NOTE: The following column talks about both suicide and sexual assault.
The teenage photographs of Virginia Louise Roberts Giuffre now cropping back up during the current Epstein-Trump news cycle are haunting and near-triggering for me because I see a bit of myself and my past mistakes in her. I was never trafficked, thank God, but I did suffer a sexual assault by an older high-school student over in Neshoba County when I was about the age she was in that infamous photo of her in a crop top over hip-hugger jeans with Prince Andrew’s hand possessively encircling her young waist. Ghislaine Maxwell, who apparently groomed Giuffre and many other girls to be part of Jeffrey Epstein’s harem-for-hire (and his own sick gratification), is smiling brightly beside them. The prince settled Guiffre’s lawsuit against him for sexual abuse of a minor in 2022.
Giuffre was a child when her assaults began—just as I was a child when I was raped by a prominent local boy after I made the mistake of going with another couple and him to his home when his family was out of town. She made mistakes; I made mistakes. We were kids. The biggest error we all make, really, is trusting what the groomers and the rapists tell us to lure us into their trap. But neither she nor I understood where our youthful naïveté could lead our lives.
What I didn’t know in the 1970s in central Mississippi was just how many women of all backgrounds were coping with the brokenness that follows sexual violation. It is far from just physical; the attack destroys your sense of safety, self-esteem and belief that you can control what happens to you. Often, others blame you for his choices. I already had a foot out the door: I was already displeased with the sexism and racism around me in my hometown; in fact, I had just learned about the infamous 1964 civil-rights murders a year or so before that fateful night. And I was used to sexist admonitions from horrid men that “a pretty little lady” should just “get married and have some young’uns” instead of going to college.
But I was naive enough to think that I could escape the misogyny and rampant violence against women there by just, you know, getting the hell out of the state as soon as I could, as I would do the day after I graduated from Mississippi State in May 1983. Yes, I wanted adventure and opportunities, but I also left to protect myself from violence.
Life for a sassy, smart woman would be better and safer most anywhere else, I told myself as I peaced out on Mississippi during my drive north. That, by the way, was about a dozen weeks before Virginia Roberts was born in Sacramento, California—a woman who had already been molested by a family friend and living on the streets by the time she went to work in the Mar-a-Lago spa.
My education about the prevalence of sexual predators and their various modus operandi was still ahead for me when I bolted from Mississippi for what I believed were safer horizons for women. I certainly did not understand the ugly, execrable, self-propagating system of power, helped by obsequious media and sick justifications of abusive misogyny and predators.
Simply put, I was naive, especially about the systems of power that had long protected business-suit rapists. They weren’t all country-boy high-school football stars.
Be clear: I blame the protectors of the predators just as much as the rapists themselves because without them, this cycle might’ve ended long ago with sexual abusers, especially those ensconced in politics and media, rooted out. Maybe.
In Search of a Safer Camelot
The latest chapter of the Epstein saga is not a game, political or otherwise. Donald Trump haters are near-gleeful that some MAGA voters, notably many women, are demanding the release of the Epstein files and naming of all the names. Meantime, I (and I assure you, any woman who has experienced sexual assault) have long wanted those files to be public. The 25 million women rape survivors in the U.S.—15% of us—want sexual predators and protectors exposed. And that number is likely low with other organizations reporting far higheer percentages.
I mean, where is the debate? These are child rapists—probably raping adults, as well, as Trump is already adjudicated to have done—or their protectors (the same thing, once removed). Why the hell would we want any of them walking the streets free, coming into contact with children, serving in political office, running media companies, giving motivational speeches at conventions, whatever? I’ve asked myself many times over the years: What kind of person wants to cover for these monsters who get their kicks from stalking and trapping prey?
Of course, I do understand why women are afraid to come forward. I didn’t call the cops on my rapist, and I’ve never named him publicly. It’s sure the hell not because I’m protecting him. I’m protecting myself. Nobody would have believed this trailer-park girl versus that Big Man On Campus, and if I’d outed him as an adult, he would just say he jilted me and call me crazy in a world primed to believe the worst about women, full stop.
