The Epstein Files is a deep and dark morality tale of our times. It says as much about man’s greed for sex, money and power as it does about society’s treatment of sex crimes as a minor embarrassment rather than a character flaw. In a world this disordered, the predators win because they have influence and money, plus membership to the clubby world of fellow collaborators. The testimony of victims, collateral damage at best, counts for little.
Jess Michaels was 22, a budding professional dancer, when Jeffrey Epstein raped her in 1990. In September 2025 she was among the group of survivors that stood on the steps of the US Capitol demanding that the Epstein Files be made public.
The latest release on January 30 of over three million pages left her and others less-than-happy: Redactions of survivor names are sloppy, exposing the names of at least 48 women. In some cases, personal information, including victim statements, emails, nude images and bank accounts, are visible.
“A five-year-old could have done a better job,” Michaels told Sky News. “It feels almost like it’s purposeful to intimidate survivors, to punish survivors, to discredit survivors, and then not hold the perpetrators actually guilty.”
A “huge violation of one of the most terrible moments of their lives,” is what another survivor, Ashley Rubright. told BBC. And yet another, Annie Farmer said it was “hard to focus on the new information that has been brought to light because of how much damage the DOJ has done by exposing survivors this way.”
After the furore, the DOJ is reported to have taken down thousands of files.
#BelieveWomen
The women, at least some of them, have been speaking up for years. Virginia Giuffre who died by suicide in April 2025 even had photographic evidence of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, his arm around her then 17-year-old self (barely older than his own daughters, he joked) with Ghislaine Maxwell grinning ghoulishly in the background.
Fake, said the former prince, of the picture. Nevertheless, he settled for an undisclosed sum that is speculated to be around $15 million. His mother the queen of England stripped him of his titles. His brother, the king expedited his eviction from rent-free, tax-funded housing after the publication of the latest photograph of Andrew on all fours crouched like a beast from hell before a prone woman/girl whose face is redacted.
It should not have taken the release of documents to vindicate Guiffre’s charge. Why didn’t the world believe her? For the same reason perhaps why survivors of sexual assault are often disbelieved or sought to be blamed: Why didn’t they walk out? Why didn’t they complain earlier?
Epstein and Maxwell’s modus operandi was to target and traffic young, vulnerable women and girls. Some came from broken families, others had abusive backgrounds. There were, in all, reckons Danielle Bensky who was 17 when she met Epstein in 2004, a thousand girls, some as young as 14.
Annie Farmer’s sister, Maria was the first woman to file a criminal complaint. Back in 1996, she told the FBI of her employer Epstein’s interest in child pornography. He had in possession, she said, nude photographs of her two sisters. The complaint came at grave personal risk; Epstein had warned her that he would burn her house down if she ever spoke up. Yet, the FBI did nothing. An investigation into the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) handling of the Epstein case in 2020 does not even mention Maria Farmer’s complaint.
In December 2025 when the first batch of the Epstein Files was released she wept. “I’ve waited 30 years…They can’t call me a liar anymore.”
Everyone knows
Everyone knew and still they emailed him, hinted for invitations to his island, flew on his private jet and sought his assistance to fix meetings, get a job for a kid, network for business
Did Bill Gates plan to secretly dose his then wife Melinda French Gates with antibiotics because he had contracted an STD while partying with Epstein’s girls? Was Elon Musk fishing for an invitation to the “wildest party” on Epstein’s island? Left-Liberal intellectual Noam Chomsky doled out advice on handling the bad press Epstein was getting. Ignore, he said, “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women.”
Did businessman Anil Ambani have official sanction when he sought Epstein’s help in fixing meetings between prime minister Narendra Modi and Trump’s former strategist Steven Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner during a US visit? That’s the more pertinent question to ask rather than his response of “arrange that” to Epstein’s suggestion in 2017 of setting up a meeting with a “tall Swedish blonde woman”.
Surely film-maker Mira Nair should have done some basic due diligence before attending an after-party to celebrate her 2009 film, Amelia at Maxwell’s Manhattan townhouse? As for Deepak Chopra, there are shades of him that always seemed dodgy.
Much of this behavior shows an ethical lapse and moral failure in continuing to associate with a registered sex offender. This is material that is juicy for memes, jokes and social embarrassment but has no real consequences.
There are exceptions of course, Peter Mandelson is already minus a job after it transpired that Epstein paid his husband nearly $75,000 and Mandelson was allegedly leaking government emails and market-sensitive information to Epstein.
The Epstein Files isn’t just about who as much as it is about how. How did Jeffrey Epstein get away? How does the eco-system that surrounded him continue to protect the reputation of men over justice for women. How does a sex trafficking ring of this magnitude remain under wraps?
In India too we’ve seen this story played out many times. The justice system works on a different plane for men with connections and pals in high places. India’s MeToo did result in more women speaking up. But so many of the men named then are, like Epstein, still in business.
How does MJ Akbar, sacked as a minister in the Modi government after over 20 women spoke up against him, get hand-picked to represent India’s position in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor?
How does Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, former head of the Wrestling Federation game the system so he remains influential?
Mohammad Farooqui acquitted of rape because a judge deemed the survivor’s no to be too feeble has sell-out audiences for his dastangoi performances and literature festivals queuing to invite him.
To talk of victim-centric justice is far too often a joke.
Justice for the women and girls has to go beyond prurient interest in the heads of countries and corporations, old money aristocrats and new money tech bros, academics and lawyers, a current Republican president and a former Democrat one who knew the disgraced financier and kept in touch with him even after his 2008 conviction as a sex offender.
What will justice for the hundreds of girls and women who were preyed on Jeffrey Epstein and trafficked out to his greasy friends look like? For now, the survivors want all the files released. They want their identities protected (no more botched redacting of names). And they want the world to know the full extent of the horrors they lived through.
“We are not asking for pity,” Lisa Phillips, one of the survivors who spoke on the steps of the US Capitol said in November last year. “We are here demanding accountability. I am demanding justice.”
PostScript
When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked an obvious question about justice for Jeffrey Epstein survivors. US President Donald Trump had this to say: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile.”
Leave aside the matter of looking cheerful and sparkly when asking about sexual assault survivors, when was the last time you heard a man asking another man to smile? But there was no stopping Trump. “I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face,” he said.
There’s an implication that the main job of women, even in professional situations while asking difficult questions on justice for sexual assault victims, is to look pleasant. Smile please.
When the man berating you for failing to smile is a sitting president and the woman in question is a journalist inside his office, there is the added sting of entitlement. He is asserting his authority and establishing dominance over her body, or in this case, her facial features. “You never smile,” Trump complains. The failure isn’t one of journalistic standards it’s a failure of wanting to be regarded as pleasant by a powerful man.
Shulamith Firestone who wrote the 1970 book, The Dialectic of Sex called for what she called a smile boycott. “All women would instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them.” HuffPost has more here.
