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- [00:01]
Interviewer
Get the ice cream.
- [00:02]
Lucia
Love big freezer. It's by the peas.
- [00:11]
Public Service Announcer
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- [00:32]
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- [01:01]
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- [01:51]
Interviewer
So can you tell us, Lucia, a little bit more about the. The trial and what you learned from it being one of the only people allowed in. It's such a. It feels like a privilege to be able to talk to you about exactly what happened and what you learned.
- [02:10]
Lucia
Thank you. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. I mean, I really did learn so much more even than I expected being in that room. As I've told you before, I was kind of so determined to be in the room, but I didn't really realize just how much more I would learn from being in there. One of the things, one of the most obvious things I guess is I was sitting a foot or two away from Ghislaine Maxwell for five and a half weeks. We interacted quite a lot, so I got a sense of what she is like, or at least how she was approaching that trial. And that was incredibly jarring for me and incredibly informative because she was very blase about the whole thing. She was chirpy, she was chatty, she was relaxed. You know, I didn't expect this at all, but she kind of walked in every day as though it was just kind of an everyday occurrence for her to be at her own federal sex trafficking trial. And it struck me that she was very convinced that she would be acquitted. That was my impression. It seemed very much like she was kind of like, oh, I have to sit through this. It's a box ticking exercise, but of course I won't be convicted. And so, for example, she, when all these legal arguments were being made about her committing some of what we all agree are the most heinous crimes, she was just doodling. She was playing with her legal pad and at one point, so I was sitting right next to Jane, who is the sketch artist for Reuters. So, so Jane had this huge pad and she was sketching Ghislaine and Ghislaine obviously didn't like that. So at one point she just started sketching Jane in return, but just with a legal pad and a biro and would kind of show her these sketches. So they had this really strange back and forth. And then I pointed out to someone who was sitting next to me, I said, oh, look, you know, this is happening. Ghislaine is, is drawing Jane. And Ghislaine saw me do that and then she started drawing me and again, like showed me this little stick figure biro drawing of, of me. And we were kind of had eyes locked for, for what felt like, you know, a few minutes. And she was just really staring at me and drawing. And, you know, I think that's an interesting example of how she was approaching everything. You know, she was trying to have some power over me.
- [04:56]
Interviewer
Do you think that speaks to a sociopathy?
- [05:00]
Lucia
Yeah, I mean, it definitely felt like something very unusual in, in a kind of normal human context. It didn't feel like interacting because if
- [05:10]
Interviewer
a normal person was up for sex trafficking charges and they knew they'd done it, there would be a shame. There would be a wake up realization of, oh my God, what have I done? Or there would be a performance of but I haven't, or I didn't mean to, or I was led astray, or if they really believed they hadn't done it, there would be a horror and an anxiety about it and like, I can't believe I've been accused of this, but in all states there would be some evidence of, I'm horrified by this, I'm horrified by my own actions, or I'm horrified by. So the fact that she didn't bother to do that. Do you think she just thought, I'm above the law, why should I pretend that's.
- [06:01]
Lucia
That is what it felt like to me. That was the impression I got that there was no. Even pretending, as you say, there wasn't even a performance of kind of engaging in the seriousness of this. And the other story that I think really speaks to this is. So Ghislaine's birthday is on Christmas Day, and we got Christmas Day off from the trial. I think we got Boxing Day off as well. We came back on the 27th and she walked in with her prison guards, who she was very friendly with. She was always kind of. There were these two young women, she was always chatting with them, laughing with them. She walked in and all her lawyers stood up and went, happy birthday, G. Happy birthday, G. And she gave everyone two kisses. And then she kind of looked at us as though we were going to wish her a happy birthday. And it really felt like she felt like she was walking into her own cocktail party and not her own federal sex trafficking trial.
- [06:54]
Interviewer
Wow. Wow. Whether that's a. I mean, well, I think we're not meant to diagnose sociopathy, but whether that is some kind of sociopathy or whether it is
- [07:08]
Lucia
such a
- [07:09]
Interviewer
huge entitlement because she was raised by Robert Maxwell and the implications of that in, I suppose, a rarefied environment and where corruption was a normal part of life, I don't know. It's very difficult to say. But it does not speak to a normal human reaction to those situations.
