Jeffrey Epstein survivor Dani Bensky has delivered an emotional rebuke of one of US President Donald Trump’s nominees, accusing acting Attorney-General Todd Blanche of failing victims while overseeing the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms Bensky asked fellow survivors to stand before politicians while holding photographs of themselves as children.“I’d like to remind you of who you’re hearing from today,” she said.She then urged senators to “think about the girls in these photos” before voting on Mr Blanche’s nomination.“We may look like grown adults when you see us now, but we were children, young girls at the time of our abuse,” Ms Bensky said. “These are the photos of when our innocence, dreams and lives were stolen.”Ms Bensky, now a teacher and mother, accused the US Department of Justice (DOJ) of re-victimising Epstein’s survivors through repeated errors in the release of investigative files.“Todd Blanche has been at the helm of the release of nude images of survivors, the outing of Jane Does and the exposure of more than 100 victims identifying information and documents describing horrific acts of abuse, including my own,” she said.Ms Bensky told senators the department failed to properly redact her name, phone number and former addresses across multiple document releases.“When my name appeared in the third file release, it became difficult to believe that this was not intentional,” she said. “Despite my lawyer repeatedly contacting the DOJ seeking protection, my information continued to be exposed.”She also criticised Mr Blanche for never meeting directly with survivors despite repeated requests.“Todd Blanche has never attempted to listen to us,” she said. “The crime victims, survivors in this room repeatedly asked to meet with Todd Blanche through multiple channels. He never responded.”Ms Bensky rejected Mr Blanche’s suggestion that investigators lacked evidence Epstein trafficked women to other men, arguing survivors themselves hold information that has yet to be fully pursued. “The survivors in this room know there are investigative leads because they are our stories,” she said. “Mr Blanche knows it too. Yet he has chosen not to pursue them.”In one of the hearing’s most pointed moments, Ms Bensky accused the Justice Department of treating the Epstein investigation as “a political crisis that needs to be managed” rather than a criminal investigation still demanding accountability.“Outing survivors causes real and irrevocable harm,” she said. “While coping with our emotional distress and psychological trauma, we also have lost our privacy and confidentiality, suffered reputational harm, lost jobs and now fear for our personal safety.“We are not activists,” she concluded. “We are crime victims.”Blanche rejects claimsMr Blanche rejected criticism of the justice department’s handling of the Epstein files during his own confirmation hearing a day earlier, describing the release of records under the Epstein Transparency Act as “a Herculean task” involving the review of “millions and millions of potentially responsive files.”He acknowledged the several redaction errors that exposed survivors’ personal information and images. “That doesn’t excuse the mistakes, of which I take responsibility. But it does mean that we tried to fix them,” he said.Mr Blanche also defended the administration’s record on transparency, arguing the Trump administration “has been more transparent than any past administration”.Responding to claims he had ignored survivors, Mr Blanche said the department had spoken with more than 30 representatives of dozens of victims and encouraged survivors and their lawyers to meet with the FBI.He also signalled the Department of Justice remained open to pursuing additional suspects if new evidence emerged, saying prosecutors would bring charges should further information come to light.Mr Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal defence attorney, has served as acting attorney general since April after the dismissal of Pam Bondi.Read related topics:Donald Trump