Proposed legislation, named after Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Epstein’s abuse, also tackles jurisdiction Democrats in Congress were joined on Capitol Hill by survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse to introduce legislation to end the statute of limitations and restrictions on jurisdiction in civil sexual abuse cases. The move comes less than two weeks after the justice department released 3.5m pages of heavily redacted documents related to Epstein, as ordered by the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. “When the truth of Jeffrey Epstein finally started to come out, when the world finally started to listen to their stories,...

The bankruptcy system was never designed to manage sexual abuse claims. US bankruptcy law has long been understood as a response to economic distress rather than mass torts. Built in the 1970s to address debt problems, Chapter 11 doesn’t reflect what we now know about trauma or how institutions mishandled sexual abuse cases for decades. Yet youth organizations, churches, schools, and nonprofits progressively use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to resolve thousands of revived or long buried claims. Survivors can face unparalleled barriers. Trauma often delays disclosure for many years, but bankruptcy deadlines have peculiarly short bar dates ignore that...

Massachusetts native Sandra Birchmore’s life hadn’t been easy. Her teen years were difficult at times, and in an effort to make sure Sandra had some strong role models, her mother enrolled her in a program with the Stoughton Police Department. At 13 years old, Sandra was doing bootcamp drills and going on ride-alongs with law enforcement officers. She loved it, and even wanted to go into law enforcement at one point, but thought that with her asthma and being less than five feet tall she wouldn’t be able to. Instead, the 23-year-old was pursuing a teaching career. On a...

The family of Virginia Giuffre — one of the women who accused Jeffrey Epstein of sex trafficking and who died by suicide earlier this year — said Thursday that she would have wanted documents related to the disgraced financier to be made public, as the Trump administration faces mounting pressure around the case. Amanda Roberts, Giuffre’s sister-in-law, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” that in one of their last conversations, Giuffre called for the release of the documents. “She wanted the world to know what they’ve done to her and so many other survivors, and she had...

Sandra Birchmore, 23, texted a friend the news in late January 2021. Farwell, then a police officer in Stoughton, Massachusetts, near Boston, had visited Birchmore’s apartment the night before, according to an affidavit accompanying Farwell’s indictment and arrest for killing her. She thought Farwell bringing soda might be a sign that their relationship was improving. “He’s coming around,” her friend texted. “A lot more than I thought he was going to yes,” Birchmore wrote back. His behavior toward her that night had been markedly different, a “complete 180 from where we were at,” Birchmore texted another person, according to...

The last known person to see Sandra Birchmore alive was a police officer. He stopped by her apartment days before the elementary school teacher’s aide, 23 years old and newly pregnant, was found dead in February 2021. The medical examiner later ruled her death a suicide. The officer worked for the Stoughton Police Department, near Boston, where he first met Birchmore about a decade earlier through the agency’s Explorer post — part of a youth mentorship program run by local departments across the country. He acknowledged having sex with her when she was 15, according to a...

Corey Feldman says he won't rest until his "promise" to Corey Haim is fulfilled. E! News' Melanie Bromley sat down with the 46-year-old Goonies star for a revealing interview about his ongoing crusade to expose alleged sexual abuse in Hollywood. Before Haim's death in 2010, Feldman claims his close friend asked him to shed light on the abuse he says they endured while working as child actors. In Feldman's words, "Corey asked me to make sure that if he died before me that his story was told. I am doing exactly that… The only thing left is he...