"The more I heal, the more I grieve what I lost."
Like many rape survivors, Jess Michaels’ healing process has spanned decades. And now she tries to help others with her organization, 3Joannes, which is launching the #WithYouToo social safety app to help people provide support for survivors right after an assault. Michaels chose the name for her friend, Joanne, the first person she told about her sexual assault “and the first person who believed me.”
“And the number three is that we never do this alone, whether we're supporting someone that has been sexually assaulted or whether we are the victim of … sexual violence — we're never doing it alone again,” Michaels says.
Because she knows how wrenching it can be for many survivors to talk about their assault, Michaels says she feels an obligation to share her story.
"I felt like it was very important for me to talk about because it was me freezing when I was raped by Jeffrey Epstein in 1991 that made me believe it was my fault,” Michaels says.
"What I like to share when I tell that part of my story is the other part, which is I was wrong,” she adds. “I was wrong in that believing that freeze constituted consent, but I ... wasn't wrong in thinking that no one would believe me in 1991. The thing that people have pointed out to me that has actually been quite comforting is that I was right. Likely the police wouldn't have believed me in 1991."
That’s exactly how I felt when I was raped as a college freshman just a few years after that. I thought no one would believe me, so I stayed silent for a long time — too long. But I found that breaking that silence was the only way to grapple with the overwhelming pain and shame I felt. I wasn’t planning to share my personal story with Jess, but the sad thing is that it’s all too common. And maybe my story can help someone else.
But there’s something else that’s been increasingly difficult for me to ignore in recent years, with violent online misogyny, with the Dobbs decision, with Trump winning a second term despite being found liable for sexual assault. It’s a larger feeling of helplessness, of dread.
“I always imagined that my daughter would grow up in a better time for women,” I told Jess. “And it feels to me like we're going backward.”
We’re Missing the Point on the Epstein Scandal
Last month, the Deputy U.S. Attorney General met with Ghislaine Maxwell and her attorney in Tallahassee, Florida. The private meeting was unprecedented. Todd Blanche, the former personal attorney for the President of the United States, who was given a top ranking role at the Department of Justice, met with the convicted child predator on behalf of the a…
She worries about that, too.
"I know far fewer women that haven't experienced sexual harm than have,” she notes.
"I also speak out because what I learned from doing that ... is that no one talks about the injury of sexual harm,” she adds. “... It's a physiological issue that is detrimental to our physical health, our wellbeing, our relationships, our career trajectory. Everything about us has changed after it."
Now with the Epstein case in the news because the Trump administration has refused to release the files, as promised, it’s been “excruciating,” Michaels says — especially as Epstein’s friend and associate, convicted child sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, has been transferred to a minimum-security prison in Texas. That came after her private meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former lawyer — and without consulting survivors.
Michaels says she only learned of the transfer on the news. And she adds the Trump administration has never shown any empathy for survivors.
“She was a collaborator, a participant, a strategist, a skillful manipulator in this process,” she says of Maxwell. “And … it is horrific that this administration is talking to this woman and giving this woman protection and yoga and Pilates classes and not doing [anything] for survivors and victims.”
"I feel like even when the binders were released in that big performative episode in February [at the White House] ... it was all about we're going to catch the bad guys. It was never about, ‘We're going to get justice and accountability for these survivors,’" she adds.
Now she and other survivors are using #ReleasetheEpsteinFiles on social media to push for a thorough investigation so “all of the systemic coverups and failures are exposed.”
“And then there is policy reform so that this can never happen again,” Michaels adds. “Because with the halt of the investigation, it wasn't just a lack of justice for us. It was a lack of justice for every American that this can just happen again.”
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