Driven in part by the suicide of Virginia Giuffre, survivors of sexual misconduct have coalesced into a formidable force that has transformed the country’s midterm elections.

Their voices helped push the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine to drop out and a sitting Republican congressman to announce that he would not seek re-election, even though both men denied wrongdoing. One congressional candidate even came forward to say she had been raped while tending to her campaign signs.

Survivors of sexual violence have channeled their pain into marches, candidate endorsements and ads targeting Republican lawmakers over the Epstein files. On Thursday afternoon, a protester at a Trump rally in South Carolina was thrown out while yelling Giuffre’s name.

All that work generated enough momentum that survivors have started to look toward what they want from a new Congress. That list includes ensuring the release of the complete Epstein files and accountability for people implicated in them, as well as for the authorities who handled the documents. But it goes beyond Epstein to include legal protections for victims of sexual violence in general.

Those months of momentum took a jolt last week with the release of a TV ad from the campaign of Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in the Ohio gubernatorial race. The spot features Democratic nominee Amy Acton’s estranged mother saying the candidate, who has spoken publicly about having been sexually assaulted as a child, is a liar.

The ad has been broadly condemned, including by fellow Republicans, with the notable exceptions of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Epstein survivor Dani Bensky told MS NOW she watched Trump and Vance defend Ramaswamy and thought, “I can’t believe this is reality.”

Bensky said she believes that the Ramaswamy ad and the lack of investigations stemming from the Epstein files, among other developments, make the case that America is becoming desensitized to sexual violence and institutional failure to do anything about it.

Still, Bensky has hope that the midterms carry the possibility of large-scale legislative change. While she and other survivors who spoke to MS NOW stressed that combating sexual violence should be a nonpartisan issue, many said November is a chance to usher in a new majority that better supports survivors.

“I can’t speak to survivors of sexual violence across the board, but I do know when we walk into Republican offices there is already generally a stigma, with the exception of a few,” said Bensky, who named Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rep. James Comer of Kentucky as two of the more receptive GOP officials.

In a new report, House Judiciary Democrats describe Trump’s connections to Epstein, call for a special counsel to further investigate Epstein’s network, and urge Congress to “use its legislative and oversight powers to pursue justice for survivors and bring an end to the Trump Administration’s shameful, bureaucratic, and political cover-up.”

MS NOW spoke to a range of survivors about the legislative agenda they would pursue with more allies in Congress and statehouses across the country, and a handful of themes emerged.

The rest of the Epstein files

In compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Department of Justice has released more than 3 million pages of documents related to investigations into the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who co-sponsored that legislation in the House, is not easing up before the remainder of the 6 million pages the DOJ named as “potentially responsive” are released.

“We still don’t have the FBI 302s — interviews with survivors that their attorneys have said are critical,” Khanna told MS NOW. “Meanwhile, the DOJ has excessively redacted some records while exposing survivors’ names and sensitive information in others.”

Khanna is shepherding the Epstein Files Transparency Act II through Congress. Among other things, it would bolster efforts by state attorneys general, members of Congress and victims of Epstein and his co-conspirators to challenge the Department of Justice in court for failing to disclose materials required by the initial Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“The Department complied with the EFTA, making public the nearly 3 million investigatory documents which were responsive to the Act,” a DOJ spokesperson said. “The Department also freely offered members of Congress the opportunity to view the files unredacted.”

Khanna believes the bill will eventually pass in both chambers. It has already secured the 218 signatures needed to be brought to the House floor for a vote after the midterms.

More broadly, he sees the treatment of Epstein victims as setting an example for how the United States addresses sexual violence nationally.

“There is a direct line between the alleged gang rape in Cornell and the elite impunity of the Epstein class,” Khanna said, referring to the case that has roiled the Ivy League university and brought calls for New York state to update its sexual assault laws. “The fact that for decades we allowed rich and powerful people to get away with the biggest sex trafficking scandal in American history sent a message in this country that we don’t take sexual violence or sexual assault with the seriousness that we should.”

