“There is no amount of compensation that could ever fully account for what was stolen, but every single survivor certainly deserves much more than sympathy, and that is the work that I’m committed to doing alongside of you legislatively.”

As a Survivor of Sexual Abuse, Pressley Has Led Calls for Accountability

Video (YouTube)

PALM BEACH, FL – Today, in a field hearing on the Epstein investigation led by House Oversight Committee Democrats, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) discussed the long-lasting economic and emotional harms that survivors continue to carry while rarely seeing meaningful accountability. Congresswoman Pressley emphasized that survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse were harmed not only by predators themselves, but also by federal institutions that violated their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and denied them accountability.

The field hearing, led by Ranking Member Robert Garcia, was held as part of the Epstein investigation in Palm Beach, Florida, where many of Epstein’s crimes and subsequent failures of accountability took place.  The field hearing included testimony from survivors and important witnesses in the investigation.

As a survivor of sexual abuse herself, Congresswoman Pressley has been a dedicated advocate for survivors’ justice and has led committee Democrats in calling for a full Congressional hearing to ensure survivors’ firsthand accounts are heard.

A transcript of Congresswoman Pressley’s question line during the hearing is available below and the video is available here.

Transcript: Pressley Highlights Economic & Emotional Harm Borne by Epstein Survivors
House Oversight Committee Field Hearing
May 12, 2026

REP. PRESSLEY: Thank you to Congresswoman Lois Frankel, thank you to Ranking Member Garcia, Congresswoman Summer Lee. Your efforts have made today possible. And of course, our courageous survivors.

I’ve been on this Committee since I was a freshman, and Elijah Cummings, the great Elijah Cummings, our chair at the time, would often remind us that the role of the Committee on Oversight, our mandate, is to be in efficient and effective pursuit of the truth.

Now that pursuit is what brings House Democrats here today. Because instead of Epstein’s victims being met with efficiency, they’ve been met with obstruction and delays by law enforcement and by the Department of Justice.

Instead of Epstein’s victims being met with effectiveness, they’ve been met with systemic coverup, and I would add cowardice of those who were intimidated by the power and the privilege of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their co-conspirators.

So today, we’re here to shine a light. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant. We’re here to shine a light on the corruption, on the failures of this investigation.

But most of all, we’re here to center the survivors. To center the courageous.

Survivors who are grown women before you but who were children. Children whose innocence was corrupted. Whose bodies were violated. Whose dreams were destroyed. Whose lives were irrevocably changed.

Maria, Courtney, Jena-Lisa, Danny, Roza, and Sky and Amanda, here for Virginia, we thank you.

Congress enacted the Crime Victims Rights Act in 2004 to mandate specific obligations for the Department of Justice to ensure that survivors are protected, informed, and able to heal.

Mr. Kuvin, you spent decades representing survivors and fighting for transparency around the federal government’s handling of their cases. Can you speak to how the federal government violated, after their bodies were violated, after their dreams, their dignity, their lives were violated, how were their rights violated?

SPENCER KUVIN: It was our understanding after the release of documents and the bravery of Ms. Wild here at the end in her case that was brought and the final disclosure of all those documents, it showed that the federal government and the state attorney’s office colluded together to not bring an indictment because they knew that if they did, then the Crime Victims Rights Act would then be triggered and they would have to inform the victims of what they were doing.

So what we learned was they intentionally kept it out of the hands of victims so that the victims co couldn’t object or have any say in the process by secretly doing this deal that they did. And the federal judge, very brave, federal judge Mara found there was a violation of the act here in the Southern District and unfortunately because the way the law was written, there was absolutely no way to get them any justice or remedy as a result.

REP. PRESSLEY: That’s right. So they weren’t notified, they were not consulted, they were not given the opportunity to participate in proceedings that directly affected their lives and their safety. These rights are supposed to be guaranteed by the Crime Victims Rights Act.

Now would any survivor like to speak to any examples to share about how the federal government ignored or neglected your case? I see the clock is ticking here. Would anyone else like to speak to that?

How about this – let me just say this, as a survivor myself, I know that this is not only about your safety that you were robbed of, your innocence and your dreams.

Survivors are forced to carry the financial burden of abuse – lost wages, housing instability, medical expenses, legal fees, security costs, trauma that impacts their daily life.

Can any of you speak to that?

JENA-LISA JONES: We have put ourselves on the front line and spoke out and put our faces to the public when we should have never had to, and that comes with a huge toll. Now every job that we apply for, they Google us. They know our most personal information of things that happened to us as children. That is forever, forever going to follow us. We don’t get that back. We don’t get that luxury. So that is just the one, one of the most important things that comes with the weight of this all because the government couldn’t do their job.

