Trump Is Handing Children Over to an Army of Jeffrey Epsteins

The administration is threatening to strip funding that shields hundreds of thousands of kids from abusers

An empty playground at the Indianapolis, IN, zoo. (Valerie Everett / Creative Commons photo.)

The media focus on Jeffrey Epstein and Pres. Donald Trump’s mentions in the Epstein files has utterly eclipsed the prospect that thousands of children stand to be victimized sexually and otherwise. Because of Trump.

Almost two dozen Democratic officials are fighting to stop it. But there’s an Oct. 1 deadline looming and neither Congress nor the media are prioritizing this.

Indifference to child welfare perhaps ought not be surprising in this administration. For all the noise Trump’s allies made about the Epstein files before they assumed power, it’s becoming increasingly plausible that Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes long before splitting from him. Not to mention the accusations directly naming Trump.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who oversees the Department of Justice (DOJ) and is spearheading everything I’m about to lay out, is part of a Bible study group recently joined by former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who let Epstein off easy with an illegally executed plea deal almost two decades ago.

And it’s worth remembering that the person Trump first tapped to oversee DOJ, and the Epstein files, was then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Trump chose Gaetz as he was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. The investigation concluded in December 2024 that there was “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape,” and more.

Fast forward, and today the administration is preparing to strip untold numbers of child victims from government measures protecting them from further harm. Here’s what’s happening, and who’s fighting back (even if they’re not exactly banging the drums about the full implications).

As soon as Trump took office, he set the wheels in motion for federal agencies to withhold federal funds, illegally, from state and local governments that defied him on a range of issues. One issue was immigration.

On July 21, the Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) added new conditions for grants to assist crime victims. By law, the Victims Of Crime Act (VOCA), the federal government must disburse allocated money to the states for a variety of expenditures aimed at helping crime victims.

Some of that aid goes to help children who’ve been sexually abused escape their abusers. The money pays for shelter, relocation, hotlines, rape crisis centers, prevention programs, legal advocacy, and more.

Trump is now denying that aid to any program that flouts his unlawful demand that they “honor DHS [Dept. of Homeland Security] requests.” doing everything DHS immigration officials demand, of course, would discourage undocumented immigrants from reporting abuse they’ve witnessed or seeking help themselves.

So, last week, 20 states and Washington, DC, sued, seeking to unfreeze $1.4 billion in aid for crime victims. But the funding freeze will kick in as soon as Oct. 1 unless the courts intervene or Trump backs down.

Here’s what’s at stake around the country.

Last year, Rhode Island used $3.3 million in VOCA funding to help more than 41,000 crime victims. In Oregon alone, VOCA reportedly provides significant funding for 146 victim-aid organizations.

New Jersey, one of the states suing the Justice Department, used $21.8 million last year to compensate 5,500 victims of crimes including child abuse and human trafficking. Payments covered costs including “relocation expenses.”

Another $33 million included funds for alerting victims of sex crimes when the perpetrators were released from custody.

In Illinois, funding helps schools prevent sexual violence against children. The state also uses VOCA funds for “transitional housing services that provide safe, supportive housing for victims of domestic violence, trafficking, or other violent crimes.”

Some funds also go to prosecutors’ offices around the country. Government and non-government organizations use VOCA funds for a range of services to victims. Those services include “lodging aid” and “temporary housing,” the East Oregonian reported.

Why would crime victims need somewhere to stay? Often it’s because the perpetrator lives in their home. Trump’s cuts, if they remain in place, will force untold numbers of victims back to the scene of the crime to live under the same roof as their abuser. (A similar lawsuit is challenging Trump’s freeze on aid mandated by the Violence Against Women Act.)

To get a sense of the untold numbers involving the child victims on the line here, I went to the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). The bottom line, the office told me, was that the office doesn’t maintain statistics on how many children are provided with shelter or safe-house lodging to protect them from sexual assault.

But they did provide other numbers suggesting the scope of the sexual abuse Trump could unleash on Oct. 1 by freezing these funds.

For instance, last year, VOCA funding helped provide emergency lodging for victims of any kind of crime 3.3 million times.

The data don’t distinguish between the types of victims provided lodging. But we do know that VOCA funding helped literally hundreds of thousands of child sex-abuse victims. According to the OVC’s website, VOCA funding was used to help victims in 822,855 incidences of child sexual assault.

Some of those instances, however could involve the same victim more than once, and the OJP told me that child sex-abuse victims can only receive such services four times in a year. Therefore, the OJP said, “It would be more accurate to say, ‘an average of 205,713 victims of child sexual assault received services per quarter.’”

The annual number, of course, is likely to be considerably higher.

We don’t know how many of those child victims were put in emergency lodging thanks to federal funds, but we do know that 205,713 such victims got VOCA help every quarter and that VOCA funding provided lodging for victims of any crime 3.3 million times over the year.

For context, the VOCA dashboard counts 4.4 million new victims served last year. and more than 870,000 were under the age of 18.

So we may not be able to pinpoint the exact number of children who will be forced to sleep nights under the same roof as the person or people accused of sexually abusing or assaulting them. But given the hundreds of thousands of kids involved, we can assume we’re talking about hundreds, if not thousand, of children.

And even if we don’t know their numbers or names, and may never see their faces, these are the kids we’re really fighting for.

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TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.