The release of information about the powerful cadre of men associated with convicted sex offender and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – known as the Epstein files – has been a long time coming.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in November 2025, the Justice Department must release its documents related to Epstein by Dec. 19, 2025.

But information has been trickling out for months, including more than 20,000 of Epstein’s emails released by members of Congress in November.

In the firestorm of reactions that followed, conservative media figure Megyn Kelly made comments that minimized the victimization of teenagers.

In response to her remarks, a new hashtag, #iwasfifteen, went viral, as celebrities and others took to social media to share photos of themselves as teenagers.

I’m a clinical psychologist who studies intimate violence – from child abuse to domestic violence and sexual assault. After more than two decades in this field, I wasn’t surprised to hear someone minimize the abuse of adolescents. My research and the work of other researchers across the country have shown that victims who disclose their abuse are often met with disbelief and blame.

What did surprise me was how the viral #iwasfifteen hashtag shed light on the dynamics of abuse, pointing to the vulnerabilities that traffickers exploit and the harms they cause.

Unlike stereotypes of teens being kidnapped out of parking lots, people who traffic minors use a range of tactics and build relationships with the teens and tweens they’re targeting. Getting young people to trust and depend on the traffickers is part of entrapping them.

One in-depth 2014 analysis revealed these strategies in action. Researchers looked at more than 40 social service case files of minors who were trafficked and interviewed social service workers.

The researchers........

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