Epstein survivor: 'I froze, and I couldn't speak, I was mute'

Jess Michaels is a Jeffrey Epstein survivor; the late convicted sex offender raped her in 1991.

His attack shattered her sense of safety, derailed her career, and took a deep toll on her health.

But she's found new purpose, standing alongside other survivors and speaking out as an advocate.

She was among a group of survivors who rallied in Washington a few weeks ago, pressuring politicians to pass an act to release the Epstein Files.

In the early 1990s she was a dancer with a successful career when her friend, a ballerina, introduced her to Epstein, she told RNZ’s Afternoons. It was a standard grooming technique, she says.

“I was brought to him through another woman, a young woman, that I knew and trusted, who groomed me for two months before she introduced me to him. And that is sex trafficking 101.

“That playbook is done on every single corner of every city in the world. There's nothing unique about the strategy.”

She had returned from a dancing contract in Tokyo when her roommate told her about a “Wall Street guy", looking for a masseur, she says. “Which is a great side career for a professional dancer.”

She pushed her friend as to whether this was “too good to be true”. Her friend assured her it was legitimate.

Michaels had an initial interview with Epstein where he was very “stoic”, she says.

“He was actually very professional sounding, knew muscle groups and bodies and how they worked and was very particular. 'Do you know this? Do you know that?' And I didn't.

“In that very first meeting he exerted authority over me… really acting as if I don't know if you're gonna get this job, because I don't know if you know enough. So, here's a book, I want you to study this book.”

Being an “overachiever”, she went home and studied.

Epstein called her to a second interview, she says, for a “trial massage".

“It was a private home. It was a penthouse. And I went there.

“And I that's where I was raped during that session with him. And I assumed I was the only one. I thought it could not possibly have happened to my friend, or she never would have introduced me to him.”

As Epstein assaulted her, she “froze”, she says.

“And one of the reasons I believed it was my fault was because back in 1991, rape laws said, it was only determined to be raped by how much you resisted. And given that I froze, and I couldn't speak, I was mute. I was frozen.”

Almost catatonic she walked “right past the doorman, as if nothing had happened". This is a typical involuntary trauma response, she says.

“We didn't know about that in 1991. So, I thought, well, I didn't run. I didn't scream. I walked past that doorman. No one is going to believe me.”

In 2019 after Epstein was found dead in his prison cell, she contacted the FBI hotline to report his assault on her.

“They kept asking for survivors to come forward. So, I thought, okay, I'm going to finally reach out."

Someone from the New York Police Department Sex Victims Task Force contacted her.

“And he listened to my story. And he's like, well, we have to call everybody back. But it was 30 years ago. What do you want us to do now?

“And that is pretty much the Keystone Cop version of how the FBI has been handling this case for the last 30 years.”

It took her a year and a half of “badgering” before anyone even bothered to take her victim statement, she says.

“That's another issue that has come up a lot, when I've talked to other survivors, is that the FBI didn't bother to take victim statements on a lot of them. Just didn't bother.”

Now she’s an advocate for rape and abuse survivors and has found solace and strength from collaborating, through a nonprofit World Without Exploitation, with women who share similar traumatic experiences.

“What we're doing is creating a model for future survivors to just bind together and don't let anyone separate you, because one of the survivors had a great saying, she said, ‘alone we're afraid, but together we're feared’.”