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. In recordings of the interview published by the Justice Department, Maxwell, who is appealing her conviction, said she wasn’t aware of any sexual abuse.

Giving “airtime” to Maxwell was “repulsive,” said Teresa Helms, another one of Epstein’s victims, who spoke at the second Wednesday rally.

“Her voice was elevated way before our voices were elevated here today,” Helms said.

At the second event, Wednesday morning, when asked if she would make the accuser-compiled list public, Phillips said it was the obligation of the federal government, not accusers, to hold people accountable.

“Why do we have to say the names when the government knows the names?” she said. “And we’re also scared to do so. Look what’s happened to so many of the survivors that have revealed names.”

Brad Edwards, an attorney who’s represented over 100 accusers, said victims were scarred from the Justice Department’s failures to properly prosecute Epstein.

“The victims are very scared to say these names because they could get sued,” Edwards said. “They’re going to get attacked. And nobody protected him the first time — and that was against one person.”

Brittany Henderson, another attorney representing Epstein victims, said accusers would assist in additional criminal investigations.

“If someone’s interested in prosecuting, they may have something different to say about sharing a list,” Henderson said. “But they’re not sharing a list for nothing to happen. And that’s the experience that they’ve had for all of these years.”

The bill would force the release of more Epstein files

The House Oversight Committee has said it would publish government records about Epstein.

So far, it has not gone smoothly.

On Tuesday night, the committee published what it described as 33,295 pages provided by the Justice Department. Nearly all of them were already public.

The newly released records appear to include records from flights Epstein took in the 2010s, although they include numerous redactions.

According to The New York Post, they also include a minute of video that had been missing from previously released security footage outside the hallway near Epstein’s Manhattan jail cell on the night he died. The footage shows nothing happening.

The discharge petition promoted by Reps. Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene would force the Justice Department, as well as other federal agencies, to publish their records while making redactions for private victim information.

Edwards said Wednesday that the legislation would allow the public to see bank records involving JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, which he said were kept secret because of protective orders, confidentiality agreements, and bank secrecy laws. Both financial institutions settled lawsuits brought by Edwards on behalf of Epstein victims without admitting to wrongdoing.

Marina Laserta said at one of the rallies that Epstein had abused her for three years, starting when she was 14 years old.

While Laserta said she was identified as “Victim-1” in Epstein’s 2019 indictment, Wednesday marked the first time she had spoken publicly.

The legislation, if passed by Congress, would allow her to understand what happened to her, she said.

“If the government is going to release his documents to the public, describing the crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein and others, the least they can do is give me my documents that they have about me,” she said.

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