Abigail Werthmann of Falmouth is a first-year student at Columbia University, planning on majoring in human rights. 

Being a survivor is hard.

Surviving cancer, living with the constant fear of relapse, is hard. Surviving a car crash that reshapes your sense of safety is hard. But surviving sexual abuse — carrying trauma that is disbelieved, minimized or sensationalized — is its own kind of impossible.

Yes, people are victimized, but they aren’t just victims. They are people. They are survivors. They are individuals who often have limited support because our society has consistently chosen to protect abusers, shield the powerful and look away from the truth.

We show profound empathy for families devastated by school shootings. We rally when a community is torn apart by a natural disaster. Yet when it comes to sexual abuse, where is the empathy for the survivors? Where is the willingness to sit with the pain of people whose lives were shattered quietly, privately and often repeatedly?

Sexual violence is not rare. It spans every community, every gender, every class. It could be you. It could be me. It could be the person passing by you on the street. Its reach is so broad, so embedded in the ordinary, that our failure to respond with urgency is deeply troubling. We have grown numb. The media’s cycles of sensationalism amplify the spectacle while flattening the human beings at its center. Our social and legal systems have long been designed to safeguard those in power, perpetuating the very conditions that allow abuse to thrive.

Which brings us to this moment. The recently released Epstein files have forced long-ignored truths back into public view. They expose not only the crimes of one man but the failures of institutions that enabled him. And yet, amid the headlines, one truth risks being lost: exposure without empathy is its own harm. Transparency without care is incomplete justice.

Consider Virginia Giuffre. In April 2025, one of the most recognized survivors of Epstein’s abuse died by suicide, just weeks after completing the manuscript for her memoir. She should have been here to witness the release of the files. Her death is not a footnote; it is the emotional truth at the center of this story. It reveals how profoundly difficult it is to survive surviving.

For many survivors, this news cycle is not history; it is memory. These files will reopen wounds. Survivors often describe reliving trauma in waves — unexpected, involuntary, intense. Now dissected across social media, these documents risk becoming another wave. Even for those whose trauma is unrelated to Epstein, the echoes are familiar. For anyone connected to his network, they are devastating.

Giuffre understood this better than anyone. She told her story not only to expose Epstein, but to reveal the systems that enabled him: policing failures, institutional negligence, judicial indifference and a culture that prioritizes wealth over vulnerability. She knew society decides whose voice is amplified and whose is erased.

Public conversation has focused on the powerful — who might fall, which institutions may crack. Those questions matter, but they cannot overshadow the deeper crisis: survivors still lack comprehensive support, reporting systems remain fragmented and the conditions that enabled Epstein persist. And we still have not shown the collective will to dismantle them.

If these files mean anything, they must force a reckoning beyond curiosity. We need to ask why survivors continue to carry the emotional burden alone. Why society demands their stories but rarely offers support. Why accountability comes so slowly. Why the powerful continue to buy silence. And why it remains so hard — physically and emotionally — to survive surviving.

Survivors across the country are watching how the government and the public respond. They are watching to see if this moment will shift priorities. Whether we will listen with humanity rather than hunger for spectacle. Whether we will build systems centered not on protecting the powerful, but on protecting those who have already endured enough.

The question now is whether we will finally choose empathy — and act on it.