A woman who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and groomed by his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, has told ITV News US Correspondent Dan Rivers that she feels “violated”.
This report contains distressing details of abuse.
Teresa Helm doesn’t like being labelled as a Jeffrey Epstein victim. Or an Epstein survivor.
She feels that having his name attached to hers defines her on his terms.
She speaks thoughtfully about the so-called Epstein scandal as we look out over the Florida Gulf Coast.
She was attacked by the paedophile billionaire when she was a 22-year-old student, having been groomed by his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
News that Maxwell has been moved to a minimum security prison in Texas and that US President Donald Trump may even be considering pardoning her are greeted by Helm’s complete dismay.
She describes it as a “re-traumatisation” and a “violation”.
She can’t even contemplate the idea that Maxwell might one day be pardoned by Trump.
For her, it would be a repeat of the sweetheart plea deal Epstein himself was given, allowing the convicted sex criminal to leave prison each day, to attend his office, where it is alleged he continued to abuse young girls.
Teresa Helm is determined that abuse survivors’ voices aren’t drowned out by the current political maelstrom.
The Epstein scandal is one which has dogged Trump’s second term. He campaigned on a promise to release all government information on the disgraced financier.
That is a pledge which, so far, hasn’t been fulfilled.
Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, insists there is no secret cache of video recordings or photos showing powerful men involved in Epstein’s child abuse ring.
But it hasn’t stopped the online conspiracy theorists claiming Trump is presiding over a cover-up.
There is plenty of evidence that some of the world’s most powerful men did associate with Epstein, including Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Bill Gates, but all denied even knowing of Epstein’s crimes, much less taking part in them.
The conspiracy theorists have all seized on a missing minute of footage from the security video camera outside Epstein’s jail cell as proof he didn’t kill himself, but was instead murdered to ensure his silence.
Pam Bondi claims the camera was faulty and skipped a minute every night, but has so far failed to release evidence to prove that.
So, the conspiracies continue to swirl, and the pressure on Trump continues to increase.
It was ratcheted up when Trump’s former ally Elon Musk asserted that the reason the Epstein files had never been released was that Trump was in them. It was a headline-grabbing claim that the White House subsequently denied.
The President hasn’t helped quell the furore by conceding that Epstein ‘stole’ one of his spa workers, Virginia Giuffre, who later accused Prince Andrew of being part of the abuse network.
Each day, there seems to be a new Epstein line on American News networks, and each day, the voices of survivors like Teresa Helm seem to grow a little more distant from the coverage.
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