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The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have lived with their pain for decades while their complaints were ignored or sidelined by various law enforcement bodies. The effects of trauma do not have an expiration date. It can rear its head at any time, triggered by a song, a scent, an unexpected encounter with the past—putting us right back in the terrifying moment. The trauma of sexual abuse in adolescence lives on in sudden triggering moments, but it is also never entirely absent from the daily experience of self.
Some of the adolescent victims of Jeffrey Epstein were as young as 13 or 14. They were just becoming the people they would grow up to be, giving sexual trauma a kind of shaping influence that is diminished when it occurs later in adulthood. Teens younger than age 18 are deemed by law to be incapable of consenting to sex because the teen years constitute a critical period for development, neurobiologically, physically, intellectually, psychologically, sexually, and socially.
Young people over the age of 18 who are sexually abused are also profoundly affected, as many of the Epstein victims were. The course of development of a young person who is traumatized is inescapably altered from what it might have been; the path it might have taken in the absence of that experience cannot be known.
Sexual abuse, which unavoidably includes emotional and physical abuse as well, is harmful in some specific ways. It catapults a child or adolescent into a physical and emotional vortex where there is little to grab on to for safety. During episodes of sexual abuse, no one is looking out for you. You are alone with your fears and confusion. The sexual excitement of the person doing things to you and with you may be frightening or repulsive. The things they are doing may be causing physical pain.
When the perpetrator is someone you depend on and trust, a sexual assault shatters the world as you knew it. Adolescents do their best to close the abyss that opens between what they used to believe and what they now feel. Sometimes they do this by locating the source of the badness in themselves, trying to preserve their view of the needed adult so life can continue as before. Sometimes they try to shut down what they’re feeling, numbing themselves as best they can. In the worst case, they deny the reality of what is happening. All of these efforts to manage the unmanageable set the stage for future doubts about oneself, about others, and about the world.
A survey of 17-year-olds found that the lifetime experience of sexual abuse or assault for girls was 26.6 percent. The risk was concentrated in late adolescence, with the rate for girls rising from 16.8 percent at 15 years to 26.6 percent for 17-year-olds (Finkelhor, Shattuck, Turner & Hamby, 2014).
Teens who have been sexually abused are more likely to be revictimized, to experience mental health disorders and suicide attempts, high-conflict relationships, financial difficulties, and benefit use, among other negative outcomes (Guiney, H., Caspi, A. et al., 2024). Underlying these problems is the intense shame and guilt that result from sexual abuse.
A research finding that is especially relevant in the Epstein case is that survivors of sexual abuse tend to experience both shame and guilt greater than offenders do, and that less than one-third of survivors report the abuse right away. When they do, it is most often disclosed to friends rather than adults (Shubhangi, Kothiyal & Delhi, 2025).
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are no different from other abused children in the harm that was done to them. They are no different in the ways their abusers have been able to slough off their own guilt and responsibility, even to the present day. What is remarkable about these survivors is their courage and their determination to shift the responsibility and the shame for the heedless, damaging use and abuse of children back to where it belongs: to those who committed the crimes.
