← The Epstein Chronicles
The Epstein Chronicles
Epstein Survivors Break Silence at State Capitol Hearing In New York (5/5/26)
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Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse appeared publicly before lawmakers at the New York State Capitol for the first time, delivering emotional testimony about what they endured and why they believe the legal system has continued to fail them. Several...
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Boss, what's the most dreaded question that you can get when you tell people you host a podcast called the Lapsed Fan? Ugh. It's what is it about? And why is that, do you think? Because to like pro wrestling is to lose the respect of others. Now what if we told you there's a podcast that explains exactly why that is and why it's kind of deserved? For over a decade, we've taken fact finding missions through the thicket of half truths that is wrestling history. We watch old matches, call out carnies, laugh at our own jokes, and have so much fun doing it that some people actually can't handle it. Think wrestling is an escape from real life? Think again. Same power games, same office politics, same people lying to your face. Just with entrance music and absolutely no company health insurance under any circumstances. All I offer is opportunity, not benefits. As do we, Vince. The Lapsed Fan Podcast. Come for the wrestling history. Stay for the uncomfortable truth about why it used to be better and why you still care.
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What's up everyone? And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. For years now, the Epstein story has been fed to the public in fragments, control releases, carefully worded statements, timelines that never quite line up the way that they should. Every time it starts to build real momentum, it gets redirected, diluted, or buried under something else. And if you've been paying attention, really paying attention, you know that the most important voices in all of this have too often been pushed to the margins. Not because they didn't matter, but because what they had to say made the entire structure around the case a lot harder to defend. But yesterday, that dynamic, it didn't hold. Yesterday, those voices were put front and center in a way that couldn't be edited down, couldn't be spun, and couldn't be ignored. And that's because yesterday wasn't another checkbox hearing in Albany. It. It was survivors dragging a decades long failure into a room of people who can't hide behind procedure anymore. And if you've actually followed the case, not the headlines but the filings, the timelines, the way this thing was handled in Florida, in New York, across agencies, then what you saw yesterday should have hit like a punch to the chest. These weren't vague recollections. These are people who actually lived inside a system that had every opportunity to intervene and didn't. They weren't asking for belief. They were forcing acknowledgment. And there's a difference. Belief can be debated. Acknowledgment, once it's on the record, becomes a problem for anyone who spent years pretending the scope wasn't clear. And what made it uncomfortable, and it should have been uncomfortable, is how precise it all was. Not just what Epstein did, but how it was allowed to continue. The access points, the normalization, the fact that this operation didn't exist in a vacuum. You don't get that kind of scale, that kind of consistency without gaps, serious gaps in oversight, enforcement, and will. And those gaps weren't theoretical yesterday. They were described by the people who had to navigate them in real time. And let's be real, that's the kind of thing that shifts the ground. Because once survivors start outlining the structure around the abuse, not just the abuse itself, you're no longer talking about a rogue individual. You're talking about an environment that made it possible. And here's the part that nobody in that room can claim ignorance about anymore. None of this is new. The paper trail has been sitting there for years. Court records, depositions, internal reviews. The question has never been what happened. The question has always been, why didn't anything stop it? When there were multiple points where it could have yesterday forced that question back into the open. But this time it came with the voices attached, people who can tie those failures to lived experience, not abstract policy. So now it's not about statements or follow ups or the usual cycle of promising to look into it. That phase should have ended a long time ago. What happened yesterday put a spotlight on something that's been carefully managed for years. This wasn't just about Epstein, and it never was. And the survivors, they make that impossible to ignore. And once that's established in a legislative setting, once it's entered into the record in that way, the pressure shifts. Because from here on out, an action isn't confusion. It's a decision. Today's article is from News 10 and the headline, Epstein Victims Testify at State Capitol First Time Publicly Before Legislators. This article was authored by Vanessa Blase. For the first time, alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring testified publicly before a legislative body. Monday at the New York State Capitol, four women shared their stories of abuse, pushing for a bill that would protect victims of sex trafficking and push for punitive damages. Certain crimes shouldn't have statute of limitations, and I think human trafficking is certainly one of them. I mean, if you can prove that there was human trafficking involved, then I Think that the statue of limitation shouldn't apply. I mean, we're talking about a heinous ass crime, modern day slavery. More than five years after Epstein died, the fight for justice continues. Four women spoke at a Senate codes meeting on Monday, including Karini Da Silva, Laura Bloom McGee, Alexandra Golomatis and Glendy's Espinal. These women all came from different walks of life, but unfortunately shared very similar stories of abuse. For decades I carried the shame and the secret, said Laura Bloom McGee. It took more than 20 years for me to find the courage to tell the truth. And look for a lot of these women, they still haven't found their footing. A lot of these women still haven't come forward. And the whole lot of women in places like South America and Eastern Europe, we're never going to hear from them. And that's why it's imperative that we listen to the survivors that are coming forward. It's very important that we take what they have to say seriously and then investigate those claims. And then if there's enough there, we progressed from that point. Right. And that's what I've always said, real investigations. And of course the only way we can do that at this point is with a special counsel. I'm here today, but it took me a lifetime to be able to speak about what happened to me, said Corinny. Da Silva. McGee shared that she was recruited by Epstein with a promise of a Victoria's Secret model contract, which did not happen. Da Silva shared that she met Epstein in. In 2001 when she was working in the massage industry to make money. No one ever told me it was going to be sexual, said DeSilva. And there's going to be people out