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The Justice Department vowed to protect the identities of women who were preyed on by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but survivors said the latest release of Epstein files has left many of them exposed and their lives turned “upside down.”
The DOJ did a slapdash job of redacting their personal information from the avalanche of investigative files released Friday and even outed the identity of at least one woman who had not previously come forward with abuse allegations, lawyers representing the survivors said.
Survivor Danielle Bensky said that what she thought were confidential conversations with FBI investigators about Epstein were included in the latest document dump.
And lawyers representing the women say that before the DOJ released the latest batch of investigative files, the women had been assured that there would be no repeat of the “privacy violations” that happened the first two times the government released Epstein-related documents.
“That expectation was shattered on January 30, 2026, when DOJ committed what may be the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history,” attorneys Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards wrote Sunday in a letter to the judges overseeing the release of the Epstein files.
Bensky, who was a teenage ballerina when she said Epstein abused her two decades ago, doesn’t believe that was an accident.
“I thought it was carelessness, and then I went to incompetence,” Bensky told NBC News. “And now it feels, it feels a bit deliberate. It feels like a bit of an attack on survivors.”
Friday’s document dump comes after two earlier Epstein file releases and included more than 3.5 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. Bensky is hoping that with all of these files being released that those associated with Epstein will be investigated.
“The whole goal of this was to expose the men in power who took advantage of all of these young girls,” Bensky said.
But she went on to say there are still a lot of files to go through. “We see who needs to be investigated … now we need to hold them to account,” Bensky said.
Henderson and Edwards, who represent some 300 Epstein survivors, filed a request Sunday for immediate judicial intervention with Judges Richard M. Berman and Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The DOJ “has possessed the names of victims that it promised to redact for months,” they wrote. The lawyers went on to say that a “simple name search” of the searchable database could have prevented this from happening. “A simple name search would have prevented this entirely. Yet even now, after 48 hours of seeking additional redaction, thousands of pages remain unredacted in the public domain.”
The lawyers demanded, among other things, an “immediate takedown of the DOJ website hosting Epstein materials” and the appointment of a special master “to oversee redaction and republication.”
“For the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, every hour matters,” the letter states. “The harm is ongoing and irreversible. This Court is the last line of defense for victims who were promised protection and instead were exposed. Judicial intervention is not merely appropriate — it is essential.”
The DOJ, in a court filing Monday, said it was in the process of “removing documents that inadvertently were produced and contain victim-identifying information.”
“The Department has worked all hours through the weekend from the point when the first victim-related concerns were raised,” it said. “The Department now has taken down several thousands of documents and media that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information due to various factors, including technical or human error.”
For some of the Epstein accusers, the DOJ’s belated redactions may be too late.
“I have never come forward!” Jane Doe 5 said in the request for judicial intervention filed on Sunday. “I am now being harassed by the media and others. This is devastating to my life …. Please pull my name down immediately as every minute that these document with my name are up, it causes more harm to me.”
Jane Doe 4 said she was being inundated with “disgusting messages” and Jane Does 7 and 8 said they have received death threats since Friday.
“You even had the audacity to release my private banking info and [I]am now trying to shut down cards and accounts,” Jane Doe 8 wrote. “This kind of vicious attack on a victim at the hands of the ‘Department of Justice’ is an abomination.”
Jane Doe 1 called herself the victim of a “vendetta.”
“It is so wrong on so many levels,” Jane Doe 3 wrote. “Not only it exposes victims to potential abuse or blackmail, but it can ruin families or damage our careers. I am horrified.”
In November, Berman had requested a detailed description of the materials the government intended to release and an explanation of how it would safeguard the privacy of survivors, including through redactions.
Berman did so after the House Oversight Committee caused “widespread panic” among the survivors after it released more than 20,000 documents related to Epstein and dozens of survivors’ names appeared unredacted.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday that the documents released that day constituted about half of the more than six million Epstein-related documents the DOJ collected.
The DOJ, however, was supposed to turn over almost all of unclassified Epstein documents by December as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19.
Bensky criticized the fact that the DOJ withheld millions of pages of material that it obtained and that some of the documents appeared to have not been properly redacted. Blanche said Friday that the documents withheld fell into categories that were permitted under the Act to be withheld, including medical files, depictions of child pornography and other sensitive materials.
“It just feels like such a slap in the face to survivors,” Bensky said.
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