Rebecca Austin is the executive director of Safe Voices, a domestic violence and sex trafficking resource center serving Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford Counties. She has been working in the field of gender-based violence prevention and response for 16 years.

Like many, I have been reading through the Epstein files and trying to make sense of the horrendous and devastating things documented in those pages.

As I search for understanding in the unthinkable, what feels most clear to me is the perpetrators’ absolute disregard for the inherent human dignity of the victims, the abuse perpetrated by people emboldened by their positions of power, and the indifference or silence of those who could have intervened but chose not to.

As an advocate in the anti-violence movement for the last 16 years, I am saddened to say that this narrative is all too familiar to me. The web of money, power, and influence used to exploit and traffic human beings, most often women and girls, is not confined to headlines or high-profile cases. It exists here in Maine.

For many, the crimes outlined in the Epstein files can feel distant from daily life, almost surreal in their scale and magnitude. But the truth is this: while the scale may be extraordinary, the dynamics are not. This is not a rare situation; it is an everyday reality playing out on a global stage.

Last year in the United States, tens of thousands of individuals were trafficked. Here in Maine, there are an estimated 300-400 sex trafficking survivors annually, and Safe Voices supported 84 of those survivors last year. Make no mistake, this crime is happening in our own communities.

Numbers like these offer a glimpse into the scope of this issue, but statistics alone cannot capture its complexity. Trafficking in our community rarely looks like abduction to private islands or international travel. More often it is quieter, closer to home, and frequently happens within intimate partner relationships.

Traffickers prey on any existing vulnerability, and when they don’t find that, they create it. This pattern is well documented, including in the Epstein files, where evidence shows that he and Maxwell intentionally targeted girls who had already been victimized by trusted loved ones. They use affection, promises, and emotional dependence to build trust before exerting control.

These dynamics make it especially difficult to recognize and escape, as abuse is intertwined with feelings of love and loyalty. Victims are coerced and threatened, frequently by people they trust. Some are exploited by parents, and others are forced by intimate partners into sexual acts with strangers. These stories rarely make national news, but they represent the lived experience of survivors right here in our community. Reading through the violence detailed in these files, what stands out to me and others who work within the anti-violence fields is that scale and wealth do not fundamentally change the nature of the crime.

Whether perpetrated on private islands or in motel rooms, trafficking is always rooted in the same core dynamics: power, control, entitlement, and the dehumanization of others. It is the story of individuals, often men, who believe they are entitled to purchase others’ bodies, and then leveraging their spheres of influence, status, and power to exploit the vulnerability of those they wish to buy.

Read that again: Those they wish to buy. At a global scale or a local one, that is the story. It is a story about systems that too often fail to protect survivors or hold people accountable in meaningful ways. It is a story about communities that look away and see people as disposable.

Abuse leaves a devastating legacy in the lives of survivors. Whether it unfolds in our community or on the national stage that captures headlines. Survivors carry the same profound violations of trust, safety, and dignity regardless of where it happens or who is involved. Yet too often, the path towards offender accountability and healing are marked by disappointment and dismissal.

Painfully, we saw one way this happens to survivors when Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to look at them. Choices like this compounds the harm survivors experience. It makes them question if our system was built with their justice in mind and if anyone truly cares about what they have endured. And it discourages others from coming forward.

The question I sit with is this: how do we not turn away from the pain of confronting these realities? In a time when nearly everything becomes politicized or reduced to talking points, how do we remain grounded in what truly matters? How do we resist the urge to disengage when outrage fades and attention shifts elsewhere? We have an opportunity right now – a moral imperative – to stare this moment in the eye and refuse to look away. But how?

For me, the answer lies in recentering survivors and their voices. It means insisting on justice even when doing so is uncomfortable or inconvenient. It means remembering that awareness must be translated into action: support local services, advocate for survivor-centered policies, and challenge harmful myths about what exploitation looks like. Most importantly, it means refusing to treat stories like these as distant tragedies we have no control over and instead recognizing them as calls to deepen our collective responsibility to one another and ask ourselves how this is playing out in our own communities. There is no question that it is.

Ultimately, the measure of our response is not in how shocked we are by high-profile cases, but in how we commit to addressing the everyday realities they reveal. How we choose to use our own spheres of influence, status, power, money, and voice to make change in our community. I challenge you to look at your sphere of influence. Define it.

Is your sphere of influence your family? Your neighborhood? Are you in local politics? National politics? Are you a leader at an organization, a company, a local church? Are you a parent? You can and must address these issues of power and control and exploitation in every one of those spheres, and each of those spheres will impact the future of our nation and how we respond to crimes like those perpetrated by the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world.

And, just as importantly, how we respond will impact the future of how we care for victims and survivors.