There would be lots of hand-wringing about me trying to ruin his life—when I and so, so, so many women (and others) have carried around the fear, distrust and guilt much of our lives like a backpack filled with bricks. These freaks damage our ability to trust; they make relationships more difficult (at least until you find someone who gets it as best they can and supports you); and they make us fear the dark and watch over our shoulders more than any human being should. The paranoia isn’t for naught; predators are still all around us, as I learned in the decades since leaving Mississippi in search of a safer Camelot.
Here are a few examples of varying degrees of how women everywhere face continual sexual threats and punishment in everyday life:
The newspaper publisher who flew me to Nevada years ago from New York for a job interview and tried to pressure me to drive to San Francisco overnight with him while the job hung in the balance. After saying no, I didn’t get a job offer, nor did I want one.
The gropers in the subway or dark clubs or cocktail parties everywhere. Our current president gave it a name back in 2005: “Grab them by the pussy.”
The men in workplaces trying to bed down all the young women in their department and turn them against women bosses so they don’t tell us. (Many eventually do, at least when he’s gone.)
The sexual violence of being called a “cunt” or “slut” because someone disagrees on an issue that has nothing to do with sex. Or, they just make up stories wholesale about you-the-“cunt” to bring an uppity woman down a notch or two.
The blogger who sent me photos of him wrapped in a sheet and had a woman (!) photograph him surprise-kissing me at a domestic-violence prevention fundraiser. (You can’t make that up.) Another woman told me he had messaged her on Facebook and told her what she was wearing the day before. She didn’t know him and wasn’t charmed.
And so on; I have so many examples of my own and that other women have shared with me because I dare talk about predators out loud. It’s as if these types have to find some way to telegraph their power over us, to try to keep us in fear, silence and submission. You’re not as good as you think you are; I can bring you down in two minutes, woman.
For women, sexual assault, harassment and stalking in one way or another are a part of daily life; the system has always been rigged to protect predators, at least the ones perceived to be powerful or who can send money or clients to those who turn their heads. And it’s always, always our fault in one way or another—from a bad logistical decision to being too young and poor to resist a chance to be amid glitz and glamour and good meals.
I fully realized the lengths men will go to demonize women while watching the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991, when attorney Roy Black showed photos of Smith’s accuser’s black lace panties and bra to the jury. I owned black lace panties, too, as did many girls and women. And I’d never falsely accused anyone of rape, nor wanted every bit of me sliced apart in a courtroom. I just thought they were pretty undies.
Oh, and Roy Black, recently deceased, later married one of the Smith jurors—and was also Epstein’s attorney. Small world.
Of Predators, and Burying Each Other’s Sins
In this belated moment in 2025, with a surprising (albeit welcome) coalition of Americans demanding full accountability for those participating in Epstein’s trafficking operation and, finally, a media frenzy to bring it all out, I’m of two minds.
I’m cautiously hopeful that we can turn a corner from protecting powerful predators such as, say, Matt Lauer and all those NBC executives who, at best, averted their eyes from the obvious, as Ronan Farrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and his book, “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” explains in disturbing detail. Know this: This is not just a book just about catching bad guys, but about the power system that protects them and punishes women for resisting. Read the book now if you haven’t yet to better understand this moment. Seriously.
I mentioned on Bluesky yesterday that I was finishing this vein-opening essay-in-progress, and a woman responded: “For some, this is less like an open vein and more like a painful cyst finally draining.” I so want that extrication due to full Epstein-world exposure to open the truth portal, but I’ll believe it when I see it because power doesn’t give up its own easily—or at least too many have something on each other for any to do the right thing.
