Danielle Bensky was waiting for the bathroom at a New York nightclub when a woman asked if she'd be interested in massaging her client — a wealthy financier named Jeffrey Epstein.
The then 17-year-old was an aspiring ballerina working odd jobs to get herself through ballet school and hoping to earn some extra cash.
"He's lovely, he has a big mansion, he's very wealthy," Ms Bensky recalled being told.
With the impression there was nothing untoward about the opportunity, the teenager and a friend headed to Epstein's Upper East Side mansion.
What began as a "casual meeting" within a couple of months spiralled into Ms Bensky being sexually abused multiple times a week for more than a year by the notorious paedophile.
Now 38, Ms Bensky, one of hundreds of women to have suffered abuse by the convicted sex offender, is speaking out as the Epstein scandal dogs the White House and grips the nation.
Epstein threatened to withhold treatment for Bensky's mother
At the time of the abuse in 2004, Ms Bensky's mother had been diagnosed with a brain tumour and "the survival rate was not great", Ms Bensky said.
Under the impression that Epstein had an understanding of neuroscience, she showed him her mother's brain scans, hoping he could help.
Instead, he gave her an ultimatum.
"He sat me down and said, 'OK, so what will you do for this?' And my heart sank, and I asked him what he meant.
"He's like, 'You have two choices, basically you can recruit and bring me more girls or … you're going to have to do something for this,' and that's when the sexual abuse started."
Ms Bensky says Epstein used her mother's diagnosis as leverage to repeatedly sexually abuse her and threatened to withhold treatment if she told anyone.
She said he also pressured her to recruit other girls for him, something she said she refused to do.
"He had made a comment about, 'Well I know all the top surgeons, I know the anaesthesiologists, I know all these people and I can do something wonderful, and I can make sure she gets the best care, or I can make sure that that doesn't happen for her and I can actually take the care away.'"
Epstein never followed through with helping her mother receive treatment.
In 2005, her mother had a 19-hour brain operation. Once she was recovering at home, Ms Bensky stopped going to Epstein's New York mansion.
The disgraced financier died in a prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial, charged with sex trafficking minors.
His death has been the subject of myriad conspiracy theories and has caused a furore among many of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters, who have long demanded answers surrounding Epstein's death and criminal operation.
Mr Trump, who committed to releasing the Epstein files during his presidential campaign, has lashed out at some of his supporters, accusing them of falling for the "Epstein hoax".
Survivors like Ms Bensky find those comments, and the ensuing politicisation of the case, offensive.
"To refer to it as a hoax, you're basically invalidating our lives, the same way that nobody in that [Epstein] household could look at us and say: 'I see you,'" Ms Bensky said.
"It's a circus, it's become this show on the world stage."
Ms Bensky wants to see more information made public.
"The files are a representation of the trial … and we didn't get that. But we do have the files," she said.
"So that feels like the piece of closure that we're lacking right now.
"He had a full staff, and you just knew that there were people watching you at all times.
"I'd love to know what this whole structure was, and how he got away with it for so long."
Americans feel 'played'
For years, supporters and allies of the president have amplified scepticism and claims of a government cover-up to protect those associated with Epstein.
Factions of the president's MAGA base, as well as some of his Republican colleagues, have maintained calls for classified documents and a rumoured "client list" to be released to the public.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi invited a group of conservative influencers to the White House in February, where they were handed binders labelled "The Epstein Files Phase I".
But much of what was inside the binders was already on the public record.
One of those influencers who visited Washington, DC was conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler.
"I was one of the 'new media' figures … who have been put through the ringer for Attorney General Pam Bondi's gross incompetence and her severe lack of judgement in the way that she rolled that out," Ms Wheeler said.
"I felt angry … because I felt I had not been told the truth by politicians I had extended my trust to."
The Department of Justice and FBI later released a memo that said their investigation had concluded there was "no incriminating 'client list'" and that "further disclosure would not be appropriate or warranted".