there that are like, well, you know what? These were adults. These weren't children. As if adults can't get caught up in a human trafficking scheme. Tell that to the millions of people that are living in indentured servitude right now as we speak around the world. There are more people living in slavery right now than than at any other time in history. Chew on that for a minute and then tell me that adults can't be victims of human trafficking. They most certainly can. Now, of course, the most heinous crime you can commit is against children. Everybody knows that. But let's not act like a woman or a man who is forced into some kind of human trafficking situation is having a grand old time. They are not. And Jeffrey Epstein, well, he had several different layers to his operation, didn't he? When it comes to the young girls, that was his forte, that was his own personal taste and a little special side that he'd serve up to some of his really good friends. But for the most part, these women that were coming over with promises of modeling careers and whatnot, they were being housed and, and they were being abused. And what Epstein would do is he'd hold their immigration status over their head. So these women, they'd be at that building on E66 and then from there they'd be sent out to go to parties, whatever. But it wasn't always young girls. That was Jeffrey Epstein's proclivity. That doesn't mean that he only had underage girls. Right. There was a lot of women who were of age who were caught up in his human trafficking nonsense. And that's something that has been very apparent from the very beginning. When you have people that are coming to America from a different country and they're having their passport taken and they're relying solely on somebody like Epstein or Brunel, and then none of the things that they were promised come to fruition and they're stuck doing things they don't want to do. Well, what do you call it? For Alexandra Golamadis and Glendy's Espinal, Monday was her first time speaking out publicly. Golamadis from Queens and Espinal from the Bronx both met Epstein as young, at young ages. Both Espinal and Golamatis said the abuse started when he tricked them into massaging them. And that was the M.O. he'd get them in the room and then from there he'd start the abuse. We've all read the reports. You don't have to have me recounted to you. That's why we go through those reports. Right? I mean, if somebody was telling you the things that I'm telling you, I would think that they were crazy. Unless they had some sources, some proof, because the whole entire thing sounds crazy. How could something like this happen for so long? But nobody's stepping up, nobody doing anything about it, nobody stopping this man. And now, unfortunately, there's really not much we can do as far as what Epstein was up to, as far as the abuse. He's gone. But the people that were helping him, the people that were around them, the people that got him off, the people that protected him, they're still here. And a lot of those people are still engaging in this cover up. The first time he sexually abused me, I was 14 years old. He made me massage and touch him in places I felt uncomfortable with. Said golamadis for many of these women, the abuse lasted years, and although it happened when they were young, it's affected them the rest of their lives. Oh yeah, no shit. You get abused at that age, forget it, it's going to stunt you. I mean, how are you going to trust somebody? How are you going to have a relationship where, you know, you feel like you're comfortable with a person to open up, tell them everything you know that you would tell somebody that you love the whole thing and then they're forced to pick up the pieces for the rest of their lives. Because I was sex trafficked Epstein, I suffered deep shame and depression, said Golomatis. Because I was sex trafficked to Epstein, I have suffered a lifetime of mental hardships, said Da Silva, with devastating long term implications. Many victims take years to tell their story, if they tell it at all. One expert on the topic and survivor herself, Katherine Raab, testified in the Senate codes meeting on Monday as well. She shared that too many survivors carry their trauma in secret, which is yet another reason justice must be served. It's not just Jeffrey Epstein. It is a network, said Rob, who often escape accountability. This bill will disrupt that. This bill will hold all these entities liable for responsible. And remember a few months ago, or hell, maybe almost a year ago at this point, when I was talking about dual sovereignty and how the state could step in if Donald Trump pardons Maxwell? Well, I think this is the precursor to that and I think that if we see a pardon, I would look for the State of New York especially to file charges against Maxwell. Rob referred to Senate Bill S9960, sponsored by New York State Senator Zelnor Myri. This bill would allow victims to seek punitive damages from their abusers and their accomplices, extend the current statute of limitations for victims to make it a crime to be benefiting from sex trafficking. Well, that's a great idea. Why should anyone benefit from sex trafficking? If you're benefiting from a sex trafficking enterprise, you should be charged with rico. The current criminal statute of limitation for sex trafficking victims is in New York is five years and about 12 years for civil lawsuits. With that, none of the women who spoke Monday can get justice. Some say that justice isn't for themselves, it's for others. This is bigger than me. This is for every little girl and little boy that's been abused. Hopefully we're able to change things for the next generation, said McGee. And look, you got to get them victories where you can find them. And these women who have went through gruesome and horrendous abuse. They don't want anybody else to ever suffer through that. So in hopes of that never occurring again or, you know, trying to stop it from occurring again, they've come forward and put their names behind this bill. McGee also had a message for anyone who may be a victim but hasn't shared their story yet. The shame is not yours to hold. There's nothing to be shameful about. I carried the shame with me for over 20 years, and the shame is 100% on the perpetrators, said McGee. That's a fact. The shame is not on the abused. It's on the pieces of shit who did the abusing. And at some point, the predator is gonna become the prey. And whether that's at the state level or the federal level, I don't know. But if they think that this is over and done with and that there's never gonna be anything else to come of it, they are crazy. The Codes Committee passed a Senate bill on Monday, along with two other bills, S4 406 and S6460A, related to sex trafficking. Senator Murray said they are actively in conversation with the assembly to move on to the next step. He said he hopes to get this passed as soon as possible. And I support the words. Right. Sounds good. Sounds like a great plan. The question is, are they going to follow through? I mean, how many times have we seen politicians not follow through? So we'll keep an eye on this one like all the other ones, and when we have some more information, we'll get it added to the catalog. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.