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The most unwilling sorority in the country met three months ago on the rooftop of a law firm, just a block away from the White House’s campus. Survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell mingled under the September dusk. Some were meeting each other for the first time. They had ostensibly gathered to make posters for the next day’s rally at the Capitol, but something more meaningful unfolded. Slowly, and without many words, the survivors came to understand their shared trauma and see around them a support network they didn’t know they needed. The realization seemed to harden their resolve, and jelled into one of the most efficient political movements to hit Washington in decades.
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“These victims have spoken. They’ve been very clear about who has caused them harm, and we need to believe these women,” says Lauren Hersh, who founded World Without Exploitation to combat human trafficking and sexual exploitation in 2016. She was the organizer of the gathering, where she served as poster-board distributor and marker replacer. She is also one of the strategists whose efforts on behalf of the women on that roof and those like them helped upended the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
In short order, these women helped force the hand of Congress, Trump, and all Americans to move toward disclosing the sins of Epstein and Maxwell—and possibly others in power. By Dec. 19, the Department of Justice must, by a bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump, disclose what it knows about the sex trafficking operations that sprawled across years and states. Three times this month, judges have sided with those who have asked to see previously secret grand jury records, in part opened because of the Trump-backed measure. And on Thursday, Senate Democrats wrote to Justice’s internal watchdog asking for an independent check to make sure everything is handled properly.
It has been a strikingly effective public affairs campaign, leading to a reversal that left even the most skeptical watchers in awe of the speed at which Republican reticence to engage on the Epstein saga evaporated. And yet, even among the champions of transparency, there is a lingering uncertainty about what exactly they might finally see come the deadline. After all, the law exempts materials that may identify victims or compromise ongoing investigations, and Trump has ordered a second look at the cases to see if certain politically active players were given special treatment.
“Your guess is as good as anybody else’s,” Hersh tells me. “We don’t actually know what’s going to come to light.”
In the span of months, the pressure campaign yielded what other causes might have spent decades chasing. The billboards in targeted congressional districts forced lawmakers to go on the record with support—or not—for transparency. A constant shuttle of survivors to Capitol Hill for one-on-one meetings with anyone potentially standing in their way. An unexpected viral public service announcement that pierced Monday Night Football. A last-minute switch in Trump’s attitude toward disclosure. A forced vote in the House and a shockingly quick capitulation in the Senate. All of it came together in the last few months to prove that, at least in this case, Washington will heed constituents’ demands.
“For far too long, the survivors were kept siloed, sidelined, and silenced. And when they came together, they broke the silence collectively,” Hersh says. “Ultimately, their collective voice really cracked open the public conversation, which exerted pressure on Congress.”
For years, the women were told there was no way the whole trove of information about Epstein would ever see the light of day. There were too many powerful and connected men allegedly involved. The survivors included minors, making any disclosures even dicier. Epstein, who first faced criminal charges in 2006 related to sexual exploitation of minors, seemed to be a master at dodging accountability for a sex trafficking ring that involved bold-faced names and billionaires. He killed himself in a jail cell while he was awaiting more charges in 2019.
But things changed last year, as Trump was working his way back to the White House. Images of Trump and Epstein became ubiquitous again. Trump was running around the country, suggesting that if voters put him back in the White House, he was “inclined” to release the Epstein files. It was bait for his MAGA base convinced that Epstein’s past could entangle the likes of Bill Clinton or Bill Gates. And it worked.
But once back in office, Trump balked. He said disclosing what the government knew would hurt victims, unfairly name unproven co-conspirators, and embarrass tangential figures. That argument was especially jarring to many of Trump’s true believers, who remain convinced a cabal of elites has been taking advantage of their status. With Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene leading the charge, a handful of House Republicans joined Democrats in forcing the full body to take a vote on a disclosure bill. (Greene has since announced plans to resign from Congress next year after a very public break with Trump.)
Still, the march to this point has been uneven. And it’s been one that Hersh’s organization was not necessarily built to serve. As the largest anti-trafficking network in the nation—200 member organizations and counting—it runs a survivor bootcamp to help former victims tell their stories to shape policy going forward. But one of the participants this summer was an Epstein survivor who confessed to being exhausted by the return of Trump.
“This moment is deeply painful and distressing,” she told Hersh as talk in the commentariat turned to a potential Maxwell pardon. She felt, frankly, alone.
Hersh understood there was only one response: “We’re gonna bring people together.”
