by Ignacio G. Hutía Xeiti Rivera
Years ago, I would have consumed everything. I would have read every document, watched every interview, memorized every timeline. I would have become an expert in the horror. I know why. I needed to take control of what once felt uncontrollable. Sexual abuse and sexual violence were not abstract subjects in my life; they were the terrain I was trying to survive. If I could know everything—who, why, how—then perhaps I could steady myself inside it.
Saturation once functioned as control. Dissociation once functioned as protection. I drenched myself in the details because understanding felt safer than feeling. Mastery felt safer than grief. If I could map the culture of sexual harm, maybe I could find my place within it—maybe even find purpose inside the madness.
But years of healing have changed my relationship to exposure.
It’s understandable to want clarity about what happened and who was involved. For many—especially survivors—the pull to know more can feel urgent, even necessary. But as the Epstein files are released, I keep returning to a different question: why has the spectacle of the reveal absorbed so much public attention—attention that might otherwise support the ongoing work of healing and repair?
That question has stayed with me as the latest disclosures circulate. Headlines promise new revelations. Social media fills with reactions. And beneath it all is the same belief: that exposure itself is power.
Today, my nervous system does not want every detail. It does not want to hold every document. I no longer mistake total information for safety. I take in what I need to remain aware. I let myself feel what arises. And then I let it move through. I do not live inside it.
I also recognize the familiar cycle—triggering, hypervigilance, retraumatization—moving through survivor communities in real time. The pull to read more. The compulsion to analyze. The exhaustion that follows.
Why do we want to know everything?
Watching the reaction to the Epstein files, I find myself wondering: why do we want to know everything? Are we all, in some way, trying to control what feels uncontrollable? Are we seeking justice? Revenge? Confirmation that this level of abuse is real so that disbelief can finally settle? Are we trying to quiet the gaslighting so many survivors have lived with for years?
Exposure promises certainty. But certainty has never been the same thing as healing.
But what, exactly, is being exposed?
There are several different things happening at once, and they are often treated as the same. First, there was the exposure of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell—the crimes they committed and the harm they caused. That is not new.
Second, there is the exposure of other people connected to them—those who enabled, benefited from, or participated in the harm. Many of these names remain hidden, redacted, or unnamed.
And third, there is another kind of exposure that receives far less attention: the exposure of survivors. Their experiences, identities, and trauma details often appear clearly in public documents, even as powerful people remain protected.
These are not the same kinds of exposure. And they do not serve the same purpose.
Sexual violence itself has never been hidden. It persists wherever power is abuse. Survivors have been naming this harm for generations, often without being listened to or supported. So what are we still waiting for these files to give us?
Are we standing still when it comes to healing? Have we mistaken the pursuit of “justice” for the work of healing and repair?
As we wait—wait for more documents, more names, more confirmation—are we standing still when it comes to healing? Have we mistaken the pursuit of “justice” for the work of healing and repair?
The intense focus on these files suggests that they represent more than evidence. They have become symbols—places where anger, certainty, and moral clarity are stored. There seems to be a belief that if everything is fully revealed, clearly documented, and publicly seen, something will finally change.
That once the truth is exposed in enough detail, it will transform us.
But what truth are we talking about? And whose truth is it?
We already understand many of the patterns of sexual violence—who is targeted, how power operates, the harm it causes. So what is this release meant to do?
Truth is often linked to justice, especially legal justice. But healing requires more than information. Acceptance, care, and change do not automatically follow from exposure.
There is a difference between knowing something and actually processing it. Between witnessing harm and responding to it. Between learning the facts and changing how we live. Knowing alone does not teach us how to hold that knowledge or what to do with it. When we fixate on exposure, we risk mistaking it for transformation.
Part of what makes the files so compelling is the promise of identification. Names. Connections. Monsters. There is comfort in believing harm lives “over there”—with certain people, in extreme places, under unusual conditions. The files offer a map that seems to say: this is where the danger is.
Once we have the names, what will we do with them?
But once we have the names, what will we do with them? Justice? Healing? Transformation? If we claim we want love, connection, community accountability, or transformative justice—what would that actually require here?
It is difficult to imagine those answers when the power involved feels so distant. Epstein owned a private island. The scale of wealth and influence surrounding him feels foreign to most of us. We experience that level of elite power as something separate from our daily lives. But power is not limited to wealth. The poorest among us can wield power over someone else in intimate, relational spaces. Monetary power amplifies harm and expands its reach, but it does not create the dynamics underneath it. But what wealth often provides is not just power—it provides access: access to vulnerable bodies, to protection, and to institutions that obscure accountability. When children are involved, the imbalance is not subtle. They are structurally vulnerable. But wealth intensifies that imbalance by restricting access—access to protection, to being believed, to systems that would act on their behalf.
How do we hold people accountable?