Epstein-related prosecutions

To date, the Department of Justice has not charged anyone, politician or otherwise, who had known associations with Epstein, aside from his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Asked about additional investigations, a department spokesperson said, “While we cannot talk about the existence of any ongoing investigations, the Trump administration is the only administration to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and make any of these documents available to the public.”

Survivors and lawmakers point to the idea that if the Justice Department were to charge even one of the wealthy, well-connected men implicated in the Epstein files, more prosecutions would follow.

“The Epstein case has always been about the power structure and the power versus the vulnerable,” Bensky said, adding: “I think it’s that question of ‘Do we have the same structure in place for America’s most powerful people as we do for the average citizen?’ We can’t let them operate with impunity under another set of rules.”

Todd Blanche’s handling of the files

Bensky told MS NOW that she and other Epstein survivors had endured not one but two abuses: the abuse perpetrated by Epstein and his co-conspirators, and the mishandling of the Epstein files by now-Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice.

In the millions of Epstein documents Congress compelled it to release, the DOJ redacted information belonging to accused predators but revealed some victims’ personal information, such as phone, Social Security and bank account numbers. The department also published dozens of nude photos of women, some of whom might have been teenagers.

The back and forth survivors have had with the government to get their information removed from the internet has made their trauma “a wound that can’t close,” Bensky said.

Pam Bondi was attorney general when the files were released, but in a May 2026 interview with the House Oversight Committee after she stepped down, Bondi said she delegated oversight of the files to Blanche, her deputy.

In a social media post at the time, Bondi disputed lawmakers’ characterization of her comments, while not contradicting her statements that Blanche had overseen the files’ release. She said she had praised his handling “of this Herculean task. I said his ethics are beyond reproach and that he is an incredible Attorney General.”

Survivors say Blanche’s and the DOJ’s handling of the redaction process prioritized the privacy and safety of predators over victims, prompting widespread suspicion that those involved are protecting people in the files. They note that Blanche only met with Epstein survivors when it became clear that it was a condition for getting Senate approval for his confirmation.

Additionally, just days after Blanche interviewed Maxwell in prison, she was transferred to a minimum-security facility. (Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the decision was made by the Bureau of Prisons, but that “every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent that it needs to.”)

A DOJ spokesperson rejected assertions from Democrats that Blanche’s interview with Maxwell was performative, pointing to sections of the transcript indicating that he pressed her for her recollections of wrongdoing by Epstein and others.

Regardless, in their recent report, House Judiciary Democrats wrote that the Department of Justice’s conduct constituted a “cover-up” that needs to be investigated by a special counsel.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has said Democrats are prepared to subpoena Blanche, among other administration officials, on “Day 1” if they gain control of Congress.

Lawsuit protections

In her final months in Congress, Rep. Nancy Mace has introduced the Speak Your Truth Act, which would force abusers who lose defamation suits against victims to pay their legal fees. The law aims to discourage the use of costly defamation suits as a tactic to silence survivors.

The Speak Your Truth Act has become law in five states with broad bipartisan support and has been introduced in at least 15 others. Victoria Burke, a lawyer who wrote the legislation after a man she alleges drugged and assaulted her sued her for defamation, said that even with support of lawmakers behind them, many Epstein victims were afraid to name their abusers out of fear of financially devastating lawsuits.

Burke told MS NOW that the Cornell case had prompted New York lawmakers to reach out to her about the legislation.

Burke also said she sought out Mace because of the South Carolina Republican’s leadership in fighting for Epstein victims, and because the congresswoman herself was sued for defamation after calling four men “predators” in a speech on the House floor in which she described her own sexual assault. (Three of the four were criminally charged this month.)

“Women are put in financial ruin simply for doing the right thing,” Mace told MS NOW. “And this is just one small tool in a much larger toolbox of things that survivors and victims of abuse can use when they’re trying to fight back and to stay alive from their abusers.”

