Like many people right now, and especially survivors, I am sitting with a lot as segments of the Epstein files and related reporting dominate the news.

We need to be clear about what this is fundamentally about. This is about violence against women. It’s about girls and women who were abused, exploited, and trafficked by men with power, money, and protection. It is about survivors who were repeatedly ignored, disbelieved, and silenced. And it is about women who are now being asked, once again, to relive their trauma in public, with no guarantee that real justice will ever come.

For those of us who have survived sexual violence, this constant stream of information can be deeply retraumatizing. Being exposed again and again to graphic details, familiar names, and the machinery of power that enabled the abuse does not feel like accountability when consequences remain uncertain. Too often, it feels like harm layered on top of harm.

Transparency matters. But disclosure without accountability is not justice.

What this moment exposes is not only the crimes of one man, but a system that has long protected wealthy and powerful men, particularly at the expense of women and girls. A system where money, status, and political usefulness have acted as shields. A system that asks survivors to tell the truth over and over, while allowing perpetrators and their enablers to disappear behind redactions, legal settlements, delays, and silence.

Many people are holding this alongside other, very real abuses of power playing out right now. We are watching immigrant families torn apart by state violence. We are watching law enforcement abuse power with impunity and face little to no consequence. We are watching democratic norms erode as accountability is treated as optional for the powerful and punitive for everyone else. These are symptoms of the same system that protects people – people like Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, everyone who has shielded and enabled them – and punishes those without power.

And still, this moment exists because people spoke up. Because women told the truth when the cost was high. Because survivors refused silence, even when institutions failed them. Truth telling is not passive. It is an act of courage. It is an act of resistance. And it is how power begins to shift.

This is a reckoning for America. Not because the system is working, but because people are demanding that it finally do so. Because survivors and journalists and organizers and everyday people are refusing to look away or accept business as usual.

Real accountability means consequences. It means centering survivors, not exploiting their pain for headlines. It means dismantling the conditions that allow powerful men to abuse women with impunity. And it means building systems where justice does not depend on wealth, connections, or influence.

Taking care of ourselves right now is not disengagement. Setting boundaries, limiting exposure, and honoring our bodies and nervous systems is an act of survival, especially for those who carry their own histories of harm.

And for those of us who are able, turning our outrage and grief into action is how we reclaim power. It is how we honor the women who were harmed and the truth they were forced to carry alone for so long.

No one should be above the law. Violence against women must be named and confronted. And accountability must be real, not performative.

That is what this moment demands of us.