ROZA: Like I heard this before from the survivors. I’m a really cool person if you meet me outside of here, I have life stories, but this release of documents made me something else, and I can’t do tasks, daily tasks, without certain help, and I have a support system, and I’m grateful for it, but if I didn’t, I don’t think I would be here today alive. So it’s really hard. I want to tell the world like it’s hard to be here today. I’m very uncomfortable. I’m trying to look like I’m okay, but I’m not okay.

REP. PRESSLEY: Yes, would anyone else like to speak to the financial burden of abuse, loss of wages, housing instability, medical expenses, legal fees, security costs?

COURTNEY WILD: So I was gonna, when I was younger, when I we met, I met Jeffrey, I experienced a lot of homelessness, so I think I misunderstood your question.

REP. PRESSLEY: No, say whatever you’d like.

MS. WILD: Yes, ma’am, I was just gonna say that, you know, just like you were walking over the bridge, you know, a 14-year-old going to Palm Beach. It was like, as soon as you go over that bridge, you just feel the money and power. And it’s just such a contrast. If you go down Okeechobee to Okeechobee and the Turnpike, there’s a road called Drexel, and it’s a mobile home street. There’s a lot of — that’s where I came, that’s where I was from. So to go from here to there is just, you know, it’s so confusing.

I was homeless. My parents had addiction problems, you know. He preyed, he knew what he was doing. It was all very calculated, you know, and then later on, the fact that he used those things against me. We had the Feds pulling up our MySpaces and treating us like criminals because we were at a party at 16 and 17, drinking, you know, rather than going out — they had so for me, it’s just, it’s so sad that he — he knew who he preyed on. He preyed on young, especially in Palm Beach County, he preyed on us, kids who came from troubled backgrounds and everything else, and they portrayed us as these underage prostitutes, which is that, is that a real charge, like, what was the statute number on his charge that he took?

MR. KUVIN: It was bizarre to us, even at the time, but, you know, it made absolutely no sense. The statutory guidance was very questionable, given that there were minors, but speaking to the representative’s questions specifically and representing survivors over the last 30 years now, you know, it affects not just the survivor.

It affects their family. It affects the way they raise their own children, if they have daughters, it affects their mental stability and ability to maintain employment. Try telling a survivor they’ve got to pay a lawyer for 20 years straight if they want to get justice. It’s impossible, especially with a law that doesn’t provide any remedy. So they’ve got to seek out victims advocates that are willing to do it for free, and there aren’t many of those, especially none that want to do it for 20 plus years to fight. So the financial ramifications of being a victim, especially of somebody with unlimited resources, is dramatic.

DANI HANNAH BENSKY: I think, also, to continue this fight like we’re all here right now, and this isn’t the only thing I’m sure we’re all doing this week, to talk about getting the messaging out. Advocacy is expensive. Therapy and healing is expensive, you know? And we there’s no time to work because, honestly, we got to change it for our kids, because I don’t want to raise my kid in a world like this right now.

LAUREN HERSH: I’ll just close out with one, one point to Courtney, to your question, about these prostitution charges. We need to eliminate the prostitution charges from the books altogether. We absolutely, absolutely should be holding sex buyers accountable for the harm they cause. But people in prostitution should not be criminalized for being in prostitution, because the vast majority of them are not there by choice. They’re there because of lack of circumstances, poverty, other vulnerabilities, and what we see so often is that traffickers deliberately use that notion, that the women and girls will be arrested for prostitution as a tactic.

It is the number one tactic in order to make sure that survivors, victims are too terrified and too traumatized to talk, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.

REP. PRESSLEY: And I just want to again, thank you all, and thank you for being prescriptive with a number of the legislative responses to address these systemic harms.

I’ll just say that there is no amount of compensation that could ever fully account for what was stolen, but every single survivor certainly deserves much more than sympathy, and that is the work that I’m committed to doing alongside of you legislatively. Thank you.

—

Palm Beach, Florida is where Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes first came to light, and where prosecutors offered Epstein a sweetheart deal that allowed him to continue his crimes. Palm Beach is also home to Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s primary residence and private club. During the many years of friendship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, multiple women were recruited for Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, including Virginia Guiffre. The Wall Street Journal reports that spa employees from Mar-a-Lago, usually young women, were sent to Epstein’s nearby residence for massages, manicures, and other spa services. Epstein referenced Mar-a-lago in a 2019 email to Michael Wolff, released by Oversight Democrats, when he said, “of course Trump knew about the girls.”

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