Giuffre’s legacy

When Dana DiFilippo learned that Virginia Giuffre had taken her own life last year, she felt as if a grim promise had been made to her and all other survivors of sexual violence: that their struggles were more likely to end in suicide than in justice.

DiFilippo, a co-founder of the Survivors’ Solidarity March, is among the countless survivors who tracked Giuffre’s fight for justice as the most well-known of Epstein’s victims.

DiFilippo says she spent 19 years “in the dark” internalizing the sexual abuse that happened to her, and by the time she was ready to act on it, she found she was too late: Colorado’s statute of limitations for prosecuting sexual assault is 20 years, but only for assaults that occurred after the Legislature updated that window beginning in 2022.

That is why survivors are pushing for the passage of Virginia’s Law, which would eliminate the statute of limitations for lawsuits over sexual abuse.

The federal version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., in February.

Housing security

Sexual violence can happen to anyone, but circumstances like housing insecurity or substance abuse can put people at greater risk. That is why Democratic congressional candidate Christina Hines of Michigan supports expanding the Fair Housing for Survivors Act.

In 2021, Hines became chief of the special victims unit in the Washtenaw County prosecutor’s office, where, she told MS NOW, she witnessed the effects of human trafficking and abuse. But she also identified gateways that could be stopped with the right policies.

Survivors may stay in dangerous situations when they do not have a place to relocate, and they often face housing discrimination if they have spent time in a domestic violence shelter.

“One of the things that we realized is, until we get more housing and shelter options for trafficking survivors, they were going to keep falling through the cracks,” Hines said.

Last March, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nicole Malliotakis introduced the Fair Housing for Survivors Act, which would make survivors of domestic abuse a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. This would ensure that they cannot be evicted or denied housing on the basis of being survivors.

Hines would support this legislation in Congress and advocate for the revitalization of the Crime Victims Fund, which Congress created by passing the Victims of Crime Act in 1984 to support victim compensation.

“Survivors see themselves in the cover-up, the corruption, the failure of the system to act in a way that protects them or gets them justice,” Hines told MS NOW. “That is true regardless of whether you’re an Epstein survivor or a survivor right here in Macomb County.”

Yet even in her own district, Hines said, not all survivors are certain that a Democratic majority in Congress will bring change. They still remember when Joe Biden was president and did not prioritize investigating the Epstein files.

Beyond the House Judiciary Committee’s report and House Oversight Democrats hammering on the Epstein files, party leadership has not been publicly prioritizing the issue, leaning instead into matters such as affordability. Top Democrats have released a laundry list of issues they would like to tackle in the first 100 days after their victory in Congress, and missing from that is any mention of the Epstein files.

Mace is a MAGA disciple who fell out of favor with Trump over his objection to releasing the Epstein files, and is leaving Congress after losing the Republican primary for governor. She is blistering on her own party’s inaction on protections for survivors, but she doesn’t have faith Democrats will be any better.

“Both parties are just mouthpieces to survivors just to win an election,” she said, calling that “ devastating” and ripping Ramaswamy for the attack ad against Acton.

“I’m not a Democrat. I’m a die-hard f—-ing raging conservative, and you have Republicans playing politics with pedophilia,” she said. “It’s disgusting what’s going on right now. It’s just disgusting.”

Mace does not know if anyone will take up the various bills she has introduced on behalf of survivors after she leaves the House. The federal version of Virginia’s Law hasn’t gone anywhere since Schumer and Leger Fernández introduced it. Ditto for the expansion of the Fair Housing Act to benefit survivors.

To be sure, survivors are not taking for granted the notion that a Democratic Congress would move such measures forward.

But they have recognized that they might have some say about that.

“Survivors are powerful,” said Elisa Batista, the campaign director of UltraViolet, a gender equity nonprofit that worked with Giuffre’s brothers to organize a vigil for her.

“We have the numbers. Please vote.”

Fallon Gallagher contributed to this report.

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If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, help is available. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, text “HOPE” to 64673, or access online assistance at rainn.org/get-help.

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