There’s a lot to be upset by with the Epstein files, including the way the Justice Department has gone about releasing them.
On Friday, the DOJ released more than 3 million pages of files related to the investigation into late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who moved among the world’s elite while eluding federal prosecution for years. (Epstein died by suicide in 2019, while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges.)
While the Justice Department aggressively shielded the names of powerful men mentioned in the documents, it failed to extend the same care to survivors of Epstein’s crimes. Many women have chosen ― often at great personal cost, including threats on their lives ― to speak publicly about the abuse they suffered. Others have not. Yet the release exposed email addresses and included nude photographs that made it possible to identify the names and faces of potential, hitherto unknown victims.
Although Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Friday that the DOJ tried to prioritize victim privacy, he admitted that “mistakes are inevitable” and urged the public to report any errors to a DOJ email tip line.
Survivors of Epstein’s crimes said the glib mea culpa the DOJ offered wasn’t cutting it.
“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy,” a group of women victimized by Epstein said in a statement released Friday.
By Tuesday, the DOJ said it had taken down all flagged files and claimed the mistakes were due to “technical or human error.”
But the damage is already done, said Dave Ring, a trial lawyer in Los Angeles who has represented victims of sexual assault for over 30 years.
“The grossly negligent and reckless release of these records without those redactions violated these victims’ privacy rights,” Ring told HuffPost. “Their names are now out there forever. The bell cannot be ‘unrung.’ This is disgraceful.”
Rape shield laws exist to protect survivors in criminal proceedings, yet the federal government disregarded them, releasing files containing identifying details anyway.
That tells us exactly who they’re prioritizing, and it isn’t victims, said Bonny Shade, a sexual assault survivor and speaker on sexual violence and prevention.
“When survivors are exposed, perpetrators are protected,” she told HuffPost. “And we’ve seen this playbook before: minimize the harm, label it a ‘small error’ and move on, while the real consequences land on survivors.”
Publishing names and identifying information doesn’t just re-traumatize victims; it invites harassment, discourages reporting and reinforces shame, Shade said.
Calling it a mistake doesn’t undo the damage; it excuses it. And the elite impunity the men in Epstein’s inner circle enjoyed while they were in his company continues to this day.
“Men in power often try to intimidate women until they stop talking,” she said. “If the goal were justice, transparency or accountability, survivors would never be collateral damage. These actions don’t protect truth, they protect powerful men.”
The fact that Epstein is arguably the most well-known trafficker in history, and yet not one victim has received justice, speaks volumes to others who’ve been sexually assaulted, said Kathryn Stamoulis, a mental health counselor specializing in sexualized violence.
“None of his vast network of male rapists have been investigated,” she said. “That sends a message loud and clear, our country does not care about victims of sexual abuse and that silence is safer than seeking help.”
Publishing victims’ names and photos is not an isolated incident, either. It’s part of a broader pattern of the DOJ failing to respect victims’ rights, said Leigh Gilmore, professor emerita at Ohio State University and author of “The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women.”
“Although the Department of Justice has been legally required to release the Epstein files, only a fraction of the material has been made public and only after sustained public pressure by survivors and their advocates,” she said.
This isn’t merely an administrative failure, she said, but a “paradigmatic instance of institutional silencing.”
According to Gilmore, this institutional silencing takes the form of “managed visibility,” in which the public sees only parts of the Epstein files but far too much about the women he preyed upon.
“The public is left unable to know what it does not know,” Gilmore said. “Evidence exists, but it is being presented in ways that protect abusers and expose victims to ongoing and new forms of harm.”
On Sunday, Annie Farmer, who has testified in court about how she was groomed and abused as a teenager by Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, shared her thoughts about the failed redactions. Gilmore thinks she said it best.
As Farmer disappointedly told the Times, “It’s hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims than having full nude images of them available for the world to download.”