As news reports continue to focus on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and whether we’ll ever see a list of clients that may have been maintained by the notorious pair, those who were harmed by the duo and survived their crimes have been on a seemingly never-ending roller coaster. Every twist and turn of the news cycle knocks these sex trafficking survivors around: A list of clients is on the attorney general’s desk. A list doesn’t exist. Congress is demanding files. Maxwell has been interviewed by the DOJ. Will she be pardoned?
None of those twists or turns has gotten those who survived Epstein and Maxwell any closer to the justice they deserve.
None of those twists or turns has gotten those who survived Epstein and Maxwell any closer to the justice they deserve. There’s only been emotional whiplash. Also, let’s make an important distinction: Epstein’s and Maxwell’s “clients” are sex buyers.
Victims deserve justice for the abuse they survived. That justice should include accountability for their traffickers and for the buyers of illicit sex, who were complicit. It is a free pass for systems of sexual exploitation to flourish when there is no accountability or when justice appears to be fading out of reach or missing entirely.
One of us was a victim of Epstein and Maxwell. The other is a former sex trafficking investigator. In our work to help survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation and to prevent more abuse from happening, we heard a story that coheres with countless others we have heard before. A woman who was sex-trafficked for years was eventually identified by law enforcement and gained her freedom. Her sex trafficker was convicted and sent to prison.
That unfolding of events seemed like a success and, in one sense, it was. But something was missing: The sex buyers who raped her were not brought to justice for the crimes they committed against her. Their behavior and the physical, sexual and psychological harm they inflict will continue without compunction.
Ominously, this is the case for countless other sex buyers out there. Neither they nor the rapes they committed are enumerated. Their unfettered power robs their victims of dignity, rendering them invisible in one of the most visible criminal economies in existence.
Sex buyers, famous or not, fueled Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking network and perpetuated the demand that directly harmed so many women and children. Without sex buyers, the market forces that enabled Epstein and Maxwell would simply not exist.








