Epstein survivor says his impact on her is clear from her school yearbooks

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said it has released tens of thousands of records related to Jeffrey Epstein, provided by the Depart

West Palm Beach, Florida — For many of the women victimized by Jeffrey Epstein, their lives are divided into two parts: before and after they were sexually abused by him.

Change was obvious to Ashley Rubright’s friends after she met Epstein. But she didn’t recognize the stark difference until she looked at her school yearbooks more than a decade later.

“Everybody that signed my yearbooks … was like ‘Have a great summer!’ ‘Let’s chill,’ ‘It was great hanging out with you this year,’” recounted Rubright, describing the “all positive” comments to CNN in an exclusive interview.

Following her introduction to Epstein sometime after turning 15, she recounted, “The next yearbook that came out … all the comments were different: ‘I’m really worried about you,’ ‘Don’t do anything stupid this summer.’”

Rubright described becoming angry and moving out of her parents’ home at 17. It would be years before she connected her troubles to Epstein.

“I was like, ‘Wow, that really did impact me back then.’”

Rubright has never shared her story publicly. She agreed to speak exclusively with CNN because she is “tired of going through this” and because many of Epstein’s victims, whom she considers her “soul sisters,” are talking to Congress this week.

“The solidarity is amazing.”

Change was also obvious in Courtney Wild’s life — straight A’s through middle school, first chair trumpet, cheerleading captain. But in the summer before high school, as her parents struggled with addiction and eventually became homeless, Wild’s life was tough. She met Epstein at the age of 14.

“It was also going from one of the poorest neighborhoods in West Palm Beach, driving over the Palm Beach bridge, and it was just like a different world, and it was unbelievable.”

Wild would sneak over to Epstein’s estate, filled with confusion and guilt and shame, she said. Once inside the estate, in the massage room, in his bedroom, Wild said Epstein was grooming and controlling.

“(He) would … try to get on my level, and he was good at making that very weird situation not the weirdest thing until the abuse happens. The first time the abuse happened, I just remember how traumatized I was and how disgusted I felt within myself. It digs deep. You’re figuring out life, who you are, and just to be used and abused, is just so painful. And then to be re-abused by the government over and over again, still in a sense to this day.”

What Wild calls the “re-abuse” goes back to 2007, when Epstein cut a sweetheart deal with the government to avoid federal prosecution. The deal was signed off on by then-US attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, who became labor secretary in the first Trump term in 2017. Epstein’s victims say they weren’t made aware of the plea deal until after it was agreed to, despite notification being a legal requirement.

All these years later, the destruction Epstein brought to the lives of the survivors still impacts them every day. There are the strange looks when they drop their kids off at school, the story may be on the TV at the local pharmacy, or they may hear people talking about it during a family trip to Walt Disney World.

Some try to avoid all the noise. Not Rubright. She’s immersing herself in it, to protect herself from being caught off guard. “It’s exhausting,” she said. “I can’t focus on my life,” she added, her voice catching on the emotion.

Randee Kogan, a therapist who has worked with some of the survivors for decades, calls the ongoing questions and speculation “a form of imprisonment” for the abused girls, now women.

“It’s coming with a cost. There’s a lot of triggers that are coming. There are emotions that are coming up that you don’t realize at the time when you’re reading it, but it sparks anger, it sparks flashbacks, it sparks anxiety, and then leading to the fact that, well, ‘I can’t escape it, so I need to know it,’ but it’s greatly impacting everybody.”

Kogan says it makes the trauma feel like it happened yesterday, not 20 years ago.

For Jena-Lisa Jones, who met Epstein when she was 14, having Epstein in the news is a constant reminder. He was her first sexual experience, and she says it changed her forever. “It’s a very big manipulation thing when you’re 14 and broke.”

And it’s still a powerful force today, she said.

“There’s worlds of emotion. One day it can be like, ‘I’m super angry. I’m going take them down!’ You want to take out everybody, you’re on this warpath. And then one day you’re like, ‘I’m going to lay in my bed and I’m going to cry forever because this is never going to go away. I’m going to be 70, 80 years old and we’re still not going to have answers and we’re still going to be sitting here and we’re still going to be talking about it.’”

Wild has shared her story so many times that she has to remind herself that it happened to her and reconnect to it.

“I have to remember that this was me that this happened to, this wasn’t like just Courtney, you know, this is actually me,” she said.

During their meeting with lawmakers this week, Wild and Jones plan to push for better protections for victims and survivors like them, but also transparency. They want everything from Epstein’s case released, with the victims’ names redacted.

They fear that other survivors who have not shared their stories could be outed, or that videos of them as children being abused by Epstein, if they do exist, will be made public.

“Is there video footage from my own stuff that happened to me?” Jones wondered during her interview with CNN.

Despite their trip to Capitol Hill, they don’t see why this matter has become political.

“This is the one thing that all sides should be united on,” Jones said.

“My biggest goal at Congress is going to be the push of ‘We need answers and we need to protect the victims of these crimes.’ Let’s do something … The government let us down. So why, and why are we still waiting?”

These women say it’s time for anyone who looked the other way or gave Epstein a pass to answer for their actions.

“I feel like Alex Acosta needs to be held accountable,” Wild said.

During his confirmation hearing for labor secretary, Acosta had said based on the evidence, his office decided a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail is a good thing. Epstein served 13 months in a state facility on prostitution charges, and he was allowed to leave jail to work in an office 12 hours a day, six days a week.

But Wild still has questions. “Let’s make the people accountable for the very high-profile positions in our government that they had,” she said.

No more shame. No more excuses for how they were treated as young girls, when they needed help.

“I feel like there needs to just be accountability for that,” Wild said. “For sure.”

By Randi Kaye and Rachel Clarke, CNN