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The Bulwark
Epstein Survivor Asks: Will Any GOP Senators Do the Right Thing? (w/ Dani Bensky)
00:15:30
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- [00:03]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Thanks for joining us on Bull Work on Sunday. Very pleased to be joined today by Danny Bensky, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee just 10 days ago. I guess it was right. And and then had the one of those who attended the private meeting with Todd Blanche that has gotten some publicity. But I'm sure Dandy will tell us more about it and is involved in trying to in the whole fight over the confirmation of Todd Blanche's attorney general. So, Danny, thanks for, thanks for joining me today. Maybe the sound just got out, though. We will wait. I'll just say while Danny's fixing her sound, hopefully Danny was really an eloquent witness on Thursday and people should take a look at the clips and read the transcript of her testimony if possible. Can you hear me now, Danny? Yep. Anyway, I am. It's I will talk for a minute and Danny hopefully will get back on. This is live. Live audio and video is always has the potential to do this. Now it's really worth. You should go back. It was pretty short, the hearing on Thursday morning. Blanche testified last Wednesday, a week ago Wednesday. Danny was one of those who testified on Thursday. Really worth going back and looking at the clips of that and the whole testimony which wasn't that long. The senators didn't keep you that long. They should get through longer. But that's it. We can get to that. Anyway, thanks for joining me, Danny.
- [01:43]
B
Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. I'm so sorry. I was having some sound issues there, so I missed a little bit of that. But yeah, thank you for having me on.
- [01:50]
A
Nothing, nothing you don't know. You're now a dance teacher and educator and choreographer, I believe. And I'm just curious, I mean, how. How did you get into that and how my sense is the dance is booming among young kids. I mean, just it's partly based on sort of family experience here in Northern Virginia. Is that right? Is that right?
- [02:10]
B
It is. It definitely is. And I think, you know, dance saved my life more times than I can count. I think movement for me when I was young felt very much like, you know, my mom was a performer. I grew up in a family of performers and so so she was a bit of a stage mom. But, you know, so there was always this push into ballet and into dance and ballet was, I found it was very confining. It was a lot of, you know, sort of body image issues came out of that. There were some issues that arise and I felt like I was, it was really the place that I was groomed to have this experience with Jeffrey Epstein when I was older. And so part of my journey through dance education right now is trying to make it safer for younger kids and make it a more holistic practice and just making sure that we're giving kids autonomy and agency over their own body while preserving the art form. So I started in ballet, and then I transferred into more musical theater. I worked for Disney for quite some time. And now there's a show that I've been working, working on for the last, like, 12 years, the Japanese musical. And so we went to Japan with that for the last couple of years. And now this program that I'm working with, I'm actually in Hawaii right now working with some of my favorite kids. They're just incredible. And we just did Hadestown with them, and it opened last night. So very relevant right now. And, you know, it's just always a wild thing for me to be working with kids this age because it was, you know, the time that I was being abused. And so I always hope to give them more of a safe haven. I think for me, I went through a lot of disassociation. And when. When I was at Jeffries, dance was an escape for me. It was the thing that I would go into my head and just start choreographing things when the abuse got really bad. And so coming out of that, I didn't want to dance. And it was sort of robbed for me for quite some time. And I really lost my identity for a while. And it wasn't until I came back to. I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse for a little while. And it wasn't until I got to the Conservatory for acting that they forced me to take modern dance and ballet again. And I was able to come back to it for movement's sake. And there was so much joy in the storytelling. And so. So much of what I'm passionate about now is storytelling with youth and using, like, maybe for those that don't have a voice, but. Cause I never felt like I did have a voice. For those that don't feel like they can speak, movement is usually the way in. There can be a way in. So I think for our younger folks right now, it's really imperative that they're getting into these spaces and finding their voices whatever way they can.
- [04:52]
A
Oh, that's great. That's really moving and inspiring. Hadestown seems like we saw that actually on Broadway, I guess, just before the pandemic, I think, of 2020. And now there seems to be a movie version that I think Susan My wife was just saying we should try to go because I really enjoyed it. That seems pretty ambitious for younger kids.
- [05:10]
B
Yes. It's such an incredible show with such universal themes, but it was really wild to leave that process in the middle of choreographing the show and jump out and give testimony and come back and they're singing We Build a Wall. And it's all about this dictator that's taking over. And it's all about. There's a line in it that I remember walking into rehearsal the day after this whirlwind of being in D.C. for two days and coming back in, and the. The line that they were singing about is the way, like, the dice are loaded. The person that loads the dice always thinks the toss is fair. And I just was sitting there, like, holding that for a moment, and I was like, you know, this is what, a year?
