by Jim Herbert
Content note: This essay discusses childhood sexual abuse and its long-term impact on survivors. This piece is long, but it is also vitally important to me in my own healing. Please read at your own pace and care for yourself as needed.
I’ve spent the vast amount of my “unassigned” time over the last few weeks doing everything I possibly could do to stay grounded in my body. In reality, what I’d like to have done for a lot of the time is sit in a dark closet rolled up in a ball with my arms wrapped around my knees like a five-year-old boy trying to hide from the neighborhood bully, but that life strategy doesn’t really serve my current real life circumstances.
So instead, I’ve been doing what I can, when I can, to be present in my life as a father, husband, friend, managing director, maitre d’ and all the other things I’m committed to being on a day to day basis. I’ve been doing my breath work, listening to guided yoga nidra meditations, talking to trusted friends, squeezing in an extra therapy session here and there and sitting in men’s circles. I could probably use eight hours a day of self care practice right now. I’m currently making time for two hours, maybe three on a good day.
On February 3rd, the President of the United States called for Americans to “move on” from the Epstein files. Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, he said, “I think it’s really time for the country to … maybe get onto something else …”
I want to pause here and explain something about how I take in news about the state of the world. It matters to me to stay informed, but it matters even more that I protect my physical, mental, and emotional well-being and avoid frying my human circuitry. As a rule, I check the news once a day, for no more than 15 minutes, never before 9 a.m., and never after 9 p.m. That boundary has served me fairly well for the past year.
But on February 3, when I read that the president of the United States suggested it was time to “move on” from the Epstein files, just as a plethora of new information was coming out, my human circuitry instantly overloaded.
The next day was my daughter’s eighth birthday. Without giving much thought to exactly how overloaded my system actually was, I got up and went about with our plans for the day. I was probably a little bit more subdued than I might’ve otherwise been, but overall we had a lovely time as a family, visiting the Shedd aquarium and grabbing dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.
I went to bed at 10 PM that night and woke up at 2 AM in the morning vomiting profusely.
There was certainly a physical element to what was happening to me. The previous weekend, my daughter had norovirus. I was underslept and overextended. I had eaten a much heavier meal that night than I’m typically accustomed to eating.
That said, I know now that the purge that ensued for the next 72 hours had just as much to do with energetic detoxification as it did physical. As I look back, I have been jokingly referring to it as my non-plant-medicine-based ayahuasca ceremony. I can only hope that it carries some similar long-term integration.
When I read the news that the leader of the free world was suggesting that our entire country turn and look the other way, move on to something that mattered and forget about the past, my body had an uncontrollable and violent reaction.
This piece of writing is not about political parties, religious ideology, or how much you are paying attention to what’s coming out in the Epstein files. This article is about what happens inside the body of an abuse survivor when they have to think about the possibility that abusers are able to walk away without any accountability. In my mind, that applies to any abuse survivor, but in particular to survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
I am the survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
In the past, I’ve more frequently used the term “sexual bullying” because in many ways I have felt that what I went through as a boy was far less egregious than most people who are childhood sexual abuse survivors. More recently, with the support of people around me who love me and very talented therapists, I’ve come to the realization that bullying and abuse are the exact same thing, so now I’m just calling it what it is: childhood sexual abuse.
I don’t need to share the details of my personal story. Some of you who are close to me know more of the story. I don’t feel compelled to share those details in an outward facing public post, but I think it’s important that I tell you that it happened when I was nine years old. Nobody in my family was involved. My father left his body before I even remembered that any of this happened so he never knew, and my mother who is still here has been unbelievably supportive as I’ve been working on processing and unpacking the trauma that has affected every aspect of my life.
But let me assure you it has affected literally every aspect of my life, even without me consciously remembering it for almost 50 years. I can’t possibly imagine what it’s like for the Epstein survivors who are still alive to be experiencing the intensity of this information entering the open frequency of the world.
There is something else I want to name, because people who have not lived this kind of experience often cannot see it from the outside.
When survivors hear powerful voices suggest that it is time to move on from abuse, especially abuse involving children, something ancient and wordless stirs inside. That stirring inside has nothing to do with politics, nor is it in any way ideological.
