THE REAL STORY

July 24, 2025

Are the names Virginia Guiffre, Danielle Bensky, Maria Farmer familiar to you? How about the name Jeffrey Epstein?

Unrelenting attention has recently been focused on the controversy around releasing files related to the investigation of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In the frenzy of all the minute-to-minute attention, it saddens me to know that we are missing the most important part of the story —  the real-life stories of Virginia, Danielle, and Maria that deserve our attention — along with the hundreds and hundreds of other young girls* whose lives were irrevocably harmed through the manipulation and prolific sexual abuse of Jeffrey Epstein and others. Their lives, which continue to bear the scars of being sexually abused at such a young age, deserve our attention, our care, and our outrage.

While the media is hyper-focused on who and how many others, besides Jeffrey Epstein, were involved in these despicable crimes and for the most part have gone on with their lives, there are hundreds and hundreds of girls, now women, whose lives, relationships, and perception of their worth have been forever altered by the actions of adults who believed that their status in life entitled them to use girls, many as young as 14 years old, to satisfy their twisted sexual desires. Each and every one of these perpetrators had choices — the girls did not.

The Jeffery Epstein story has been politicized to epic proportions. This sordid and horrible story, however, is fundamentally not a political story, nor is it a story about Mr. Epstein and his cohort. Rather, it is a deeply human story of pain and suffering inflicted, through absolutely no fault of their own, on young girls, at the beginning of adolescence — a natural time of curiosity and self-discovery, cut short by the actions of these perpetrators. They could not have known that their innocence would be traded for a lifetime of shame, self-doubt and fear.

The real story is the human toll of sexual abuse in childhood. The girls who were exploited and paid to both recruit more girls and to keep quiet are not nameless victims — they are living breathing vibrant girls who had no idea of what they were being drawn into. They had no idea or understanding of how the sexual violation would, in an instant, profoundly change their worlds and remain a defining factor of their lives into adulthood.

We know some of the stories. Last spring we learned of the tragic ending of one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Guiffre, who, at the age of 41 years old, could no longer endure the heavy life-long burden of sexual abuse.  We also know the story of Danielle Bensky, a once aspiring ballerina who could not bear to look at herself in the  mirror for years after the abuse. Maria Farmer, along with her sister Annie, were the first to courageously report the sexual abuse of Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell to authorities.

These are the names, representative of far too many others, that we ought to remember and hold with utmost respect and compassion. Let us not forget that their stories and their lives matter more than the political wrangling which feeds a hungry and morally void media. We may never know what the investigation of a serial pedophile will reveal but we do know the price of innocence so traumatically stolen, we do know the lifelong legacy of suffering that was inflicted on tens of hundreds of young girls, and we do know that this is what matters.

Janice Palm, LMHC, Executive Director

• According to the Justice Dept and FBI reports, over 1000 girls were trafficked and sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein