There are so many enraging aspects to the Epstein scandal: the Trump administration’s apparent illegal delays and redactions of evidence; Trump’s frankly bizarre claims he has been “totally exonerated”; Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid for freedom from her minimum-security comfort; the lack of arrests, at least in the US.
Additionally infuriating is the fact that, yet again, we’re all caught up with the fame-encrusted stories of rich, powerful men. The women and their reported life-scarring encounters with Epstein and his set are an afterthought. At best, they’re treated as a salacious backdrop to the fortunes of men whom society has lionised and – with epic irony – thought better than the rest of us.
The Epstein “Transparency” Act
During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump and his acolytes made much of what might be hidden in the Epstein documents held by the US Department of Justice. Trump undertook to release the files in a 2024 interview with Fox News. In February 2025, Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, claimed that the list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”.
Yet it would take a further 11 months for the first evidence to be released. In that time, pressure grew from the survivors of Epstein’s trafficking ring, opposition Democratic members of Congress, and even some Republicans. The Trump administration was accused of engineering a government shutdown to avoid the signing of a discharge petition to force the files’ release.
Eventually, the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed overwhelmingly by Congress, and Trump was forced to sign it. What followed was a series of delays, obfuscations, and apparently illegal redactions, which have drawn sharp criticism from many members of Congress, the Epstein survivors, and the public at large.
It is estimated that, despite a 19 December 2025 deadline for full disclosure, only 2% of the material has been released at the time of writing. Serious questions arise about what is being withheld, and for whose protection, even while what has been released is damning enough.
The Epstein survivors
We know all about the men named in the Epstein records. We are apprised regularly of the mythology of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, et al. But how often do our media tell the stories of the women, many of whom were children at the time that rich men abused them?
Probably the most well-recognised among them is Virginia Giuffre, who accused Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein of trafficking her from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where she was working as a masseuse. Recently, Trump claimed quite revealingly that a rift between him and Epstein resulted from Epstein’s “stealing” women from his Florida spa. Tragically, Giuffre died by apparent suicide in April 2025, but her memoir, Nobody’s Girl, was released posthumously in October.
Other survivors have courageously waived their anonymity in order to campaign for justice for all the Epstein survivors. Prominent among the 2,000 women the Epstein ring abused are Anouska Di Georgiou, a UK-born actress and model, and former model Lisa Phillips but there are many more. The survivors have formed a rock against which Trump’s attempts to “move on” have shattered.
Besides youth, many of the women who have come forward had at the time of their abuse an important characteristic in common: an exploitable vulnerability. Some came from troubled or disadvantaged backgrounds; some had experienced a childhood moving around, previous abuse or early loss of a parent.
The survivors have described with remarkable consistency the process of grooming that drew them into the trap. There were offers of job opportunities, mentorship, and luxury designed to appeal to each particular naivety and desire to belong. It was horrifyingly effective. When the abuse began, it was already too late. Cloaked in the tabloid normalisation of young girls “partying” with rich, old men, the paedophilia remained invisible in plain sight for decades.
Societal context of misogyny
Women have always known that the constructs within which they live dictate their prospects, freedom, and safety. Even in supposedly progressive societies like the UK, nearly one in three women experience some form of domestic abuse in their lives. One in 14 women experience rape, yet less than 3% of reported rapes lead to charges being brought – and it’s estimated that at least 80% are unreported.
It’s not just women’s safety that’s impacted. Structural gender inequality runs deep and broad. In the UK, the current gender pay gap is 12.8%, meaning women work on average 47 days annually for free. The reasons for the gap point to further structural inequality, with more senior positions occupied by men, female-dominated professions frequently attracting unjustified lower pay, and caring responsibilities outside work falling in the main on women.
The 2022 US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v Wade and similar, US-sponsored anti-abortion movements growing in the UK are eroding women’s choices over their own healthcare, even when their lives are in danger.
Though it is hard to comprehend in 2026, there are even those who believe women shouldn’t have the right to vote.
Even our everyday, unconscious use of language minimises women, their autonomy, and their experiences. Men who assault are described as “handsy”; sexual predation is frequently designated “misconduct” on a level with sniggering at the back of the class; if they get angry, women are dismissed as being “irrational”; and assertive women are described as “aggressive” or “difficult”.
Comply or die
With regard to the Epstein files, some find it hard to believe that these children were groomed, trafficked and abused because Guiffre was smiling in the instant her now-infamous photo with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was taken.
This speaks to the utter lack of interest in how girls and women are required to operate in a world that rewards them for being pretty, agreeable, and compliant and punishes them for not achieving any one of those things. Recall Trump’s recent berating of White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins for not smiling when she asked a serious question about the Epstein survivors.
When it comes to smiling, women must walk an exceptionally fine line.
Make no mistake, these attitudes kill. Between 2014 and 2024, 2,000 women and girls in the UK were killed by men, 61% of whom were current or ex-partners who sought to control them and, when other strategies failed, murdered them. The first nine pages of the 2025 UK Femicide Census list the names of all 2,000.
In 2021, after Sarah Everard was murdered by an off-duty police officer while walking home, women began telling their stories of fear and harassment. They spoke of how they had carefully chosen walking routes, pretended to be on the phone to a partner, and held keys primed in hand in case of attack. All this to the shock of the men who supposedly shared their lives. For a moment in our culture, the cavern between men’s and women’s freedoms was visible.
“Not credible” or not a priority?
Against this background, it’s no accident that the horrific allegations in the Epstein case have been dismissed as “not credible”. And it’s no surprise that swift action is taken when allegations of “sharing secrets” are made against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor yet reports of decades of sexual abuse are left to drift unpursued in the ‘he said, she said’ ether.
Incomplete though they are, the released Epstein documents contain enough sickening material to shake the world apart. While some have begun to face accountability, in the US – the epicentre of Epstein’s vile crimes – there has been barely a tremor.
And when others are forced to face consequences, Trump – who is mentioned many thousands of times in the files in some very disturbing contexts – has only ever expressed sympathy for those accused of despicable acts. When Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with sex trafficking offences in 2020, Trump said in response to a press question, “I just wish her well”. More recently, he expressed his sadness at the arrests of Andrew Mounbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson. It’s less clear how he feels about the women whose lives have been destroyed by abusers.
Those who believe Trump is trying to cover up his own involvement in these crimes will also be keen to understand why over 50 pages of documents relating to accusations made against him are not included in the release.
Immunity for sale
It isn’t just about gender inequality. Our western democracies are increasingly blighted by growing wealth inequality. The top 1% now earn 20% of global income and rising.
This disparity has wider social implications. Allowing for the societal assumption that the rich are inherently better, desensitisation to cruelty towards the poor is possible. Neoliberalism may have brought us to a place where we can deny certain people’s humanity with ease.
There’s an uncomfortable truth behind the behaviour of some of the “elites” named in the Epstein files. We may have to confront the prospect that they really didn’t think they were doing anything wrong because many of the girls they abused were not rich like them and so could effectively be considered less human.
I used to wonder why some were driven to the vast accumulation of more wealth than a person could spend. With the unearthing of the crimes of the Epstein class, it’s now clear that for some, money buys immunity from the consequences of their depravity.
It’s a stark contrast with the Epstein survivors themselves. How craven these men look against the bravery of those coming forward, facing down threats made by abusers they know have the means to carry them out. How impressive is the women’s dignity in refusing to carry the shame and fear their abusers try to heap upon them. To misquote a slogan, the Epstein perpetrators are lucky their victims want only justice and not revenge.
Let this International Women’s Day belong to the survivors.
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