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The most unwilling sorority in the country met three months ago on the rooftop of a law firm, just a block away from the White House’s campus. Survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell mingled under the September dusk. Some were meeting each other for the first time. They had ostensibly gathered to make posters for the next day’s rally at the Capitol, but something more meaningful unfolded. Slowly, and without many words, the survivors came to understand their shared trauma and see around them a support network they didn’t know they needed. The realization seemed to harden their resolve, and jelled into one of the most efficient political movements to hit Washington in decades.
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“These victims have spoken. They’ve been very clear about who has caused them harm, and we need to believe these women,” says Lauren Hersh, who founded World Without Exploitation to combat human trafficking and sexual exploitation in 2016. She was the organizer of the gathering, where she served as poster-board distributor and marker replacer. She is also one of the strategists whose efforts on behalf of the women on that roof and those like them helped upended the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
In short order, these women helped force the hand of Congress, Trump, and all Americans to move toward disclosing the sins of Epstein and Maxwell—and possibly others in power. By Dec. 19, the Department of Justice must, by a bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump, disclose what it knows about the sex trafficking operations that sprawled across years and states. Three times this month, judges have sided with those who have asked to see previously secret grand jury records, in part opened because of the Trump-backed measure. And on Thursday,…
