When more than two dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell took to Capitol Hill in September, they carried something that had eluded them for decades: each other. Standing shoulder to shoulder at a news conference, they demanded full transparency, public accountability, and release of the Epstein files. For the first time in years, major broadcasters carried their voices live, not in fragments but in full testimony.
The moment felt like a turning point. Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement in 2006, watched the livestream and thought: "The tide might be turning."
What gave these survivors the courage to speak was the same force that had reshaped the landscape of sexual abuse disclosure a decade earlier. They had learned from #MeToo that power comes not from individual voices but from collective ones. When women speak together, powerful people listen.
"We are not scared anymore," said Lisa Phillips, a survivor and podcast host. "When survivors come together and when we get powerful people behind us, something shifts. We took our power back."
The 2017 viral moment when millions posted #MeToo online revealed a truth that organizers had argued for years: sexual violence was not rare or isolated but woven into everyday life across continents. The response was staggering. Nearly two dozen states and Washington DC passed more than 70 workplace anti-harassment bills. Powerful men in politics, media, and entertainment lost jobs. Corporate policies changed.
But the movement's greatest strength may not be what happened immediately after the viral surge. It is what has persisted beneath the headlines.
Young people who were teenagers when #MeToo exploded are now entering adulthood with different expectations about consent and accountability. They have language for abuse that previous generations lacked. They do not tolerate what came before.
For Epstein survivors, the lesson took years to fully take shape. Many tried to report abuse in the 1990s and were ignored by the FBI. Others spent years alone, navigating a legal system that failed them, incensed by Epstein's controversial 2008 plea deal. Virginia Guiffre's public testimony in 2011 cracked open the silence. The Miami Herald's 2018 investigation brought more women forward.
It was not until 2025, when Liz Stein partnered with World Without Exploitation to gather more than 20 survivors on stage to share their stories collectively, that something shifted. By the time they reached Capitol Hill in September, their message was unified. Many had never met each other before that press conference.
"For a long time, we were operating independently, and it's easy to ignore one person's voice," Stein said. "But it is really difficult to ignore a collective."
The results were immediate. Lawmakers met with survivors. Congress on both sides of the aisle pressured the administration to release the files. In November, the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law. By December, the Department of Justice began releasing 3.5 million heavily redacted pages.
"Nobody thought that was ever going to happen," Stein said of the law's passage. "But when a group of women walks into a lawmaker's office and tells their individual stories in a collective way, the impact is profound."
Yet Burke, the movement's founder, sees a danger in how the public consumes the Epstein files. Media coverage focuses on famous names, elite corruption, and political conspiracy. The scandal has become entertainment, a true-crime mystery to solve. What gets lost is the systemic nature of the abuse.
"We're looking at a huge web of child sexual abuse," Burke said. "But people are treating it as a singular case."
Jess Michaels, who survived Epstein's abuse in the 1990s, speaks out with a different goal in mind. "There's a responsibility I feel, that people will listen to me because it's Epstein, but by the time they're done listening, they will find out it was never just about Epstein," she said. "This happens in every single town and at every single economic level."
Nearly one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence. The solutions to this crisis exist, according to Burke. Specialized sexual violence courts with trauma-informed judges operate in Nairobi. Survivor-led organizations advocate for consent curricula beginning in sixth grade. Me Too International, co-founded by Burke and Dani Ayers, has launched the Survivors Vote campaign to mobilize an estimated 52 million U.S. survivors as a political constituency.
Yet Me Too International remains small and underfunded, with just 14 staff members. The organization depends on a handful of institutional funders. Burke insists the fundamental premise of the movement has not changed: sexual and gender-based violence is solvable, not inevitable. What is required is resources, scale, and sustained pressure.
Burke sees the rhythm of movements as natural: ebbs and flows, one effort building on another, until a moment arrives when years of work break through. The Epstein files moment is one such breakthrough. But it will only matter if survivors remain at the center.
Author James Rodriguez: "The real story isn't which celebrity's name appears in a deposition, it's that survivors finally learned they don't have to fight alone."
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