It’s actually cellular.
The nervous system of a survivor does not register the attempted diversion words as commentary or opinion, but rather it registers those words as a new threat of danger. In many cases, that reactivated trauma taps into the abused’s fear of abandonment, as the old message returns in a new voice: what happened to me does not matter enough for anyone to care.
For many survivors, the most damaging part of abuse was never only the act itself. It was the silence that surrounded it. Or as my teacher Dr. David Bedrick called it: the lack of a witness.
That unwitnessed trauma metastasizes into minimization, gaslighting and the pressure to just “get over it” so that others can feel more comfortable again. Some of that gaslighting and minimization comes from outside sources, like the man in the oval-shaped office who recently suggested we move on, and some of it comes from inside the survivor themself, as they collapse into a puddle of worthlessness.
I know all too well about this because it took me almost 2 years and over 100 therapy sessions from the first onset of my remembering of my own abuse story, before I was able to stop gaslighting myself. And that’s even after multiple therapists, my wife and many other trusted allies told me, “it’s almost an impossibility that you’re making this up in your head, Jim.”
“Move on” is the cultural twin of “it wasn’t that bad.” Both carry the same subtext: your pain is inconvenient for me so make it go away.
In my mind, that is the precise reason why this information about the atrocities that were done to young children has laid dormant for so long. It is not only that there has been a powerful attempt to cover it all up, but it’s also the truth that most people can’t possibly handle what they’re going to see.
This is why language from positions of power matters so much. Leadership language shapes culture and when dismissal comes from the top, it echoes everywhere. Survivors like me don’t just hear a political statement wrapped up in the cover up and gaslighting — they hear a signal about their own intrinsic worth. And I can speak from firsthand experience about the immense collateral damage the lack of self-worth can create over the years.
If even .000001 % of what has come out in the Epstein files is remotely true, I can’t imagine how anyone with a soul could possibly try to sell the lie that it wasn’t that bad.
I want to be very clear about something here, because I know how easily this can be misunderstood. What I am describing here does not come from my own vengeance voice. I am not obsessed with this and I never have been. I am not posting and reposting snapshots of partially redacted files on social media platforms.
What I will say though, is that for the last few weeks, it has been really hard for me not to look at the material in the files, even though I know it doesn’t serve me to do so. To me, I would imagine that it’s a bit like a heroin addict who knows they need to get off the drug, but they can’t find the pathway to stop poisoning themselves.
Ultimately, survivors do not seek endless punishment. What we seek is acknowledgment that what happened mattered, that it was wrong, and that those responsible are not quietly permitted to disappear into the fog of time and fatigue.
One would think that the leaders of the most powerful nation in the world could find the decency to look a victim in the eye and say:
“I’m sorry that this happened to you.”
From what I can tell, that hasn’t happened even once yet. In fact, I’ve seen visual evidence of leaders who were unable to look victims in the eye, and I wonder what it is that makes them so cowardly, compared to those who are brave enough to sit and tell their own unimaginable abuse stories.
As someone whose psyche had managed to bury the trauma for almost five decades in an attempt to protect myself from the pain, I can speak to this next point with authority:
Healing and denial are at profoundly opposite ends of the spectrum.
Healing allows memory to settle without erasure and while the possibility of acceptance may be more than one could ask for, there is at least the possibility that some sort of meaning can be made of it all.
Denial on the other hand demands forgetting, so that others can move on without being inconvenienced. Much like the gaslighting, sometimes that denial comes from the hands of those who are trying to cover things up, and sometimes it comes from the one who was abused because they love the other people in their life so much that they don’t want them to have to experience the pain that they know those loved ones will suffer if they knew the truth.
Accountability on the other hand is what makes healing possible, because it restores a sense of moral order to a nervous system that once experienced violation without protection.
When I think about the survivors connected to the Epstein files, those who are still alive, that is, I know that they must still be carrying the imprint of what was done to them. I cannot begin to imagine what it feels like to watch public attention drift, to hear powerful figures urge the world to look elsewhere, to see perpetrators protected or defended by implication. Survivors – ALL SURVIVORS – know that abusers have always depended not only on secrecy, but on the world’s willingness to look away once the discomfort becomes too great.
