Thank you, Cristina Breshears.
So powerfully true and wisely said!
— Molly
The DOJ has now released two batches of Epstein documents. Hundreds of pages completely blacked out. Whole stories swallowed in ink.
And what is legible feels almost deliberately provocative: public photos inserted as if they reveal something meaningful, faces of celebrities’ children blacked out as if they were victims, and just enough Clinton content to inflame partisan outrage without illuminating anything real. If Clinton was involved, he should be held accountable. Full stop.
But this isn’t accountability. This is misdirection. This is obfuscation. This is protect the powerful all over again. Just as always.
And what shatters me most is this: the survivors. Innocent children who grew into adults carrying the weight of unspeakable trauma are being betrayed yet again.
They’ve waited decades for the truth. Decades for transparency. Decades for the world to finally say: “We believe you. We see you.” Instead, they get page after page of black rectangles.
This is not neutrality. It is another harm. Another silencing. Another institutional reflex as old as patriarchy: protect the wealthy; protect the white men; protect the ones whose reputations matter; everyone else can wait.
If only we had believed Katie Johnson in 2016. Or E. Jean Carroll in 2019. If only Maria Farmer’s testimony in 1996 had been taken seriously. If only our systems had listened to the dozens of girls who came forward instead of bending around Epstein’s powerful social circle. How much suffering could have been prevented? How much ongoing suffering could be abated?
Across this country, tens of thousands of rape kits sit untested on dusty shelves. Survivors report assaults every single day that will never make headlines, never be prosecuted, never be believed. Countless more are never reported because the patterns of protection for the powerful are so damn obvious.
This moment — these heavily redacted documents — is not just about Epstein. It is about the pattern. Silence the victims. Shield the men. Call it “process.” Call it “due diligence.” Call it anything but what it is: complicity.
Releasing these documents in drips, drowning them in black ink, is not justice. It is a continuation of the original violation. A psychological bruising layered atop a physical one. And the message is so clear: Your pain is less important than their power.
I refuse that message.
I center the survivors. I believe them. I honor them. And I rage for them. We owe survivors more than sympathy. We owe them action. We owe them outrage. We owe them the full truth, unredacted and unvarnished. We owe them a world where institutional betrayal is not the norm.
If the truth implicates powerful men, then let it implicate them. If the truth destroys reputations, let them burn. If the truth shakes institutions, let them shake. Because justice is impossible without a full reckoning.
And while we wait for that reckoning, I stand with the survivors. Always. Loudly. Without apology.
Please, if this haunts you as it does me, please call your representatives and ask them to put pressure on the DOJ to follow the letter and spirit of the law. There needs to be justice and mercy for the survivors.
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