How do we hold people accountable—punishment, or something else? For many people, especially when the harm involves children, the idea of abolition can feel impossible. Abolition is often misunderstood as the absence of accountability. But at its core, abolition asks whether systems built on punishment and cages have ever truly reduced sexual harm — or whether they have simply responded after the fact.
If we are serious about moving beyond punishment toward healing or abolitionist practice, then what my organization, Heal Sweet Home, calls connection skills become essential. Without relational literacy—without the capacity to navigate rejection, power, desire, shame, and repair—we will continue orbiting carceral logic. Abolition is not an idea we announce; it is a practice that requires deep, collective work.
We need mechanisms that help us respond to harm and mechanisms that help us tend to our emotional needs. These are connected but not identical. Survivors deserve care regardless of whether accountability processes succeed. Accountability processes cannot replace the long-term work of healing. Without both, spectacle fills the gap.
Sexual violence does not mostly live in sealed documents or elite circles. It lives in families, schools, workplaces, communities, and everyday relationships. When we pour our attention into spectacle, we pull it away from the common conditions that allow harm to continue.
Bearing witness matters. We should not look away from what has happened. But witnessing must not become distance. If we treat this harm as something that belongs only to elites on private islands, we miss its proximity to our own families, workplaces, and relationships. The work is not only to observe — it is to integrate. To ask what this reveals about how we understand power, consent, silence, and accountability in our own lives.
At what point do we stop witnessing and start consuming?
Another part of the fixation is harder to talk about: the hunger for detail. The need to see exactly what happened—to know how bad it was. This is often framed as bearing witness. But at what point do we stop witnessing and start consuming? We see this pattern everywhere—in graphic movies about sexual violence, in endless crime shows, in court and prison dramas where disturbing details become normal and expected. Over time, horror loses its shock and becomes routine.
In a culture that offers very few ways to process sexual harm together, horror-centered media becomes an outlet. Details become something to trade. Repetition becomes ritual. We scroll, react, argue, and share—not because we are cruel, but because we lack better tools. We have not been taught how to hold this knowledge inwardly or communally without turning away from ourselves or projecting it outward.
The files also promise moral clarity. Once names are revealed, lines can be drawn. Sides can be chosen. People can signal that they are on the “right” side. This can feel like power.
What we rarely ask is what we expect exposure to do.
Those engaged in long-term healing and abolitionist work will recognize this gap well; the problem is not the absence of that work, but how easily it is overshadowed. What tends to rise instead are punishment-focused responses—attempts to address power with more power, harm with more harm—rather than healing or community-based practices that actually reduce harm.
Clarity built through spectacle is fragile. It does not teach skills. It does not prevent violence. And it often does not support survivors in the ways they most often ask for: being listened to, witnessed, and held with care; having harm stop; receiving care and resources; and remaining connected to community rather than pushed aside. What we rarely ask is what we expect exposure to do.
If the goal is punishment, we already know the outcome. Punishment may feel satisfying for a moment, but it has never been a reliable way to create lasting change. If the goal is prevention, exposure alone cannot do that work. If the goal is justice, we have to ask what justice looks like when it moves so quickly from outrage to attention to forgetting, without creating lasting support, repair, or change.
What does focusing on punishment allow us to avoid?
There is another question underneath all of this: what does this focus allow us to avoid?
As long as sexual violence is framed as rare, extreme, and committed by monsters elsewhere, we do not have to face how normalized domination, entitlement, and nonconsent remain in our own culture. We do not have to examine how desire is shaped, or how power and repression distort it.
Prevention cannot begin with horror. When we lead with graphic detail and scandal, we teach vigilance, not relational skill. Real prevention must begin earlier and elsewhere—with body literacy, consent literacy, and the everyday skills of connection—skills that support both healing and prevention. Children and adults alike need language for their bodies, their boundaries, their desires, and their discomfort. They need practice navigating rejection, repair, power, and accountability inside relationships. Without that foundation, exposure becomes spectacle rather than transformation. A culture shaped by capitalism and empire depends on emotional illiteracy; it thrives when people are disconnected from their own bodies and from one another. Institutions built on hierarchy, competition, and control are structurally limited in their ability to teach mutuality and relational accountability. If we are serious about prevention, we have to cultivate capacities that spectacle cannot provide.
Exposure without repair risks becoming voyeurism rather than transformation. This is not an argument against information or truth-telling, nor a call to look away. It is an invitation to ask what information is for. Exposure that supports healing, care, and real change matters. Exposure that retraumatizes, sensationalizes, or replaces action does not.
If the release of the Epstein files is to mean more than another moment of spectacle, it must push us toward harder work: building the ability to respond to harm without relying on documents, courts, or cages; developing healthier ways to understand sex, power, and consent; and creating conditions where harm is less likely to happen—not just more likely to be exposed.
The question is not whether we should know. We already know plenty. The question is what we will build with that knowledge—and who we are willing to become because of it.