Now, Ms Wheeler wants to see the president sack the attorney-general for her "botched rollout" of the Epstein files.
"It's time to rectify this issue, which is why I said [the president] should not tolerate Pam Bondi's behaviour anymore," she said.
"The base feels stung because we have not been told the truth, and we associate the Epstein files now with the question of, are we going to get the justice we voted for?
"The American people feel that this is injustice. They feel that they are being played. They feel there is dishonesty afoot. And of course, that triggers us because we have been harmed by politicians doing this before.
"What we do as President Trump's base is, a true friend tells you the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable, even when that truth might have consequences."
'An own goal'
Author and Washington Post reporter Sarah Ellison described the current Epstein controversy as "an own goal by the Trump administration".
"To say there's nothing to see here and you're not going to see anything else … That created an absolute sense of betrayal and that people had been lied to," Ms Ellison said.
The president has faced growing political backlash with mounting calls for greater transparency coming from some Republican colleagues and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
With Democrats animated on the issue, the president reversed course, directing Ms Bondi to seek the release of grand jury testimony stemming from the prosecution of Epstein.
But the move was blocked by a federal judge in Florida, citing legal guidelines governing grand jury secrecy.
The Justice Department is continuing a push for grand jury transcripts to be released in the state of New York.
Officials have also reached out to the lawyers for Epstein's co-conspirator and enabler, Ghislaine Maxwell, to see if she would speak with prosecutors.
"It's not a comfortable place for Trump's base to be in opposition to him, or to be unsatisfied by him, so everyone is kind of looking for their way back together there," Ms Ellison said
In a move that has split Republicans and outraged Democrats, the Republican leadership also moved to close Congress early to prevent a vote on releasing more files relating to Epstein.
Ms Wheeler said only "radical transparency" will satisfy the president's base.
"They owe it to the American people to give us every bit of Epstein file information that they have, period," she said.
"There should not be any more gatekeeping on this.
"I don't care about the political implications of anything else in those files, release them all."
Trump vs Murdoch
Mr Trump has escalated his legal attacks on the news media and recently settled lawsuits with CBS and America's ABC for tens of millions of dollars.
The president also turned on Rupert Murdoch, suing the media mogul and his newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, for $US10 billion ($15 billion) after it published a story scrutinising his years-long friendship with Epstein.
The Wall Street Journal reported Maxwell had collated a series of letters for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003, which included one bearing Mr Trump's name.
The article also stated the letter included a lewd drawing of a naked woman, which was signed “may every day be another wonderful secret”.
Mr Trump, who only in February called Mr Murdoch a "legend", denies ever writing the letter and claims it is a fake.
Ms Ellison, who previously worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal before publishing a book that detailed the inside politics at the Murdoch-owned paper, said the legal action sends a message.
"It's the most significant media lawsuit that he brought because Rupert Murdoch is the most significant media mogul in this era," she said.
"This is a sometimes ally, this is someone who has essentially, from a media perspective, delivered Donald Trump to us, and now for this to be the person and the institution that Trump is suing, it means that no-one's really safe."
Despite being hit with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit, Ms Ellison said the paper was showing no signs of backing away from its coverage of Mr Trump and Epstein.
"I think Rupert is one of these people who loves nothing more than talking about the news with his editors … but I don't think that he dictates the coverage to them at the Journal."
The WSJ has since published another exclusive story reporting that Ms Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, told the president his name was among many mentioned in files about Epstein.
The White House has labelled it another fake news story.
Away from the dizzying pace of news developments surrounding the case, survivors at the centre of it, like Ms Bensky, persist.
She returned to dancing as a choreographer after taking a hiatus to cope with the trauma of her abuse.
"It was really a struggle for me to come back to the leotard for a while," she said.
"This is a human story. It's not about politics, it's not divisive, it's just to be seen and heard and finding accountability."
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