\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>n 9 September 2022, Lucia Osborne-Crowley flew from London to Miami and caught a Greyhound bus north to West Palm Beach. The writer and journalist had arranged to meet Carolyn Andriano, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the age of 14 until she was 17, starting in 2001. Andriano had been a crucial witness in the trial against Maxwell in 2021.<\/p>\n When the two women met, Andriano said she had just been visited by a private investigator \u2013 a man in his 60s, who had heard she was talking to someone about a book. In a restaurant that afternoon, Osborne-Crowley was approached by a man in his 60s. What was she writing, he wanted to know. He offered her drugs, cash and a meeting with one of Epstein\u2019s pilots, then put his hands under her skirt. When the manager asked him to leave, he waited in the car park; Osborne-Crowley had to escape through a staff exit.<\/p>\n She had been following the Epstein case for six years by then and had written a book about the Maxwell trial, The Lasting Harm; this was just a taste of what others had experienced. In November 2025, 28 Epstein survivors released a statement saying many of them had received death threats. They all asked for police protection.<\/p>\n With Epstein dead and Maxwell in jail, who was paying these men? \u201cIt could be any of the people who are not yet facing charges,\u201d says Osborne-Crowley when we meet. \u201cFirstly, they can afford it. The weekend I was in Miami, there was a person following me, a person following a survivor in South Africa who was in my book, and a person following a survivor in the UK. Just so that we all were aware.\u201d Two women withdrew from The Lasting Harm after receiving threats. \u201cGhislaine used to tell them: \u2018If you ever tell anyone what\u2019s going on here, no matter how far into the future, we will find you and we will stop you.\u2019 And in a lot of ways, that promise was kept.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018A group of 12 people decided that this conspiracy was real\u2019 \u2026 a court illustration of Maxwell during her trial in 2021.<\/span> Photograph: Jane Rosenberg\/Reuters<\/p>\n Osborne-Crowley, 34, is sitting on my sofa after making a fuss of my cat, in a lunch break between filing court reports for the legal news service Law360. She wears black cowboy boots and keeps her scarf on, apologising in a just-detectable Australian accent (she moved to London from Sydney in 2018) when she needs to answer a work email. It\u2019s a busy week, with a class action against Amazon, a landmark disability claim and the latest round in a lawsuit backed by Ronnie O\u2019Sullivan against snooker\u2019s governing body. But it is the constant stream of Epstein revelations to which she returns, specifically their effect on the women she has come to know as friends.<\/p>\n This is her frustration: that the coverage centres Epstein, Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and tries to unpack their psychology and connections, finding it easier to talk about political corruption than sexual abuse. The human collateral gets lost, as does the survivors\u2019 agency. \u201cThis would never have happened if these women hadn\u2019t campaigned for this act [the US\u2019s Epstein Files Transparency Act]. We don\u2019t need more articles or books saying: \u2018Ooh, Jeffrey Epstein, how do we understand him?\u2019 There are a lot of things that need more scrutiny, but it\u2019s not the yachts and the islands and the opulent wealth. This is a story about grooming and the girls who lived through it.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as Andriano, Osborne-Crowley writes in her book about Jane, who was approached by Maxwell and Epstein at a summer camp in 1994, when she was 14. There is Annie Farmer, who was invited to a weekend retreat for bright students at Epstein\u2019s ranch when she was 16, only to find no other children there. Kate, 17, was promised an introduction to a music producer in London. Liz Stein was a 21-year-old personal shopper in a New York department store. Jess Michaels was a 22-year-old dancer when Epstein raped her after a massage, as long ago as 1991.<\/p>\n double quotation markGhislaine used to tell them: \u2018If you ever tell anyone what\u2019s going on here, no matter how far into the future, we will find you and we will stop you\u2019<\/p>\n Reading their stories, what strikes you is the similarities \u2013 the love-bombing, the identification of weakness, the financial help, the gifts of lingerie, the name-dropping \u2013 as well as how that playbook was finessed over time. In 2004, when Andriano got too old for Epstein, he asked her to recruit younger friends from school. \u201cWhy would I want to be friends with girls younger than me?