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Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London.

I'm Tim Franks. And we're beginning with the foul cloud that emanates from the Geoffrey Epstein files,

a cloud which continues to hang heavy and to spread and to stain all those it touches.

It will take us today to Washington and also the very heart of the British establishment.

Let's begin in Washington, because there's an attempt going to be launched there in just under an hour for

the law to be changed so that victims and survivors of Epstein's trafficking and abuse

can more easily seek some sort of recompense. Rebecca Zipkin is the policy director of the

advocacy group World Without Exploitation. She's in Washington as part of the campaign.

So the law that's being introduced today would eliminate the federal civil statute of

limitations under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. And what that would do would allow

survivors to bring claims against their abusers civilly. And this is very relevant in the Epstein case.

We're hoping that Congress will pass this law, including a look-back period, which would allow

those who have abused in the past to bring claims for a limited period of time.

So just to be clear, this isn't about criminal cases. This is

about seeking damages. And are you going down that route specifically because you think it would

just be too much to ask Congress to pass a law changing the criminal statute of limitations?

There's already, depending on the crime, but in many trafficking cases, there's already no

statute of limitations for criminal, depending on the specific fix, however, of what you're

charging.

So I can't know exactly what claims would be able to be brought and what would be barred criminally.

But again, with a criminal case, you have to rely on our government to bring a case, which we've seen for decades.

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