After Being Exposed by the DOJ, Epstein Survivors are Being Harassed, New Report Says

A resounding Fuck-You continues to be in order for the Justice Department, which in January carelessly (and belatedly) dumped on its website a tranche of Epstein files, thus exposing the names, details, and nude images of several of the pedophile’s survivors—many of whom wished never to be identified. And, big shock! Per a new and extensive report by Reuters, this mistake’s been particularly detrimental to the victims’ safety. 

Nearly 23 Epstein survivors have been threatened, harassed, and intimidated since being exposed, the outlet reported on Monday. Along with seeing cars parked outside their homes, survivors say they’re receiving online threats, creepy phone calls, and photographs of their homes; and at least 10 say they’ve obtained weapons as a result. 

“I’m just paranoid all the time,” Marina Lacerda—who was sexually abused by Epstein at 14, and who purchased a gun to keep by her when she sleeps—told the outlet. She said that after she was named nearly 50 times in the files, she was accused of being both a liar and prostitute, and that she’d deserved what happened to her. Her daughter, 12, was also asked by schoolmates whether she was Epstein’s kid. 

Lacerda was one of at least 43 victims who were improperly exposed by the DOJ in its February dump, in what a lawyer called “literally thousands of mistakes.” “We are getting constant calls for victims because their names, despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public, have all just been released for public consumption,” he told press at the time. 

The DOJ has fallen short of apologizing for its blunders—and in February, former Attorney General Pam Bondi flat-out ignored victims when they stood behind her during a testimony with the House Judiciary Committee. Instead, shortly after the files’ release, the department admitted it made redaction errors—though it’s clearly not taken appropriate steps since. 

“We made mistakes and we owned up to them,” acting AG Todd Blanche said during a congressional hearing in May. “Of course any time we release a victim’s name that shouldn’t be released, we have failed as a Department of Justice.” Well, no shit. But surely you’ve also failed as a DOJ if the names of those you’ve released are under threat? 

That is, maybe in less authoritarian times. The DOJ is adopting Blanche’s what-else-do-you-want-from-us attitude—and speaking to Reuters, Natalie Baldassarre, a DOJ spokesperson, said that while “no victim should face harassment, threats, or intimidation after coming forward,” the DOJ is “not to blame for backlash directed at victims who voluntarily revealed their identities long before files were published.” 

Also insane is that Epstein’s survivors have yet to be officially invited to a public congressional hearing themselves—and were only able to speak before Congress in a shadow meeting hosted by Dems in May. “These documents hold disturbing, and yet, incomplete accounts of my abuse,” Danielle Bensky, one of the witnesses, said during the hearing. “They were viewable not only by the entire world, but my child, my students, my students’ parents, my friends, my employers, my colleagues, my family.”

For his part, Blanche has reportedly yet to release the rest of the files—a drag that’s earned him a lawsuit, and may well cost him his official nomination to become AG. But clearly, his strategy is to play dumb… so we’ll see how that works out for him.