"I tuned into Wednesday's Capitol Hill press conference featuring survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's decades of sex trafficking, out of a sense of solidarity but with no expectation of breaking news. I discovered what was news to me anyway. More than 100 victims were expected to turn out and I easily counted dozens; eight spoke. "Minor number one" in federal complaints against Jeffrey Epstein came forward publicly, and movingly, for the first time."
"Brazilian immigrant Marina Lascera dropped out of high school at 14 to provide Epstein with "massages" for $300, in order to support her mother and sister. It turned into regular sexual abuse. "Every day I hoped he would offer me a real job...an assistant? That day never came. I had no way out...until he finally told me I was too old for him," Lascera said today. She was 17."
"When girls like her got too old, the survivors' attorneys explained, that's when Epstein and Maxwell began to traffic them to men who were fine abusing the older but still barely legal girls. I didn't know that. At least four of the witnesses who spoke said they were recruited at 14."
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell held a Capitol Hill press conference; dozens attended and eight survivors spoke. A woman identified as "Minor number one" in federal complaints spoke publicly for the first time. Brazilian immigrant Marina Lascera said she dropped out of high school at 14 to provide Epstein with "massages" for $300, which became regular sexual abuse until he told her she was too old at 17. Attorneys described a pattern of recruiting girls at 14 and later trafficking them to men when they were deemed too old. Survivors supported Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna's effort to force a House vote to release Justice Department files that had been released only in redacted form.
Read at The Nation
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