Still, despite my guarded hope for this moment, it’s horrifying to watch women’s safety and histories of abuse being bandied about now as a political game just to “stop Trump”—and I know this is very difficult for sexual-violence victims to watch. Please think of us every step; first, do no more harm. And be clear: Women, too, do much of that harm to other women, and not just that monster Maxwell.
Seeing women on national and local stages who are willing to play any form of predator protection game is wretched. Sexual-assault survivors feel the pain of every violation, actual or attempted, as well as of every harassing incident—yes, barely adult Monica Lewinsky was a victim of workplace sexual harassment by a man with absurdly more power, which he wielded sexually with his young daughter living in the same building. And survivors feel the fury of women forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement about harassers’ actions in order to pay bills while looking for a safer job. We seethe over the betrayal by a supposedly democratic society that quickly averts its collective eyes and allows predators, mostly men, to get away with it and reinvent themselves right in front of our eyes as we’re punished if we speak out about our basic rights to survival and safety.
It’s like another collective violation of survivors every time one of the abusers gets promoted or piled up with money or just remakes himself on the backs of women who are afraid to speak out because we can lose our own livelihoods. It should be obvious to all that most sexual-assault victims fear exposing their abusers because we would be destroyed—at least economically in a world where so many women already struggle with less pay; minimal trust in our ideas, abilities and innovations; outcomes of intractable poverty without inherited wealth; or being convinced to stay out of the workforce to raise the kids only to have the man of the house leave to recapture his youth with a younger woman.
So we do the survival calculus, and then often stay quiet and live with the guilt of not speaking up. We worry about who else our abuser abused or who in his circle provides cover for abuse. We wonder about his friend group: How many of them are passing around million-dollar deals because they’re all in the same power-predator-harassment club and have to essentially keep paying each other off? Farrow’s book will really make you wonder about this inside my chosen industry, where silence and quiet threats and punishment have the added effect of ensuring that the public is provided as little info as possible to inspire actual change. Remember that Farrow had to take his soon-Pulitzer-winning journalism to The New Yorker because so much was rotten in the power channels of NBC.
Rape or harassment survivors must look around and wonder what women will come for us on behalf of men if we dare to speak the truth publicly about a problem man whom they want protected, even when their actions are public. (This has happened to me inside my industry. It infuriated me on behalf of all women. I still see red over it.)
Like during the heyday of #MeToo, women survivors think maybe there’s power in numbers among our sisters and the men who actually support us, but we don’t really know where the knife in the back will come from. Many of us are employers, or breadwinners, and we might’ve even built things that matter to society—and we know it can all go away if we speak out with any specificity about this vicious, hateful, sick cycle of giving predators a pass.
And thus the cycle propels itself forward as the survival calculus silences and haunts us.
The Language of Ownership
Probably better than most in our society, sexual-assault survivors know firsthand how complicit the media industry has been—again, read Farrow’s riveting book—in spinning the news cycle away as quickly as possible, even from a story as horrific and long-running as the Epstein trafficking industry. I mean, look what it took Farrow himself with parallel work by women Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor at The New York Times to expose an open rapist like Harvey Weinstein and his enablers, even as brave survivors continually laid out the truth so many don’t want to acknowledge. Notably and perhaps inevitably, a less-than-impressive white man and media “expert” then at the Times tried to diminish Farrow’s systemic reporting in The New Yorker or least tamp down its reach. Let’s just say it’s easy for smart sexual-assault victims to side-eye that media-insider hit job.
It hurts so much now, three months after the mother of three died by suicide, to watch the abuse of Virginia Giuffre as a young woman be manipulated every possible way with Trump casually and flippantly telling reporters that Epstein “stole” the then-minor from his spa. That is the language of ownership—as if the child was chained to him with two adult men fighting to see who could control her, as her family pointed out this week.
Bless this hero woman for finding the courage as an adult to speak out to protect other women after she first held her newborn daughter in her arms—seeing the cycle projected onto her baby girl’s face if we don’t do everything possible to break the powerful’s shield of silence and out them. Fire them, defund them, stop putting them in control—basically take away their tools that keep the cycle going and protected, or at least wrapped up into a neat Ghislaine Maxwell prison sentence or deal.