\u201d she said at Maxwell\u2019s trial. \u201cThat would be so uncool.\u201d<\/p>\n Andriano died in a hotel in May 2023, eight months after Osborne-Crowley\u2019s visit. The autopsy recorded an accidental overdose of methadone and fentanyl. It was a shock to those who knew her. \u201cShe\u2019d been clean for so long and I spoke to her the day before,\u201d says Osborne-Crowley. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like she was about to relapse for the first time in 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n For the Epstein survivors, the recent release of files has been vindicating and re-traumatising, she says: \u201cIt\u2019s so complicated. They feel very validated on some levels.\u201d At the same time, central figures were concealed and survivors\u2019 names left unredacted. <\/strong>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to be shocked at this point, but it does feel really shocking that the Department of Justice would do that. And they are very angry that the cover-up is so brazen. The law says that the only things that can be redacted are the names of the victims. So you\u2019ve got the executive branch breaking the law, and in a way that\u2019s sloppy.\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein abused hundreds of women, most of whom prefer to remain anonymous. Does belonging to that group, \u201cthe Epstein survivors\u201d, minimise them \u2013 an interchangeable mass of Jane Does, as Epstein saw them?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s both good and misinformed,\u201d Osborne-Crowley says. \u201cGood because they have voices and the attention of politicians. But it is frustrating to be treated as though you have the same opinions. Carolyn was 36; Liz is in her 50s. This operation was very different in the 90s than it was in the mid-2000s, so people\u2019s experiences are different. I\u2019ve seen people latch on to that as \u2018infighting\u2019. It\u2019s ridiculous, because there\u2019s no world in which it would make sense for them to agree on everything, given how sophisticated this operation was.\u201d<\/p>\n A<\/span>s a child, Osborne-Crowley was a star gymnast. At 12, she represented Australia at the world championships. She did triple somersaults in the air and held a handstand with one arm. The training was relentless: camps where she was woken for a 5am run by Rihanna\u2019s Pon de Replay on full blast; a diet of raw eggs, protein powder and milk. \u201cI had to be strong and powerful and graceful and light, all at the same time,\u201d she writes in her 2019 memoir, I Choose Elena. \u201cI had to smile.\u201d The judges nicknamed her \u201cthe smiling girl\u201d.<\/p>\n She was training for her second world championships, at 15, when she was raped by a stranger in Sydney. A man in his 30s marched her into a McDonald\u2019s toilet and she escaped only by smashing a bottle on the floor and startling him. She didn\u2019t go to the police, but gradually dropped out of gymnastics and began to develop chronic pain symptoms, later diagnosed as endometriosis and Crohn\u2019s disease. Over years of treatment, she surfaced memories of being abused by a gymnastics coach \u2013 and realised she wasn\u2019t the only one.<\/p>\n \u201cMy friends joke that I\u2019m a very all-or-nothing person,\u201d Osborne-Crowley says. \u201cI have the institutional childhood abuse and the violent rape, these things I told nobody<\/em> about for 10 years. And then I publish an essay and tell everybody, all at once.\u201d In her memoir, she details the physical cost of suppressing this and the science around it \u2013 the addictions and autoimmune diseases that are the body\u2019s way of processing trauma.<\/p>\n Covering Maxwell\u2019s trial was a way of making something good come of that knowledge. \u201cIt certainly wasn\u2019t therapy. It would have been much easier to do my actual therapy.\u201d She describes the process of writing The Lasting Harm as a steep learning curve, in which more experienced reporters taught her how to pace herself. The Epstein survivors were vital, too. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to overstate the role that Jess and Liz played in that. I\u2019ve learned since then I\u2019m not going to be helpful to anyone if I\u2019m not around, literally or emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018It\u2019s hard to overstate the role that Jess [Michaels] and Liz played\u2019 \u2026 Liz Stein (right)<\/em>, a survivor of Epstein and Maxwell, speaks before the State of the Union last month.