That retreat begat the idea of a Sept. 3 rally. Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, a Kentucky Republican and a Silicon Valley Democrat, were working on a bipartisan maneuver that would force into the open whatever the Department of Justice had in its filing cabinets. Survivors would speak beside lawmakers. It was an event destined to draw headlines.
But it was also potentially combustible. So the night before, Hersh and her pals at Boies Schiller Flexner, a powerhouse law firm, invited the survivors to the rooftop over on New York Avenue here in D.C. “There was this instant sisterhood that was really beautiful,” Hersh said. Survivors of other unspeakable circles of exploitation got word of the evening and joined in solidarity. Among themselves, they developed an informal rallying cry: Alone I’m fearful, but together we are feared.
It also was an opportunity for the organizers to privately convey a warning to the survivors. “Everybody is going to want to divide you in this moment. If we’re going to be successful, there can be no division amongst you,” Hersh told them.
The next day on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, survivors took their turns attaching their names and faces to horrible experiences at the alleged hands of Epstein, Maxwell, and their comrades. It was one of the most moving and upsetting moments of advocacy in recent years, one that made it impossible for a lot of lawmakers to ignore.
“The truth is, Epstein had a free pass. He bragged about his powerful friends, including our current President, Donald Trump. It was his biggest brag, actually,” survivor Chauntae Davies said.
From there, the survivors understood they had to keep the pressure on Congress. They were consistently on the Hill, lobbying lawmakers to rethink their fealty to Trump and his shove-it-down attitude toward the investigative files.
But the strategists understood they had to keep going. Hersch and her team hired film teams in Los Angeles and New York to interview survivors. But when they sat down to look at the footage collected on soundstages in those coastal caverns, they realized their best material came not from the scripted readings, but from the impromptu observations. “You don’t really hear much of the script in the actual PSA because what ended up happening in the space was just so moving. These women came together, the raw emotion that surfaced because of the bond that they shared was so powerful,” Hersh said months later. Initially, the ad was just going to go online. Once it went viral, it caught the eye of a donor—Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman—who helped it air during Monday Night Football, hours before House lawmakers were set to vote.
“There are about 1000 of us. It’s time to bring the secrets out of the shadows. It’s time to shine a light into the darkness,” the survivors said in the one-minute spot.
Separately, the groups started to lease billboards in congressional districts where they thought they could force Republicans to either defect or defend the ongoing stonewalling from Justice. In Colorado Springs, where Rep. Lauren Boebert serves and deceased Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre still has family, drivers saw the “Courage is Contagious” messaging along I-25. Boebert, a conservative firebrand who is typically in line with Trump, opted to defy the party and join with Democrats in chasing the release of the Epstein files. Not even a meeting in the White House Situation Room could talk her away from her position.
A final press conference proved to be a gut punch to many lawmakers who were watching from their offices.
“We are fighting for the children,” said survivor Haley Robson, who held up a photograph of herself as a young girl. “Choose the survivors. Choose the children.”
“None of us here signed up for this political warfare,” added survivor Wendy Avis. “We never asked to be dragged into battles between people who never protected us in the first place.”
Another survivor, Jena-Lisa Jones, spoke directly to Trump. “I beg you, President Trump, please stop making this political. It is not about you, President Trump,” she said into the camera. “I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment.”
Staring down defeat, Trump retreated. Although he continued to call it a “hoax,” he publicly gave Republicans permission to vote for the release; only one voted against the measure.
The legislation cleared the Senate hours later unanimously. And Trump signed it into law that evening.
All the while, stunned survivors were on the Hill watching every development come at break-neck speed. “We never thought in a million years that it was going to move to the Senate as fast as it moved to the Senate,” Hersh said.
Still, the next move is one controlled by the Justice Department, and this is one that takes its cues directly from the White House. Both Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel said earlier this year that there was nothing else noteworthy worth releasing. But now Congress—and Trump—have ordered them to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” by next week.
The devil is in the details. If Bondi chooses to argue that they’re still investigating Epstein-related manners, it could sidestep the prescribed transparency. Similarly, they could skirt disclosures in the name of protecting survivors. “We don’t know how things shake out. I’ll be very candid with you in telling you that this period of waiting is really distressing on the survivors,” Hersh says. “They know what has come out. They know what hasn’t come out.”
On top of that, the survivors could find themselves in the coming days flipping through page after page of government documents that are just blocks of blacked-out material. Hersh is ready for that possibility, too. “If we get pages of redaction,” she says, “you can be sure that our work will not be done.”
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