Epstein Survivors Testify at Palm Beach Field Hearing as Democrats Declare 'New Phase' of Investigation

Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse testified before House Oversight Committee Democrats at a field hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida, on May 12, 2026, held about three miles from the Palm Beach mansion where many of Epstein’s crimes took place.¹

Eight people testified at West Palm Beach City Hall, including survivors and two prosecutors, in a hearing led by Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee. Garcia said the session marked the start of “a new phase of the Epstein investigation,” one focused on the survivors and on the 2008 federal plea deal that allowed Epstein to avoid serious prison time.¹²

”My Name Was Exposed to the World”

Much of the testimony centered on a grievance survivors have voiced repeatedly since the Justice Department began releasing Epstein records: that the files exposed victims’ identities while the powerful men named in them were protected by redactions.

A former model who testified under the name Roza told the panel she had spent years as a protected “Jane Doe” only to find her identity stripped away when the files were published. “I kept my identity protected as Jane Doe. I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times,” she said. “While the rich and powerful remained protected by these actions, my name was exposed to the world.”¹ She described living unable to stop “looking over my shoulder.”²

Sky Roberts, the brother of prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, testified about his sister, who died by suicide in April 2025. He said she “was only 16 years old, a child who had just finished 10th grade, when she began being trafficked,” and that her sworn testimony had exposed Epstein’s operation “for what it truly was: a global sex trafficking operation enabled, protected, and funded by powerful people.”¹³

Courtney Wild, a survivor who has fought the 2008 non-prosecution agreement in court for years, pressed for answers about how many other girls were harmed. “Do you know how many other girls Jeffrey abused during that time period? I’ll bet the FBI does,” she said.² Survivor Danielle Bensky described her own 2008 FBI interview as feeling like an “interrogation,” and Jena-Lisa Jones told lawmakers that “real change requires leadership at a national level.”²

Maria Farmer, one of the first women to report Epstein to the FBI in the 1990s, appeared by video and asked why only fragments of her case file had surfaced in the released documents. “Where is my full report?” she asked.²

A Hearing at the “Scene of the Crime”

The choice of venue was deliberate. West Palm Beach is adjacent to Palm Beach, where Epstein owned the waterfront estate that investigators have described as a hub of his abuse, and where the local police investigation that first exposed him began in 2005. Attorney Spencer Kuvin, who has represented Epstein accusers, told the hearing that “transparency must be the rule, not the exception.”¹

Because Democrats are in the minority on the committee, the West Palm Beach session was a field hearing convened by Garcia and Oversight Democrats rather than an official, subpoena-backed proceeding of the full committee. Republican Chairman James Comer had separately committed in April to holding hearings featuring Epstein survivors after First Lady Melania Trump publicly called for them.⁴

The “New Phase”

Garcia tied the hearing to a new interim staff report, released the same day, that uses subpoenaed records to trace how the lenient 2008 deal negotiated by then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta allowed Epstein to keep operating and to expand his network internationally. Democrats framed the Palm Beach event and the report together as the opening of a more survivor-centered stage of the inquiry, even as they continued to accuse the Trump Justice Department of withholding records required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.²³

To date, only Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have been criminally charged in the United States in connection with the trafficking operation. Epstein died in federal custody in 2019; Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence. Survivors who testified in West Palm Beach said the released files have so far produced exposure for victims but little accountability for the men they have accused.

Documents

Watch and read the hearing’s primary sources.

• Video: Epstein survivors testify in Palm Beach (May 12, 2026) — Full footage of the field hearing.
• Oversight Democrats — “The Price of Non-Prosecution” (interim staff report) — The report released alongside the hearing.

References

1. WLRN — “‘Powerful remained protected’: Survivors recall Epstein crimes at congressional hearing in West Palm Beach”

2. MS NOW — “House Democrats hold hearing with Epstein survivors, declare probe is in ‘new phase’”

3. International Business Times UK — “Epstein Survivor Tells Palm Beach Hearing: Sex Trafficking Was ‘Protected and Funded by Powerful People’”

4. Latin Post — “Epstein Survivors Return to Palm Beach to Demand Answers at ‘Scene of the Crime’”