Kat Gale’s Reviews > Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice > Status Update

There's something within all of us, even when we're not aware of it, that fights to keep our spirits alive.

A master manipulator who excelled at divining the desires of others, he threw what looked like a lifeline to girls who were drowning, girls who had nothing, girls who wished to be and do better. If they wanted to be dancers, he offered dance lessons. If they aspired to be actors, he said he'd help them get roles...And then, he did his worst to them.

The worst things Epstein and Maxwell did to me weren't physical, but psychological. From the start, they manipulated me into participating in behaviors that ate away at me, eroding my ability to comprehend reality and preventing me from defending myself. From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive .

As a young girl, I wielded my Walkman like a talisman, to ward off evil.
–Same.

In America, only 4% of law enforcement agencies have personnel dedicated to exposing human trafficking...I want to change that. I want not just to hold abusers accountable but also to challenge the ways that all too often our legal system protects those abusers. it is estimated that most victims of childhood sexual abuse don't share their experiences until they're in their 40s.
–Can personally confirm this.

Trauma is such a cunning enemy. Those of us who've survived its terrors often marvel at how quickly it can recede, at least at first...but recovering victims like me know too well how trauma lurks in the shadows, always there. No matter how many years go by, or how many therapists you see, it can rise, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere.

--Can absolutely confirm this. :(

She wanted the book published. She wanted all her suffering to have accomplished something, and if she could help even one survivor of abuse, she said, it would be worth all the effort.

I want to say explicitly why Virginia opted not to stay silent, which certainly would have been easier for her. From the beginning, she told me she believed that her story would help other people–not just survivors of Epstein's cruelty, but any person, male or female, who'd ever been coerced into sex against his or her will.

Dedicated to my Survivor Sisters and to anyone who has suffered sexual abuse.
-As a survivor the same age those children were in the Epstein Files, reading this will be rough, but her voice needs to be heard. All our voices do. I went to D.C. to visit congressional offices to make them look a survivor in the face while I told them that not holding these monsters accountable makes us all less safe. Release the files.