Here’s where it gets even more personal for me.
Once again it’s not about political parties or our money or power. It’s about the fact that I’m currently raising a daughter who is pretty close to the same age I was when it happened to me. About the same age as some of the youngest victims that are currently being reported in the Epstein files.
When I look at my daughter, I don’t just see the child she is today. I see every age she has ever been and every age she has yet to become. I see the absolute trust with which children enter the world and the assumption that they deserve to have that the adults around them will love them, protect them, and stand between them and harm’s way, if harm ever tries to find them.
Some might say that to trust is to be naïve, but the reality is that that trust is actually a biological birthright. Human nervous systems are meant to develop inside an environment that is inherently safe, and attuned to the needs of the younger at the responsibility of the elder.
What devastates a child in abuse is not only what is done, but it’s the absence of protection around what is done. The failure to be witnessed in the abuse is bad enough, but to be gaslit and shamed is unthinkable. Every survivor carries some version of that rupture.
So when I hear language suggesting that the world should move on from abuse, especially abuse of children, something inside me reacts first not as a citizen, but as a parent. The most fundamental promise any generation makes to the next generation should be this:
We will not look away when you are harmed.
Keeping that promise is the bedrock of psychological safety and it is also the bedrock of healing.
Children do not need a world that forgets, but rather a world that stays, holding a candle in vigil to the healing. Children need adults who can tolerate discomfort long enough to name what is true. Children need leaders who understand that acknowledgment is not weakness, but that it is generational protection.
And survivors, whether they are nine or ninety, need the same thing children need:
A witness.
It’s disgusting to me that this whole unveiling of the unthinkable truths has been turned into a spectacle and a political waiting game to see if the heat cools off over time. Survivors of all ages, whether they are children or adults, deserve for this to not be a spectacle. We do not need an endless retelling of the stories in the name of revenge. In fact in most cases, certainly in my own case, survivors are not out for vengeance. We are simply out there hoping to be witnessed.
Would it be too much to ask for the leaders in our current administration to simply offer a steady, grounded recognition that what happened mattered, that it should not have happened and that those harmed are not alone in carrying the reality of it?
Saying “I’m sorry” instead of move on is what allows the nervous system of a survivor to begin to soften instead of brace. The act of societal contrition, coming from the leaders, allows memory to settle instead of loop, and makes it possible, slowly and imperfectly, to live forward without erasing the past.
My belief is that those who are unable to acknowledge the pain of others by saying “I’m sorry that happened to you” do so because they are so attached to protecting themself from their own fear, pain or in some cases the accountability that they know might someday come their own way.
When I was nine, I didn’t have the voice I needed to advocate for myself. You can damn well bet that from this day forward, I will use my voice whenever and wherever I can, to advocate for my daughter and other children. When I look at my daughter, what I feel most fiercely is not any particular “right” ideology. What I feel is a ferocity to protect in a way that I never could have felt before I became a parent. It’s like an ancient, biological knowing that her safety matters more than my comfort, more than anyone’s convenience, and more than the world’s desire to tidy away what is unbearable to face.
Every parent understands this concept instinctively, even if they do choose to look the other way to serve their own selfish needs or mask their own wounds. I once heard a man at a retreat weekend say, “Wounded men do wounding things.” It landed for me back then and it feels even more powerfully true as of late.
Any human who has ever had the gift of becoming a parent and has even a modicum of decency, should have a sense that if something were to happen to their own child, or any child for that matter, that they would not want the world to move on. A parent with a soul would want the world to stop, examine everything and name what happened clearly, in order to ensure with absolute seriousness, that harm like that is neither minimized nor permitted to dissolve into silence.
That instinct in me as a father is the same instinct that was violated in me as a child. It is the same instinct I feel now toward every survivor whose story intersects with the Epstein crimes — including the many we will never know by name and those who died in a web of secrecy and cover ups to protect the wealthy and powerful.
There is another reason why all of this matters to me so much and why I literally collapsed when I heard the words move on.