- [05:49]
A
Oh, my God. Well, thank you for testifying, which was courageous, of course, as so much of what you've done and your fellow Epstein survivors have done. But so today, I mean, I'm curious to hear about the SO testimony. I think people have seen clips and read about it, but just what was it like? What surprised you about it? I guess you've testified before Congress or at least before members of Congress before, obviously. And then I want to also hear very much about the private meeting with Todd Blanche, which I guess was later at the end of the same day. Right. Things moved pretty fast that day.
- [06:16]
B
Yeah, they did. I mean, every time we're in Washington, D.C. it's such a whirlwind of. You kind of never know what is going to come of it. And, you know, this roller coaster ride that we're all on. But the support of the survivors and the survivor sisterhood is so strong and it's so important. And so, you know, we did walk in sort of not knowing what we were going to hear from Blanche. We were there for both days. We listened to the first day of his testimony, and there were just so many things that were like, it's not right. Like, he was saying this moment about that the files, the mishandling of the files were like, basically they were mishandled. The redactions were terrible. They took them down, they put them back up. Redacted within 24 hours. And we're all sitting there and we're like, that's so beyond inaccurate. My lawyer called multiple times. My name was released in all three different batches. My name, my address, my phone number, where I worked at the time. I mean, literally every identifying piece of information you could possibly have was released in the January document dump, which was already after my name was released in December. So it's like you're sitting there and talking to a group of survivors with all of our information. Like, I saw nude photos of friends, right. Like, it's. It was so devastating and the impact of that was so devastating. And to hear him just kind of flippantly say, like, oh, no, we fixed that, like, everything's better. And you're like, in what world? Like, you just feel completely gaslit. And then it just continued. I mean, the testimony, the second day that I was able, I was able to give testimony, it was one of the hardest experiences that I've ever done and I've ever had to go through. Because, you know, usually we're in front of people that we've spoken to quite a bit. I mean, we're in senator and, you know, congressional leaders offices pretty regularly, and we're meeting with people like Chairman Comer, and he's been fabulous. And so we're having these sort of face to face interactions where it feels a little bit more like at least we're familiar with them. And so walking in now to this experience, experience was a little overwhelming because here you are having, you know, having to talk about these really intimate, hard things in front of people that might not be such a friendly face after all.
- [08:25]
A
Yeah, no. Well, you were great. And I guess you testified next to Liz lawyer. They decided to go after her for ridiculously. For doing her job for when she was in the Biden administration as pardon attorney. And they didn't have the nerve.
- [08:36]
B
She was like, interrogated more than Blanche was like, really? At that point, like, who's. Who's like, is there a trial?
- [08:43]
A
Like, yeah, who's up for. Who's up for. Who's up for confirmation?
- [08:46]
B
Right, exactly.
- [08:49]
A
Good. Well, you did a great job. And so you testified. And one of the things that came out of the testimony, I think, was that Senator Tillis said, well, he probably thought he couldn't vote for Blanche until or unless he met with you all. And so say a little bit about that. Was 10:30 in the morning and then by fourth, how did that all work out? And tell us about that meeting, if you would.
- [09:07]
B
Wild. Yeah. I mean, starting with the moment with Tillis and even going back a little bit further, as I was giving testimony, I noticed that John Cornyn was really listening as well. And he left right after testimony. But he was very. I could feel the energy. I could feel him like, sort of leaning in and Listening. And I do think that there is real interest in trying to help us there. He has been like, Cornyn has been so amazing on sex trafficking, and he has been somebody that's been such a proponent for putting away perpetrators in those crimes. So I am hoping that, like, he. He felt like a hopeful moment. Honestly, I didn't expect Tillis to turn and say what he said. I was really kind of like, okay, Cornyn might be the one that we can really talk to and get to the heartstrings about, you know, how horrible this has been for survivors and that it's not political, because we always say that it's not political. But somehow when you meet with us, you need to feel it, right? Because we really are not here to be political pawns. And yet somehow we are always put into this arena, and it's so infuriating. So that's why we feel like it's so important to get in front of the senators and actually talk to them about our stories. So, anyway, so the moment with just feeling the energy from Cornyn was sort of hopeful. And then when Tillis spoke and he did say, you know, Blanche has to meet with you, it was just such a moment of relief because we haven't seen a whole lot of humanity in all of this. Bonnie didn't even turn around when we were there last time. There's just been no empathy and no compassion and no seeing this case for the gravity and the weight that it actually holds. Because we're talking about 6 million files. We're talking about a perpetrator that died. But sex trafficking doesn't happen with one perpetrator. And the only person that Todd Blanche has spoken to has been moved to a lower security penitentiary. You know, so when you're just looking at facts, you're like, how is. How are they not taking this seriously? So when Tillis finally was. Finally did say, you need to meet with Blanche, we were just hoping that he really wants this to be a substantive meeting and not just the check the box moment. And so, you know, we were. I just remember, like, I was trying to hide my smile, not for any other reason. Then just feeling like, wow, he saw us. You know, he actually did. He is trying to do, you know, he's not just saying, okay, great, let's vote him in and just be done with this topic. Like, he actually is. Is trying to talk to us. So that is great. But then, of course, we went to the meeting, and I mean, talk about a check the box moment for Blanche. It was gaslighting Palooza, as we like to call it now.
