They feel, as expressed by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, as if they were “being erased.”
While a civil war is unleashed in the world of Maga in the decision of President Donald Trump to reject the conspiracies that his most ardent supporters fueled that Epstein is part of a deep sexual trafficking sex clique, women who were victims of the billionaire say that their suffering is being left by raw politics.
Four victims of Epstein who spoke with NBC News say that the Trump administration should expose any powerful man who has shared Epstein’s inclination for vulnerable young women, without stopping any future prosecution.
“Never really healthy,” said Danielle Bensky, 38, who was a budding dancer when he said Epstein abused her two decades ago. “And with what is happening now, it seems that we are being erased. All the brave women who presented themselves … all the work we did to tell the world what happened to us, everything is being erased.”
The victims recently spoke with NBC News when Trump tried silence it, as many believe.
Faced with what critics and allies are calling a severe threat to their presidency, Trump has alternately ruled out to fury as a “deception” by the Democrats and ordered Bondi to release transcripts from the “relevant” grand jury and other documents that could shed more light on the scandal.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump wrote an obscene birthday letter for Epstein more than two decades ago. NBC News has not seen the original letter, and Trump has called it “something false.”
Bensky said his heart sank earlier this month when Bondi, which had amplified the Trump campaign, promises to “demolish the deep state,” he launched a two -page memorandum that indicated that there was no evidence of a “list of incriminating clients” of men who had sex with young women acquired by El Financiero and that their office would not process anyone else in the case.
“I felt a wave of sadness,” Bensky said. “All those years of trying to win justice simply denied. They were only two pages saying that they had finished investigating without details about what happened to everyone. It is as if we had never existed.”
For other victims, Epstein’s reappearance in the news is how to start the scab of a wound.
“The reality is that trauma is never and is done,” said Epstein’s victim, Teresa J. Helm, by email to NBC News. “It’s complex. You can take a lifetime to repair yourself. Several things can start a trauma response, and that is 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 victims of sexual assault for the National Center for Sexual Exploitation. She said any hope she had to get a justice measure.
“When the abusers of a person are repeatedly shown in view at any given time, and especially when the promises of justice, and the promises of power structures are finally counted, by then they essentially have the door in the face and no longer open for business, what?” Helm wrote in his email.
The lawyer David Boies represented one of Epstein’s best known accusers, the late Virginia Giuffre, who said in a 2016 statement that Epstein and his accomplicbe now impressed Ghislaine Maxwell forced her to have sex with several powerful men, including Prince Andrew.
British royalty acknowledged associating with Epstein and agreed an agreement with Giuffre, but denied the accusations.
Maxwell has filed a petition before the Supreme Court to vacate its 2021 sentence for recruiting and preparing adolescents so that Epstein is sexually abused.
Boies said Trump, Bondi and others in the administration are only to blame for reliving the Epstein saga.
“Now it is emerging because the administration made a big problem that were going to launch a list of customers and, suddenly, they made a 180 turn saying that we will not throw anything,” said Boies. “If they never said something, there would have been only an average interest in the thought of conspiracy. It is the inconsistencies that fed things.”
Boies said that where he knows, there was no document in the series of evidence that he checked that it was labeled as a “client list.”
“I think they should release the material after promise, 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 an aspiring actress when Epstein assaulted her in 1997 in a hotel in Santa Monica, California, she said.
“I get angry when I hear his name,” Arden said about Epstein.
Arden said Epstein had identified himself as a talent explorer for Victoria’s Secret and she wanted to meet him. Epstein was the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret Les Wexner, but was not a talent explorer for the retailer.
“I really wanted to be in the Victoria’s Secret catalog,” Arden said. “But then he grabbed me, tried to tear my clothes and said he wanted to ‘mistreat.’ I ran from there and chased me.”
Arden, who presented a police report after the meeting with Epstein, said he supports Trump but believes that “there is a cover -up of some kind.”
“Pam Bondi said in February that there was a list and then said that the list was on his 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 horrible than we think.”
Another victim, who has spoken publicly about how Maxwell recruited her to give Epstein erotic massages, told NBC News that he was “terrified” when Bondi announced that there was no “list of customers” and that he would not process anyone else.
“In the past, I was talking about what happened, and now I do not want my name to be in relation to anything to do with Epstein because I am afraid of what my family could do to me,” said the woman, who agreed to speak with NBC News about the condition that her name is not used because she fears the remuneration of the Trump administration.
“I am not surprised that Trump is now saying that we should stop talking about Epstein,” he said. “These people are trying to protect themselves.”
Bensky said that what is happening now is like “Land Pork Day for the #MeToo Movement” and threatens the advances that all victims have made to face their abusers.
“We need transparency and responsibility for the good of our daughters and future generations of girls,” he said.
Now, a choreographer who works with adolescent dance groups, Bensky said that for many years he has found comfort when using “some of the same tools that I use in my choreography to enter a meditative state.”
“In recent times, I’ve been working with a group of young dancers in Hawaii and sometimes I think about how there are so many girls for being victims,” said Bensky. “I find myself thinking, how do I tell my students that the world is not always dark and painful? Because I sat sadly for a long time.”
