2 weeks ago
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In 1986, my life went from black-and-white to color. It was the year I taped a Duran Duran poster to my rural Pennsylvania high school locker, and then months later hung out with band members backstage at the Paris runway shows. It was the year I went from cleaning bathrooms for $3.35 an hour to making $50k in a day for a Maybelline shoot. Modeling opened a door into a gorgeous, creative, elite world – a dream born of a biological accident.
It is also what led me, decades later, into the very uncomfortable position of speaking out about the horrific legacy of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whom I briefly dated in 1993.
I was introduced to Epstein at a dinner party, which I attended at the request of my then agent Faith Kates. He was charming and smart, and didn’t condescend as we connected over current events and the state of the world, a rare experience for me in those scenarios.
The brief relationship that emerged was consensual. But some of the events that took place within the confines of that relationship were not.
Last October, I came forward with a story I had kept private (with the exception of sharing with my closest friends) for decades: Epstein once walked me into Donald Trump’s office at Trump Tower, where I was groped by Trump as Epstein stood by and watched. (Trump denies that this ever happened). For years I stayed silent in order to protect my privacy and my family. But with the release of a documentary in which I was featured, I felt I had to tell the truth. To support my account, I was polygraphed by a renowned examiner, my close friends were interviewed to corroborate that I had shared this story over the years, and Trump biographer Michael Wolff confirmed that Epstein disclosed the incident to him.
More recently, I have also shared something Epstein once told me over tea and Zabar’s walnut bread at his mansion: that he had video of me disrobed in a bedroom in his home. He described it as “the most beautiful thing” he had seen. That comment chilled me then, and it haunts me still. When I watched FBI agents raid Epstein’s homes in 2019, I grew nauseous at the thought that such videos could have ended up in the hands of other people.
Let me be clear: I did not consent to being groped by Donald Trump, and I did not consent to being filmed by Jeffrey Epstein. I am speaking out not because of politics, but because the American people – and Epstein’s many victims – deserve transparency.
This is not a partisan issue. Being a victim crosses party lines. That’s why I’ve been encouraged to see representatives Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, and Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, from opposite sides of the aisle, standing besides Epstein’s victims on Capitol Hill, demanding the release of the Epstein files. Hundreds of women have lived in the shadow of this man’s crimes. They deserve truth, not secrecy.
Yet what we’ve seen is a game of political chicken. The Wall Street Journal reported that attorney general Pam Bondi privately told Trump his name appears in Epstein-related files. The justice department’s second-in-command, Todd Blanche – Trump’s former lawyer – met behind closed doors not with victims, but with Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein abuse underage girls. And despite public assurances that there is “nothing to see”, Congress recessed early rather than debate the issue. Maxwell, meanwhile, was quietly moved to a more comfortable minimum-security prison in Texas, despite the fact that she repeatedly deflected and minimized facts during her interview.
Two days ago, in a deceptive move supposedly intended to signal transparency, the House Oversight Committee released more than 33,000 files related to Epstein that it received from the Justice Department. As Representative Massie pointed out, 97% of those pages are “already in public domain.”
So here I am, like so many women in my position, mustering the courage to disclose and jumping through hoops to prove my truth – while perpetrators and enablers enjoy the benefit of secrecy. It is baffling that leaders from the president on down insist nothing is nothing to see, yet refuse to release the actual files. It is equally baffling to hear Alan Dershowitz deny that surveillance tapes exist, when testimony and evidence suggest otherwise. Maria Farmer, one of the first women to report Epstein and Maxwell for sexual crimes, told CBS News that Epstein had hidden cameras throughout his home. A recent New York Times report included images of video cameras inside Epstein’s mansion, even above his bed. And Epstein specifically boasted that he had video footage of me.
I know my pain is shared by countless survivors. I think of Virginia Giuffre, who tragically died by suicide this April, and of the retraumatization survivors endure as they watch Ghislaine Maxwell settle into a more comfortable facility while their stories remain buried. That is not justice.
We deserve peace of mind. We deserve healing that comes with accountability. And that will never come so long as our trauma is reduced to partisan warfare. Sexual violence and trafficking have no political party.
It is time to put politics aside, release the Epstein files and help free the women at the center of this tragedy from a nightmare that has lasted for decades.
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Stacey Williams is a former model