- [11:41]
A
Say a little bit just how these people don't know. I don't know. How did the meeting happen? Where did it happen? How did it get to.
- [11:47]
B
That was disorienting and a little bit chaotic. So I had left the testimony. I was sitting there, and as I was leaving, this woman approached me and said, doj wants to meet with survivors now. And of course, I'm like, oh, gosh, we're doing this. We're doing this now. And so I turn over to the survivor sisters, and we're like, okay, we have to go to this meeting. And everything felt crushed and chaotic. And so we're like, okay, where are we meeting him? And they're like, oh, it's not Blanche. It'll be Ali Serrano, who is the head of sex crimes. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no. We've asked for meetings with Blanche for the last nine months. We want to meet with Blanche. They're like, okay, well, we'll see what we can do. And so we went back to this little room, and everybody started to leave. You know, it was like, we're up. We're done with testimony. We all have lives. We all have work and kids and all of our things. So we started to disperse. And then basically, they were like, okay, Blanche can meet with you right now. Like, where? Right now? When? Right now? And they're like, it was like one 1 o' clock PM and it was like, the meeting's over by two. He has to be out by two. And you're like, by the time we get to the Hill, we're not even gonna be able to see him. And so then we talked to them again, and they said, okay, fine, he can meet you at four. And so. But the whole thing was really just sort of meant to put us on our heels, I think, a bit. And they read reporting that survivors didn't show up. You know, survivors just ghosted, you know, Todd, Blanche. Like, that is not what happened at all. We were trying to make arrangements. We were trying to figure it out. And so we did. We went to the doj. We had this meeting. And when we went in, you know, we went in with very specific topics that we wanted.
- [13:19]
A
This was in a conference room at the doj, or his own office.
- [13:22]
B
Doj. There were members, a couple members of the FBI there. He had some staffers there. We had our counsel on this screen, which, of course, took us, like, 15 minutes to get up, which was a whole thing. Gotta love technology. But anyway, sitting There in silence with Todd Blanche for, like, 15 minutes while the thing isn't working was really. We were like, okay, can we please just talk? Like, I've never felt so squirmy. But anyway, so. But we went in there with a real list that we have been, you know, and also, like, I want to say we are. There's a core group of us that are really good advocates about, like, when to pass the ball. If Amanda and Sky Virgin, the G Freeze family, say one thing, I know how to pivot, and I know that I can say something else and I can pass it to Liz Stein, who then, you know, we're strategic about it because we've done a lot of these meetings and we were thinking we were walking into another meeting where we would at least start to be heard, you know, where we could share a little piece of our stories. He would see human beings in front of him and maybe we could work together. And instead it was. It was so. Not that. I mean, right off the bat, it felt. Felt like he would argue everything. I mean, it was like we said, okay, so in the 6 million files. And it'd be like 3 million. And we're like, okay. And we would start to be like, but there are more documents that are missing. We know that they're missing because there are training videos that just popped up. We have all, like, we were starting naming all the things, and then we're like, you know what? Not worth it. Move on. Next topic. We're not going to get anywhere with that. Right. And so I love to use the analogy of, like, it felt like you were running into a brick wall and hoping a door, door was there, because at every turn, it was like he would just find the language and argue semantics. And you're like, this is not the point. Can we get back on track, please? So we started asking him about why Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred and what happened there. And his answer was like, people get transferred all the time. Survivors never know. Victims never know. Next question. You know, but he definitely approached it with sort of this, like, you came in here, you're blindsiding me. Where, like, well, just tell us what happened with their redactions. Why are you protecting perpetrators when all of our information is out there, everywhere? Like, just. There has to be some sort of. Like, we just need some sort of understanding. And he just. He basically shut down and would talk in circles. And so it was a very. It was a no win situation. And I think we walked out of there. I've never felt in my adult life since recovering from a lot of what happened to me when I was a girl. And I still live with ptsd. There are things that I can't recover from fully. But I would say that that meeting was one of the most, like, re. Victimizing things that's happened. It was like, because we just had waited so long and we just needed so many answers about how our information released. Like, I've lost jobs. I know other survivors have lost jobs. Like, there's so many. Like, this is our lives, and it's real, and it's. It's really a shame to be passed off. Like, I mean, he said just multiple times, like, what are you getting at? And it's like, you're talking to survivors of sexual abuse, right? You're talking to people in this country who have been through quite a lot, and we haven't seen any investigations be followed through on. Followed through on. We haven't seen you. You're actually obstructing every. The investigation in New Mexico. You're in the White House situation room talking about.