The latest On the Issues with Michele Goodwin episodes reclaim the Epstein files from the men who dominate the narrative.
In the wall-to-wall coverage of the Epstein files and what they mean for the state of the union, there are glaring absences: the survivors and victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his various co-conspirators and clientele. These women and girls are the sole reason the files even exist.
In the latest episodes of the podcast On the Issues with Michele Goodwin, Ms. Studios executive producer and host Michele Goodwin recenters the women and girls at the center of Epstein’s empire of exploitation.
This two-part series includes a conversation with Jess Michaels, a 1991 Epstein survivor, and Moira Donegan, a feminist writer and journalist with The Guardian U.S.
The two-part series highlights how the sensationalization of the Epstein files creates an incorrect perception of sexual violence and the ways in which it is perpetuated.
Donegan explains this well:
“[F]or a long time, I was a little bit allergic to the Epstein story … I come from a long history of covering sexual violence, and what you learn doing that work is that most sexual violence does not occur in this realm of shadowy conspiracy or vast networks of secret traffickers. What it usually occurs in is in banal situations among people who know each other, among families, among small communities, among people among whom there is trust, who transform those sorts of quotidian environments into sites of great domination and violence.
“And in my work, I’ve tried to demystify sexual violence to show not just how common it is, but how ordinary the situations in which it occurs can be.”
The reporting around Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files fails survivors and victims in two ways.
The stories and experiences of the women and girls harmed by Epstein and his associates are overshadowed and hidden by the social, political and economic cachet of the perpetrators of this violence. The violence is often spoken about in vague terms, while the scandal of who has perpetrated and has been accused of perpetrating the harm is at the forefront.
It also suggests that this sort of violence is novel and requires immense resources to commit.
As Goodwin points out, this is often not the case:
“[P]eople are looking for the person in the white van driving through the neighborhood, and instead, it’s the car that’s pulling into the garage too often.”
In this context, it is critical to uplift the voices of survivors and victims, who ground this story in the reality of the harm committed, rather than the spectacle of the circumstances.
One of these stories was powerfully told by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who wrote Nobody’s Girl about her experience of sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein and his co-conspirators. Giuffre was the first survivor to come out against Epstein and died by suicide on April 25, 2025, at age 41 after completing Nobody’s Girl. Her story, published posthumously in October, provides context and concrete examples of the insidious nature and ramifications of sexual violence.
In her conversation with Goodwin, Michaels describes her own experience of sexual assault at the hands of Epstein and the realities of PTSD for women and girls who experience sexual assault. Michaels explains that “sexual assault survivors have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than even combat veterans,” yet are largely ignored in the discourse around PTSD and treatment.
Michaels offers a path forward for survivors and victims of sexual assault that deemphasizes criminal responses and instead centers survivors by focusing on reducing shame and stigma, increasing access to resources, and developing systems of community and support.
Listening to the people harmed by sexual abuse and violence can help shift the conversation away from sensationalization and toward meaningful solutions—solutions that attend to the needs of survivors and reduce the shame and stigma often associated with the experience of sexual assault.
