In 1986, my world shifted from black-and-white to technicolor. That was the year I taped a Duran Duran poster to my high school locker in rural Pennsylvania and months later, found myself hanging out with the band backstage at Paris runway shows.
It was the year I went from scrubbing bathrooms for $3.35 an hour to earning $50,000 in a single day for a Maybelline shoot. Modeling opened the door to a dazzling, creative, elite world a dream life I never could have imagined.
But that same career path also led me, years later, into a very different reality: speaking out about the monstrous legacy of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted child sex offender I briefly dated in 1993.
I first met Epstein at a dinner party arranged by my agent, Faith Kates. He was charismatic, intelligent, and treated me as an equal—a rarity in that world. What followed was a short relationship. While it was consensual in parts, not everything that happened during that time was.
Last October, I publicly shared something I had kept private for decades, telling only my closest friends: Epstein once walked me into Donald Trump’s office at Trump Tower, where Trump groped me while Epstein stood by. (Trump denies this happened [CNN].)
For years, I stayed silent to protect my privacy and my family. But after a documentary featured my story, I felt I had no choice but to speak up. To support my account, I was polygraphed by a highly respected examiner, friends confirmed they had heard the story from me years earlier, and journalist Michael Wolff confirmed Epstein himself once described the incident to him.
I’ve also disclosed something Epstein told me one afternoon over tea and Zabar’s walnut bread at his mansion: that he had video of me disrobed in one of his bedrooms. He called it “the most beautiful thing” he had ever seen. That statement chilled me then, and it haunts me still. When I watched FBI agents raid Epstein’s homes in 2019, my stomach turned at the thought of where those videos may have ended up.
Let me be clear: I did not consent to being groped by Donald Trump. I did not consent to being filmed by Jeffrey Epstein. This is not about politics—it is about truth, and justice for Epstein’s many victims.
Being a victim crosses party lines. That’s why I was encouraged to see Representatives Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, demanding the release of Epstein’s files while standing side by side on Capitol Hill. Hundreds of women have been living in the shadow of Epstein’s crimes. They deserve the truth, not silence.
Yet what we’ve witnessed instead is political maneuvering. The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi privately told Trump that his name appeared in Epstein-related documents. The Justice Department’s deputy leader, Todd Blanche who once served as Trump’s lawyer met behind closed doors not with victims, but with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice now serving a 20-year sentence.
And despite repeated assurances there was “nothing to see”, Congress recessed early instead of debating the issue. Maxwell, meanwhile, was quietly moved to a cushier minimum-security prison in Texas, despite having repeatedly deflected responsibility in interviews.
Then, just two days ago, in what was presented as a show of transparency, the House oversight committee released more than 33,000 files related to Epstein. But as Rep. Massie noted, 97% of those documents were already public.
So here I am like so many women having to prove my truth, while perpetrators and enablers continue to hide behind secrecy. It makes no sense for leaders, from the president down, to insist “there’s nothing to see” while refusing to release the actual files.
It is just as absurd to hear Alan Dershowitz deny the existence of surveillance tapes, when evidence suggests otherwise. Maria Farmer, one of the first women to report Epstein and Maxwell, told CBS News about the hidden cameras throughout his home. A report included images of video cameras inside Epstein’s mansion—even over his bed. And Epstein himself once bragged to me about videotaping me.
I know my pain is not mine alone. I think of Virginia Giuffre, who tragically died by suicide this April, and of the retraumatization survivors endure as they watch Maxwell settle into easier prison conditions while their stories are buried. That is not justice.
Survivors deserve peace. We deserve accountability. And we cannot have healing so long as our trauma is reduced to partisan warfare. Sexual violence and trafficking do not belong to any political party.
It’s time to put politics aside, release the Epstein files, and finally give the women at the center of this nightmare the truth and the freedom they deserve, according to theguardian.
