When Danielle Bensky first went to The Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, she didn’t know what to expect.
asserted
she → go → what
“What happens if I walk in and survivors’ names are just plastered everywhere?”
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names → happen → ?
Bensky wondered about the reading room, a traveling exhibition of Epstein investigative files, first held in a New York City gallery this May.
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Bensky → wonder → gallery
“Instead, it was just so beautifully done.”
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it → do → ?
The reading room is meant to bring attention to Epstein’s crimes and law enforcement’s decades-long failure to act.
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room → mean → crimes
The former financier, who counted numerous high-profile men among his associates, was arrested in 2019 for sexual abuse of teen girls but killed himself in jail.
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who → count → jail
While Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested and found guilty of luring teen girls into Epstein’s orbit, documents reveal that law enforcement officials were well aware of their crimes decades prior.
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officials → arrest → crimes
Survivors have called for greater transparency and legal actions against any other participants in their sexual abuse.
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Survivors → call → abuse
Bensky also didn’t know what would happen when David Garrett, founder of event organizer the Institute for Primary Facts, floated an idea to make the exhibit more interactive.
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exhibit → know → idea
There was a cork board in the final room and Garrett told Bensky he was going to keep it there when this exhibition opened to the public, so visitors could leave notes.
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visitors → be → notes
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s such a great idea,” said Bensky, who is among the Epstein survivors pushing for accountability and justice.
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who → ’ → accountability
“That’ll be so cool to see.”
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That → see → ?
About a week after the reading room officially opened, Bensky returned and saw “at least six or seven corkboards that were full and overflowing with notes”.
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that → open → notes
There were notes with drawings and notes with abject sadness and “sometimes, it was pure rage”.
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it → be → sadness
Sometimes it was a note directly to themselves, and it got everybody involved,” she said.
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she → get → themselves
“Even members of survivors’ families were leaving notes.
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members → leave → notes
Bensky said the notes have given her hope amid years of institutional failures.
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notes → say → failures
“Being seen in this process has been pretty remarkable.”
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seen → see → process
Visitors have written, “We’re here with you, we stand with you, and we believe you” – demonstrating the “really beautiful empathy that comes with every single note”, Bensky said.
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Bensky → write → note
“There have been days where I felt like I couldn’t really do much.
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I → feel → much
I felt really debilitated,” Bensky said.
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Bensky → feel → ?
“The reading room can be a lot when you’re walking through your trauma all day, and you’re meeting all kinds of people.
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you → walk → people
“But so many of us will just go and sit in the room with all the notes and read the notes, and it’s like, ‘Wow, what an extraordinary thing to actually be seen and be believed by so many people at this point.’”
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it → go → point
Liz Stein, an Epstein survivor, expressed similar sentiments about the power of these notes.
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Stein → express → notes
“It started out with one bulletin board, and I will never forget seeing that one initial bulletin board and just really feeling like, ‘Oh my goodness, people are really reacting to that,’” Stein said.
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Stein → start → that
When the first reading room installation ended, these notes “took up the better part of the downstairs of the exhibit”.
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notes → end → exhibit
“The love that people show us is overwhelming, and every time we do these events with the reading room, every single time, people hug us, they tell us what we mean to them, and a lot of times they’ll say, ‘But it doesn’t matter.
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it → show → times
I’m just someone you don’t know from somewhere you don’t live,’” Stein said.
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Stein → ’m → I
“And it’s like, no, we might not know your individual names, but we feel the love.”
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we → ’ → love
“This wall with the note cards is a really tangible visual representation of how much support we have, and that fuels us in a way that I don’t think people quite understand.”
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people → fuel → that
Garrett said that the idea for a notes space came at the last minute.
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idea → say → minute
He thought that people might experience deep emotions from the exhibit and might feel the need for support.
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people → think → support
So, organizers put up a cork board with information about the national suicide prevention hotline as well as resources for those experiencing gender-based violence.
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organizers → put → violence
Without thinking about it too much, Garrett decided to leave some extra notecards and pens.
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Garrett → think → notecards
“We just put them out and said, “if you want to write a note to the survivors, you can do that,” he told the Guardian.
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he → put → Guardian
“We didn’t think that we would need more than that two foot by three foot corkboard.”
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we → think → corkboard
“By the end of the first day, not only was the corkboard full, but [notes] were taped up all around the cork board.”
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notes → tap → board
After just one day, visitors had left about 300 cards.
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visitors → leave → cards
For the next 10 days, the producer would buy more cork boards everyday.
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producer → buy → boards
There were 30 by the time the reading room ended its initial exhibition.
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room → be → exhibition
…and 17 more, not listed.
The Aporia
