'Centering Their Voices: This Is What Power Looks Like'
"After decades of silence born of fear, shame, trauma, over 20 Epstein survivors came together in D.C. for the first time to publicly tell their grievous stories of rape and abuse - what did it cost them? - when they were 14, 15, 16 years old. Facing not just their own dark pasts but dogged denial, stonewalling, and a literal silencing by a senseless military flyover, they still wielded 'the fire and the power of our voices' to insist, 'We are the proof that fear did not break us.' "
"It was months after Trump vowed to release the Epstein files 'on Day One' and Pam Bondi said an upright DOJ was 'lifting the veil' on Epstein’s crimes - and decades after they were committed - when the resolute victims came to stand together, speak of 'the weight we live with daily,' and demand to be heard. Their signs said 'He Is On the List,' 'S-H-A-M-E,' 'Trust the Victims, Not the Felon.' Many had never met each other, and thought they were the only ones bruised and haunted by long-ago rape, abuse, enduring trauma. 'Our government could have saved so many women. Those women didn’t matter,' said Marina Lacerda, who was 14 when she was raped by Epstein. 'Well, we matter now. We are here today, and we are speaking, and we are not going to stop speaking.' "
Continued at link:
https://www.commondreams.org/further/no-longer-victims-this-is-what-power-looks-like