Yesterday, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, who were as young as 13 when they were first sexually abused and trafficked, released a powerful PSA that featured their childhood photos. It made the news and spread through social media.

Today, they channeled the power of their truth into a second press conference (the first was held in September) that shared their stories and announced the establishment of a national, survivor-led non-partisan political movement to expose all aspects of sexual abuse and exploitation. It made the news and spread through social media.

This afternoon — at long last — the House of Representatives voted 427-1 for a bill demanding that the Justice Department release all the Epstein files. But that did not happen until one Republican after another stepped before the mic to lie, blaming Democrats for the long delay in releasing the files and falsely claiming Republicans had wanted transparency all along.

The lone dissenter in today’s vote was far-right conspiracy theorist Republican Clay Higgins of Louisiana. Shame on him and the many Republicans, including our felon-in-chief, who worked tirelessly to keep the Epstein files under wraps.

Hours later, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer won unanimous agreement for the Senate to pass the measure as soon as it arrives in the chamber. It will then go to the felon in the White House for his signature, with the hope he does not use any further tricks to circumvent justice for women and girls.

Sexual abuse and Virginia Woolf

You might ask how any of this connects to Virginia Woolf. Here’s how.

Virginia Stephen was six years old the first time she was sexually abused. Her abuser, her half-brother Gerald Duckworth, was 18. Virginia was 13 when she was abused again, another incestuous abuse that went on until she was 29. This time, her other half-brother George Duckworth, a father figure to both Virginia and her sister Vanessa, was her abuser. He was 29 when it began and 45 when it ended.

Here are Virginia’s own words from her collection of five memoir pieces included in Moments of Being:

There was a slab outside the dining room door for standing dishes upon. Once when I was very small Gerald Duckworth lifted me onto this, and as I sat there he began to explore my body. I can remember the feel of his hand going under my clothes, going firmly and steadily lower and lower. I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But it did not stop. His hand approached my private parts too. I remember resenting, disliking it-what is the word for so dumb and mixed a feeling? It must have been strong, since I still recall it. This seems to show that a feeling about certain parts of the body; how they must not be touched; how it is wrong to allow them to be touched; must be instinctive. – Moments of Being, p. 69

Sleep had almost come to me. The room was dark. The house silent. Then, creaking stealthily, the door opened; treading gingerly, someone entered”. “ ‘Who?’ I cried. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ George whispered. ‘And don’t turn on the light, oh beloved.’ Beloved – and he flung himself on my bed, and took me in his arms. Yes, the old ladies of Kensington and Belgravia never knew that George Duckworth was not only father and mother, brother and sister to those poor Stephen girls; he was their lover also. – Moments of Being, p. 180

It was long past midnight that I got into bed and sat reading a page or two of Marius the Epicurean for which I had then a passion. There would be a tap at the door; the light would be turned out and George would fling himself on my bed, cuddling and kissing and otherwise embracing me in order, as he told Dr Savage later, to comfort me for the fatal illness of my father–who was dying three or four storeys lower down of cancer. – Moments of Being, p. 182

Incestuous sexual abuse and its effects on Virginia

Others have written about the effects this traumatic sexual abuse had on Virginia’s mental health, as well as her feelings about herself, her appearance, and her sexuality.

Louise DeSalvo’s Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (1989) comes to mind first. Sara Culver’s 1990 article in the Grand Valley Review, “Virginia Woolf as an Incest Survivor,”is worth reading as well. Gillian Gill’s Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World (2019) also adds insight.

Among other things, such works speak of Woolf’s discomfort with any attention to her looks, whether it be her hat, her dress, or her body. They also speak of her own shame regarding looking at her own image in a mirror.

The looking-glass shame has lasted all my life, long after the tomboy phase was over. I cannot now powder my nose in public. Everything to do with dress-to be fitted-to come into a room wearing a new dress- still frightens me; at least makes me shy, self-conscious, uncomfortable. ‘Oh to be able to run, like Julian Morrell, all over the garden in a new dress’ I thought not too many years ago . . .

Yet this did not prevent me from feeling ecstasies and raptures spontaneously and intensely and without any shame or the least sense of guilt, so long as they were disconnected with my own body. – Moments of Being, pp. 68-9

Incestuous sexual abuse and its effects on Virginia’s writing

Virginia’s sexual abuse also influenced her writing in such novels as The Voyage Out (1915) and The Years (1937).

Remember the scene where the married Mr. Dalloway holds virginal Rachel Vinrace tightly and kisses her “passionately” against her will? (TVO 89) Recall the time Rose escapes the strange man under the lamppost who sucks his lips, makes a “mewing noise,” and starts unbuttoning his clothes? (TY, p. 29)

In both cases, the traumatized females suffer nightmares after the event.

Surviving with strength

Despite the incestuous sexual trauma Virginia suffered beginning at the age of six, she survived and went on to leave a body of work that lives on to be revered by new generations of common readers and scholars.

As Culver puts it, “Her detractors have dismissed Virginia Woolf as a pretentious snob, comfortably insulated from the ‘real world’ by her sex, her class, and her recurring illness. This is a slander that needs to be disproved. Woolf — while still a child — had to face realities so ugly they tormented her for years. But they did not conquer her. That she not only survived such violations of her integrity, but survived magnificently, argues that she was neither weak nor spineless, but remarkably strong and courageous.”

The same can be said of the thousand Epstein survivors who survive “magnificently” with remarkable strength and courage. We call on those in power to ensure they receive the full justice they have long deserved. We call on those in power to BELIEVE WOMEN.