<\/span> Photograph: Alex Wroblewski\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Was she sometimes suicidal? \u201cYes. But it\u2019s also about being fully present \u2013 you can\u2019t be a good journalist if you can\u2019t be present when someone is telling you the worst thing that happened to them.\u201d Are there things she can\u2019t print that she wishes she hadn\u2019t heard? \u201cNo, because those things make me aware of how dangerous [Epstein] was. There are a lot of details people would be shocked by, in terms of the depravity and cruelty. I wish I could communicate that.\u201d<\/p>\n She is now more careful about what she takes on, referring broadcast requests to survivors. She was asked to write a column about the arrests of Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson, arguing that women had been failed because they weren\u2019t charged with sex or trafficking crimes. \u201cAnd I said no, because that doesn\u2019t happen to be my opinion. But also, I\u2019d been speaking to Virginia Giuffre\u2019s family, who were celebrating a huge moment of justice.\u201d (Mountbatten-Windsor has denied Giuffre\u2019s allegations of wrongdoing and the Metropolitan police said in December it would not launch a criminal investigation into the sexual allegations against him, while Mandelson has never been suspected of any sexual offending.) She points out how much easier it is to investigate someone over allegations of misconduct, with its apparent paper trail, and that the questioning of Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s protection officers suggests the investigation will go wider.<\/p>\n The Epstein-Maxwell network was so extensive and elite that it can read like a conspiracy theory. Were all these people really<\/em> connected? It doesn\u2019t feel like an accident that, at Hillary Clinton\u2019s congressional hearing last month, two Republicans raised Pizzagate and UFOs, as if to blur fact and fiction. Is there a danger that, in the public imagination, all of this seems too bad to be true?<\/p>\n \u201cWe owe it to the victims to stop that part of ourselves that thinks it\u2019s too much,\u201d says Osborne-Crowley. \u201cI have a source who saw a lot of these people on the island, and she\u2019s been saying it for a long time and nobody believed her. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of three counts of conspiracy. A group of 12 people decided that this conspiracy was real.\u201d<\/p>\n A frail Bill Clinton told the same congressional committee that he \u201csaw nothing that ever gave me pause\u201d. In the many conversations Osborne-Crowley has had with survivors, no one has made an allegation about the former president. But he was useful to Epstein in other ways. Juliette Bryant, who was trafficked from Cape Town in 2002, has told reporters she first met Epstein when he was having dinner with Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, an account supported by flight logs and which Clinton has not denied.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018He was being used as a grooming tool\u2019 \u2026 Bill Clinton (in red)<\/em> with Kevin Spacey and Ghislaine Maxwell.<\/span> Photograph: AP<\/p>\n \u201cHe was being used as a grooming tool,\u201d says Osborne-Crowley. \u201cThat\u2019s not to say he knew that was happening, but that\u2019s what Jeffrey was doing. It gave him huge amounts of legitimacy \u2013 he was the reason people thought it was safe to be in that group.\u201d<\/p>\n In December, Maxwell played her final card, a habeas corpus petition to have her conviction overturned. It mentioned Osborne-Crowley six times. These were references to Osborne-Crowley\u2019s post-trial interview with the juror Scotty David, in which he spoke about his experience of sexual abuse. In 2022, Maxwell\u2019s lawyers called for a retrial, declaring David unfit because he had not declared this in a pre-trial form, but they were denied. \u201cA retrial would be saying a sex abuse victim can never serve on an impartial jury,\u201d ruled the judge, Alison Nathan. \u201cThat is not the law, nor should it be.\u201d Two subsequent appeals have failed.<\/p>\n How did it feel to see herself form part of Maxwell\u2019s last line of attack? \u201cVery strange. She interacted with me quite a lot in the courtroom. She\u2019d wave and wink and once started sketching me. But that whole ordeal was incredibly difficult. I knew the case law on what would disqualify a juror and I knew this wouldn\u2019t amount to that, but it was still horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot has happened since Maxwell was convicted: her lawyers sued her for non-payment of fees, then Maurene Comey, the federal prosecutor in the case (and the daughter of the former FBI director James Comey), was fired last summer by Donald Trump. Soon afterwards, Maxwell was interviewed by Trump\u2019s former lawyer, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche. She told him: \u201cThe president was never inappropriate with anybody.