But Giuffre spoke to a nation and a media that was not yet ready to face down powerful sexual predators and protectors. One reason: We are a country so diseased with partisan division that we can’t imagine allowing one of our party guys to go down; too many Americans will only demand the full truth and real justice when it’s about a guy in the other party. I’ll never forget all the Bill Clinton defenders lecturing me when I supported his impeachment, as they made excuses they wouldn’t have for the other party.
But, people, sexual predators inhabit and hide in both political parties. We support sexual abuse when we give “our guy” a pass. Stop it. Now.
It’s an indictment of our nation, really, that it took MAGA voters and Elon Freakin Musk to bring the buried Epstein records back to the forefront now. Let’s call a spade a spade: In some ways, that bunch is willing to do something that the Democratic faithful were never fully willing to do. So, I offer (extremely guarded) credit where it’s due.
Yes, they should’ve done it a long time ago. Yes, everybody should have.
Supporting a Sorority of Survivors
I fear, though, that this will die out again. The perpetual script is that Maxwell—notice that only a woman, albeit a hideous demon of one, has been convicted among all of these men’s crimes—gets her deal, or pardon, and names select names, maybe. Most of the Epstein pedophiles will skate because they have the goods on each other; maybe they’ll even disappear for a bit and then gather up their defenders and fund new companies, media and otherwise, sealed with the brotherhood protection handshake that hurts survivors so much to see.
Power doesn’t allow this kind of reckoning; history teaches us that. But I will continue praying for an alternative ending: one where the sexual protection racket finally falls apart, and nobody gives a damn whether a rapist is red or blue.
Like Giuffre, I want the sexual plunder to end for her daughter’s future, and for my younger colleagues, and my nieces and my friends’ children. I want sexual survivors not to have to think every day of our lives about whether exposing the predators among us in everyday life will blow back on us, destroy us and our families or our livelihoods, and even those of the people that we employ. I want us to have something beyond a whisper network where women talk quietly about these power threats among ourselves because we know that the second we go public, the machine will come for us, or even send a woman messenger. The machine will make things up. It will spread lies. It will cancel us if it can.
Bottom line: I want women to stop facing the Hobson‘s choice of being destroyed or erased if we speak out on behalf of our sisters, or having to walk around with these horrific secrets and knowledge about dangerous men in our universes, unable to point out the dangerous, naked emperor. I need these predator networks to learn that they can no longer rely on protection systems that allow them to get away with this until they die rich, happy, honored and accomplished, no matter how many NDAs are rotting in their safes.
Today, though, I will allow myself to hope and pray that this time can be different. I’ll continue to be grateful to the reporters, especially Julie K. Brown and Vicky Ward, for the truths about Epstein they tried and managed to push through the power wall decades ago, despite the system trying to stop it. I want them to live to see their work pay off.
As for me, I want to feel like I can fully speak my mind in my truth, and that of other survivors, without believing that I will be left destitute and people on my team will suddenly be unemployed. But I can’t sacrifice my core values and the quest for safety and support for this sorority of survivors I joined that fateful night as a teenager. I must stand with them.
This means power in numbers by “finding our people,” as my Mississippi Free Press co-founder Kimberly Griffin likes to say. It means joining other good people and backers to create new, equitable and welcoming institutions and boldly remaking power into something that rejects victimization and control by people with a history of predatory behavior and who think of conquest as a sick power game.
And it means never, ever sitting in another Zoom as a woman looks me in the eye as she downplays and lectures me about my concerns about sexual predators, harassers and those who protect them in the industry where I’ve worked for nearly 40 years.
Is standing up for rape survivors, and against powerful predators, really too much to ask of you, America? No amount of money is worth bowing before that evil throne.
Let’s blow it up once and for all.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.