By Hannah Nightingale – The Postmillennial
Outside the Capitol building on Wednesday, Reps Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna held a press conference regarding their Epstein Files Transparency Act they introduced to Congress in July. During the press conference, women who identified themselves as victims of infamous financier Jeffrey Epstein spoke out. One of the women said that survivors of Epstein would be compiling their own list of people who frequented Epstein’s world.
Lisa Phillips said she was taken to Epstein’s island in 2000 while she had been on a nearby island for a photoshoot and said “what I experienced there was a glimpse into a very dark and disturbing world.” She said that survivors would be compiling their own list. “I would like to announce here today, us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list. We know the names, many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know who were regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done by survivors, and for survivors, no one else is involved.”
She later clarified when asked about the list that “we’re reaching out to survivors that are scared to come forward and that also know who they were trafficked to. So that’s the list that we’re compiling.” She said the group was unsure how they would release it or if they would, but “the Department of Justice needs to release the list.” Attorney Bradley Edwards said that victims “are very scared to say these names, because they could get sued. They’re going to get attacked, and nobody protected them the first time, and that was against one person.”
Brittany Henderson noted that if “someone’s interested in prosecuting,” the victims “may have something different to say about sharing a list, but they’re not sharing a list for nothing to happen, and that’s the experience that they’ve had for all of these years.”
Anouska De Georgiou called the bill “essential,” saying that it requires the DOJ to release “all the records” related to the Epstein and Maxwell investigations including “flight logs, immunity deals, internal communications, and even the records surrounding Epstein’s detention and death, and crucially, it forbids withholding documents simply because of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. This is about ending secrecy wherever abuse of power takes root.”
She said the “turning point” came when he had her daughter, “and on the day she was born, I knew I had a responsibility to protect her” and all children. “I have to use my voice the voice that had been silenced by fear and shame for so many years.”
She appealed to President Donald Trump, saying, “President Trump, you have so much influence and power in this situation. Please use that influence and power to help us, because we need it now, and this country needs it now.”
Annie Farmer recounted being 16 years old and being flown to New Mexico “to spend a weekend” with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. “That same year, 1996, my sister, Maria Farmer, reported what happened to me there, along with reporting her own assault at their hands and their theft of sensitive photos of herself, of me, and our younger sister that she had taken for her work as a figurative painter.”
She said that passing the bill “is one important step that can be taken to prove to Americans that the government does not side with sexual perpetrators. A thorough public review of this information is an important step in preventing the type of systemic failures that have occurred in this case and harmed all of us.”
Marina Lacerda, who said she was Minor Victim 1 in the 2019 federal indictment of Jeffrey Epstein, said that Wednesday was the “first time that I ever speak publicly about what happened to me.” She said she is an immigrant from Brazil and met Epstein when she was 14 during the summer. “I was working three jobs to try to support my mom and my sister when a friend of mine in the neighborhood told me that I could make $300 to give another guy a massage. It went from a dream job to the worst nightmare.”
She said Epstein assistant Lesley Groff called her “so often” to be at the house that she dropped out of high school before ninth grade and went to work for Epstein. She said she had hoped for a higher-level job with Epstein, but was eventually told she was “too old.” She urged that if and when the files are released, identifying information of victims must be redacted, but also unredacted versions should be given to the victims.