\u201d A week later, she was transferred to a minimum-security jail. \u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve ever heard of a defendant choosing not to testify in court and then being given carte blanche to tell her story, unchallenged,\u201d says Osborne-Crowley. \u201cShe blames Virginia [Giuffre] for recruiting everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n What hasn\u2019t happened in the US is any arrests, even though women have been reporting Epstein to the police since at least 1996. \u201cThere are thousands of people who could have intervened. Or they did intervene and the person they reported it to didn\u2019t do anything,\u201d says Osborne-Crowley. \u201cCarolyn and Virginia could still be alive. There will be more people who die before their time because of the toll this trauma takes <\/strong>on a person\u2019s body.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018There will be more people who die before their time because of the toll this trauma this takes on a person\u2019s body.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Osborne-Crowley is managing her own trauma better these days. She no longer has to flag down taxis so that she can lie on the back seat for 20 minutes, waiting for the painkillers to kick in. She has beaten several addictions and lives in London with her boyfriend and their cat. The coach who she says abused her (who has not faced charges) has stopped contacting her on social media, where his feed is full of photographs of girls who look a lot like her.<\/p>\n Grooming is the same wherever you find it, she says. She remembers sharing her story with one of Epstein\u2019s survivors, half apologetically; it was nothing like her experience and there were no billionaires. \u201cAnd she said: \u2018Look, obviously it makes a lot of things different that Epstein was a billionaire. But it\u2019s not just about the most powerful people in the world. It\u2019s about the people who are the most powerful in your neighbourhood, your school.\u201d<\/p>\n Those people won\u2019t go away, Osborne-Crowley says, but she is hopeful that our understanding of grooming is shifting \u2013 that if people can join the dots between, say, Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Jimmy Savile, the Rotherham and Rochdale gangs, <\/strong>they might stop it when they see it. Meanwhile, the Epstein survivors will push for people to be held accountable and more files to be released.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are very motivated, because they can see that it\u2019s working,\u201d she says. \u201cI was speaking to <\/strong>Liz and Jess and they were at the State of the Union in DC. They were guests of one of the congressmen who introduced the Transparency Act. Jess said: <\/strong>\u2018If you grow up in America and you ask your parents for something crazy, like really<\/em> ridiculous, they\u2019ll say: \u2018What do you want \u2013 an act of Congress?\u2019 But we did it: we created an act of Congress.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In the UK, t<\/em>he NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. <\/em>In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International<\/em><\/p>\n Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, <\/em>Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. <\/em>In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org\/rcip\/internl.html<\/em><\/p>\n In the UK and Ireland, <\/em>Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie<\/em>. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On 9 September 2022, Lucia Osborne-Crowley flew from London to Miami and caught a Greyhound bus north to West Palm Beach. The writer and journalist had arranged to meet Carolyn Andriano, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the age of 14 until she was 17, starting in 2001. Andriano had been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[23654,13102,3804,2171,6616,5260,6617,23655,20368],"class_list":{"0":"post-46217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-brazen","9":"tag-coverup","10":"tag-expose","11":"tag-fight","12":"tag-ghislaine","13":"tag-journalists","14":"tag-maxwell","15":"tag-tenacious","16":"tag-traumatic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}