She is among at least 10 girls and young women who have alleged they were groomed or assaulted at Zorro Ranch, Epstein’s gated compound, beginning in the late 1990s. Benavidez and others said they were lured by promises of money or career help, then found themselves trapped, surrounded by miles of dry grassland with no neighbors in sight. They said they were groped, forced into nude massages, assaulted with sex toys, raped. They overcame paralyzing fear to share their ordeals again and again. And yet authorities have never fully investigated what happened at the ranch.
“Until we are heard, until survivors are heard and believed, then I don’t think there’s ever going to be any justice,” Benavidez, 52, said in a recent interview, her first since the Justice Department in January released millions of documents that brought renewed attention to Epstein’s activities at the ranch, and missed opportunities to investigate them.
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The disclosures, including an unsubstantiated anonymous claim that two “foreign girls” died during sex and were secretly buried on the property, prompted state authorities to launch new investigations this year — a criminal case led by the New Mexico Department of Justice and a “truth commission” led by the state Legislature.
Benavidez says she would willingly tell investigators what she endured. Even though Epstein is long dead and his chief accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is in prison, Benavidez says more people need to be held accountable.
“I don’t think it’s too late for the truth to come out about people that were involved and helped him and turned a blind eye to his crimes,” Benavidez said. She has not publicly shared names.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he is committed to finishing an investigation that should have been done years ago. His office searched the ranch in March, the first time law enforcement had done so. And he promised to give survivors a safe place to share their experiences.
“We are going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened there, follow every lead, no matter how uncomfortable it is or how long it takes, and most importantly, we need to center the voices of victims in this process,” Torrez told NBC News.
New Mexico has long been treated as an undercard in the Epstein saga, although allegations of abuse there date nearly as far back as allegations in Florida and New York.
He bought the ranch in 1993 and visited several times a year, often with girls or young women. In 2008, he pleaded guilty in Florida to paying underage girls for sex and cut a deal with prosecutors that spared him serious jail time and ended a more expansive federal investigation that included New Mexico. In 2019, federal authorities in New York arrested him on a new set of charges that did not mention New Mexico. The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office opened its own investigation of Epstein that year, but stopped at the request of the prosecutors in New York, ultimately sending them the case file.
She has given interviews and talked to the FBI. The trauma, however, never goes away.
Benavidez now works as a hospice nurse, a job she loves, and she does not want to let Epstein take her attention away from her patients.
She still speaks because she wants to be part of an effort to expose Epstein’s enablers.
“I know that there’s co-conspirators, and there’s people even that I have not named, that I believe were involved and knew what was going on,” Benavidez said. “So I hope that they find the truth so those people can be brought to justice and prosecuted.”
Hallie Jackson reported from Stanley and Jon Schuppe from New York.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. The hotline, run by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), can put you in contact with your local rape crisis center.
