Victims Ignored Is Justice Denied

Upholding victims’ rights is an essential part of serving as a federal prosecutor. This DOJ’s leadership has been consistently ignoring its obligations and losing the trust of crime victims.

Epstein Library website. (Source: Shutterstock)

“We absolutely owe an apology to any victim’s name any time it’s inadvertently released,” former Attorney General Pamela Bondi told the House Oversight Committee on May 29, 2026, about the public release of identifying information of victims in the so-called Epstein files. Yet apologies ring hollow where the actions of this Justice Department’s leadership have repeatedly and deliberately demonstrated just the opposite to crime victims in general, and especially to those who are victims of sexual assault.

Since they first took the helm at DOJ, then-AG Bondi and then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been nominated to become the next Attorney General, have engaged in a pattern of conduct that, at best, has been devoid of humanity for victims, and at worst, has flagrantly violated their statutory rights. Under their leadership, the department baselessly dismissed a case involving sexual abuse of unaccompanied minors, terminated grant funds intended to provide services to sexual and domestic violence victims, and restored firearms rights to domestic abusers seemingly without consulting the abuse victims.

Both Bondi and Blanche know better.

Bondi started her career, like I did, as a state prosecutor in Florida — where victims’ rights, including the right to dignity and freedom from intimidation, are robust. She acknowledged the importance of victims’ rights as she ascended to the position of Florida Attorney General, and then again during her confirmation process before the U.S. Senate.

Blanche, also like me, served as a career DOJ prosecutor. As federal prosecutors, we were bound by the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, codified under 18 U.S.C. § 3771, which guarantees victims the right “to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy.” We were also bound by the Attorney General Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance (AG Guidelines), which were born from a 1982 Congressional Directive to the Attorney General to promulgate the first set of such guidelines. The purpose was to address a “criminal justice system that was unresponsive to the needs of crime victims.” See notes to 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (the victim-witness tampering statute). The AG Guidelines have been revised over time by career officials – the last time in 2023 – to reflect changes in law, the impact of technology, and lessons learned over time. But as another thumb in the eye of crime victims, this DOJ’s leadership archived the AG Guidelines, abandoning the requirement that prosecutors be annually trained on their statutory obligations to crime victims.

Federal prosecutors have more than guidelines and statutes to shape good practice. Toward the end of my tenure at the department, in 2024, I served as the primary author of DOJ’s Framework for Prosecutors to Strengthen Our National Response to Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence. It is a consensus document of more than 120 prosecutors and other law enforcement experts from throughout the country at all levels of government that lays out a blueprint for building provable cases in a manner that ensures victims are treated with humanity, while upholding defendants’ due process rights. It devotes an entire section to encouraging prosecutors to “Use Legal Tools to Protect Victim Safety and Privacy,” further underscoring how paramount the treatment of victims is to the role of the prosecutor.

Treating victims well is not just good practice. A federal prosecutor’s obligation to uphold victims’ rights is part and parcel of upholding the oath to the Constitution and adhering to the rule of law. The Justice Department can’t keep the country safe and hold offenders accountable if victims are not willing to trust prosecutors and investigators enough to come forward and work with them. Crime victims certainly won’t do that if the Justice Department continues to treat victims as this administration has. Victims can see the gap between what this department’s leadership says and what it does, and the failed Epstein redactions are the clearest example of that. This is not a controversial topic. DOJ leadership should be shining a light on serving victims rather than relegating them to darkness. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it more effectively serves justice, the law, and the community.

That is how I practiced as a federal prosecutor and how I trained my colleagues throughout the country to practice during the 16 years that I served in the department. During almost 14 of those years, I handled cases involving marginalized victims. I specialized in prosecuting sex crimes committed by law enforcement and other government actors, having handled more of those cases than anyone in the country to date. I therefore know what it is like to work with victims who, like the Epstein victims, are among the most vulnerable. And I know how crucial it is to protect their privacy and remain cognizant of all they experienced and will experience as their cases play out.

The defendants I prosecuted exploited their government authority to prey upon those they thought no one would believe simply because of their status in life. Like the Epstein victims, the victims in my cases feared intimidation and retaliation by offenders who had a significant amount of power over them. They felt shame for not fighting back or for submitting under threat of violence or other perverse consequence. They felt embarrassment at the prospect of their loved ones learning about what they endured.

Of course, that shame and embarrassment should be placed squarely on the offenders. Yet it explains why victims are reluctant to report in the first instance, and later hesitant to remain part of the criminal justice process, particularly when that process revictimizes them. The consequence is justice denied for the victims as well as for the perpetrators, who will not be held to account. When a victim was willing to come forward, my colleagues and I did everything we could to lessen the trauma of the process, treat them with dignity, protect their privacy, and keep them safe. DOJ’s leadership should be doing the same.

Instead, they have done the opposite. They’ve shelved training requirements, ignored statutes and policies, and cast aside processes that protect victims and shield their privacy. Redacting voluminous electronic files like the Epstein files is no doubt a large task. But as my former DOJ colleague explained, Bondi and Blanche dismantled institutional electronic infrastructure that could have helped manage the Epstein files disclosures, and did nothing to replace it. The ramifications of failing to properly redact the files were nothing if not foreseeable: The document release apparently included more than 6,000 instances of unredacted references to victims’ names, other personally identifiable information, and nude photographs, leading to renewed threats, harassment, and intimidation of victims.

Bondi was right when she told the Oversight Committee that the release of even one victim’s name is a “failure.” Indeed, this department’s leadership spectacularly failed these victims, revictimizing them yet again. The consequences go far beyond what the Epstein victims are currently experiencing. The botched release of the Epstein files — which was overseen by Blanche, according to Bondi’s testimony before Congress — serves as a shrill and deafening deterrent to any victim who may want to summon the strength to come forward and trust the department, but will now choose not to do so. Anyone can end up a victim of a crime, whether it be a law enforcement officer who is assaulted, a teenager who is sexually abused, or a public official who is threatened with violence.

The American people deserve an Attorney General and Justice Department leadership who abide by the law and understand the importance of upholding victims’ rights. Otherwise, we will have a Department of Justice in name only.

Fara Gold spent more than 20 years in government service as a state and federal prosecutor. During her nearly 16 years at DOJ, she served in the Civil Rights Division and in the Office on Violence Against Women. Due to her expertise, she was named the Civil Rights Division’s first Senior Sex Crimes Counsel. She started her career in Florida at the Broward County State Attorney’s Office.