When I first began sharing my own history publicly, cautiously at first, then more openly, something unexpected happened. Again and again, people would pull me aside or write to me quietly afterward as if I instantly became a trusted confidant. These people who pulled me aside and whispered something in my ear were not speaking in abstractions. They spoke about their own loved ones or in some cases, even themselves. What I heard again and again was:
My husband went through something like that.
My son won’t really talk about it, but I know something happened to him.
It happened to my brother.
More than a few times I have heard:
It happened to me and I have never told anyone.
I heard these stories so often that I eventually realized that my story was far more common than I could have ever possibly known. If I had to estimate, I would say at least a quarter, perhaps more, of the people who heard my story had a direct, intimate connection to male childhood sexual abuse.
We live in a culture where men are almost always the abusers. When a man is abused himself, the shame compounds. The voices inside that man’s head might be saying things like, “I was too weak to protect myself” or “I am too scared to tell anyone about it.” I know that I have said those things inside my own head over the last few years.
This is why witnessing matters so much. It matters because abuse does not live only in individual bodies. Abuse lives in families, partnerships, through the generations, and in the quiet adjustments people make around wounds that were never named out loud. When even one survivor is believed and met, it does not end with them. It ripples outward to everyone who loves them and to everyone who has been carrying something similar in isolation.
This is why language that urges forgetting is so destabilizing to survivors. It does not simply threaten individual healing, but it threatens the fragile social permission that allows truth to surface at all.
Healing, as I have come to know it in my own body, has never required me to move on from what happened. It has required me to do exactly the opposite. It has required me to go in to the messiness, no matter how difficult it has been at times. . It took me almost 50 years and a nearly fatal bump on the head to shake things loose enough for me to move gently toward healing, in tolerable increments, with support, with witnesses, and with self-compassion that my younger self never received. Healing has meant integrating my memories into a life story that has been completely re-written without erasing any of it at all. It has meant restoring my dignity where there was once confusion and shame.
Accountability, or even the possibility of accountability, is what makes that integration feel safe enough to occur.
Without accountability, the nervous system reads the world as it once was: dangerous, indifferent, unprotective.
So when I hear powerful voices suggest that it is time to move on from abuse, especially abuse involving children, what I feel is not political outrage. It is protective grief. The father in me, the survivor in me, and the witness in me all respond at once with a voice that has a reasonable ask:
I am not asking the world to live forever inside the horror.
I am simply asking that we not abandon that horror before it is truly and fully unmasked, no matter how uncomfortable it makes some people and regardless of the collateral damage.
So today I stand up and say to those who would tell me to move on, that I refuse your message.
I refuse it for my current self, for the boy I was, for my daughter, and for the countless survivors whose names we may never know. What happened back then mattered. It still matters. It will always matter.
It is most certainly NOT time to move on. It’s time to remember, to be brave enough to look at the horror and to create healing by holding all abusers accountable, not just the ones in the Epstein files, but everyone who ever thought they had a right to do anything to anyone who did not give permission.
Survivors understand something about abuse that societies are slow to accept: harm does not persist for decades without protection. Harm persists because someone benefits from silence and because someone powerful decides that exposure is more dangerous than what was done, either by them, an ally, a supporter or a friend.
As the Epstein files continue to come out, hopefully what is surfacing now is not only what happened to so many, but also who was shielded, who was believed, who was ignored, and who was quietly protected because of proximity to power. When leaders suggest it is time to move on, survivors hear the same old hierarchy reasserting itself: influence over truth, reputation over harm, comfort over accountability.
I believe the moment is coming when that hierarchy fractures.
It’s happening around the world and eventually it will happen here in the United States as well, as the accumulated weight of testimony, memory, and witness becomes too great to contain. It will happen when the cost of protection exceeds the cost of truth and when those who have long relied on position or alliance to evade consequence, can no longer assume it will hold.
History shows that such moments arrive whether the powerful welcome them or not.
I would like to think that we are nearer to that threshold than many of us believe. From where I stand as a survivor, as a father, and as someone who has watched silence damage lives across generations, I say that the long overdue day of reckoning can’t come soon enough.