- [07:33]
Lucia
Yeah. And I think, you know, to what you just said about entitlement, I think it is. And again, you know, us can ever know for sure, but the fact that she's lived in that world where she is surrounded by entitlement and is so protected from the law. You know, the thing about, you know, when we think about whether these people see themselves as. As above the law, when we think about the Epstein case, the really, really sad fact is that they have been. They have been above the law in practice because, you know, this. The first complaint was made to the FBI 30 years ago and, and not nothing happened about it for such a long time. So, you know, they feel like they're above the law and there's a lot of evidence for them to reinforce that idea because. Because they, they were allowed to get away with this for such a long time. And, and, you know, thank God there was some semblance of justice in Ghis case as she was convicted. But the, the way this has been handled by the authorities just shows, you know, that a lot of these people really can get away with these things for decades.
- [08:47]
Interviewer
And it did seem like he was working with at some kind of higher level, bribing people, blackmailing people. So perhaps she'd been promised, well, this will never come back at you. You'll never go to jail. There's a lot of speculation about whether the person who is now in jail is the person who was on trial because people say that they can see differences having sat so closely to her. Do you think the person who's in jail is the person who was on trial?
- [09:14]
Lucia
It's very hard to say. I mean, just, just by virtue of having eyes, I can see that they certainly there are obvious visual differences. And, you know, I can say that, as you say, having sat very close to her, a lot of her facial features look very, very different in those interviews that we're seeing. I mean, the nose and the bone structure. So, you know, I don't know if there's some other way to explain that. So, you know, I don't want to definitively say that I think it's not her, but I think.
- [09:49]
Interviewer
Does it sound like her voice?
- [09:51]
Lucia
Not quite. No. There is something, there is something off about the voice as well, the. All of it, you know, watching and, you know, it's. I guess it's important to say we didn't hear her voice that much at trial because she decided not to testify in her own defense, although she did speak at sentencing at length. So, you know, I have heard her speak up close and, you know, it doesn't match. It's very clear if you have eyes and ears, that it doesn't match. And I don't know what the explanation for that is, but, you know, it looks very suspicious.
- [10:25]
Interviewer
What else did you learn at the trial?
- [10:28]
Lucia
I mean, this might sound like a really obvious point and something that we all know, but seeing it up close was a real lesson for me, and that is just how poorly the survivors were treated in this trial. Because I was around them, I was talking to them, and the way that the Department of Justice and the actual court administrative staff treated them was, I would say, almost contemptuous. You know, it was nasty, it was cruel, and it's just, it's so sad because, you know, they've been waiting 30 years or, you know, at that point more like 25 years for some form of justice. And then when there finally is a trial, the abuse continues in this sense that they're treated so badly by the court system. So, for example, one of the survivors who I became very close with and who was in my book, she was traveling every day, hours and hours every day to get to the trial. And because she didn't line up at 1 o' clock in the Morning. They wouldn't let her in. And, you know, this is the trial of, of her own abuser. And I had all these arguments with the security where I said, look, you know, what are you doing? There is a piece of legislation in the us, the Victims Rights act, which says that you have to be entitled to a seat in a courtroom of your abuser. And I kept saying that and they just wouldn't listen to me. And they just said, if she wants to be in the room, she has to line up at the same time that you did. And I said, that's completely absurd and cruel. You know, it is hard enough for these victims to see this trial and to hear evidence about all the horrible things that they went through and to hear the defence mount what was a really insulting defence of Ghislaine Maxwell. Their only defence, really, was every single one of these victims is lying. They've made it up for money and fame. That was. That was really the only defense. So it's already hard enough to have to hear that. And then they're also faced with the indignity of having to fight even for a seat. And at one point I said to the guard, I said, look, I've got my seat for today. Can I just swap with her so I'll go into an overflow room? And he just said, no, no, the rules are rules. Like, you got here first, it's your seat. You can't swap seats, can't give it to her. So, like, that just shows, you know, that there's no practical reason for that rule, right? There is absolutely no reason that I shouldn't be allowed to swap with her, but they wouldn't let us. And, you know, I just know that the survivors had such a terrible time throughout the whole trial. And it just speaks to this kind of the way that the justice system often continues abusive patterns, even when it's performatively delivering justice. So that was another. Another really important thing. And then also just being able to be in the room listening to the survivor witnesses testify was an incredible experience because, again, of course, we all know how hard that is. But. But seeing people do it in this way, you know, it really home just how much courage it takes to do that. And then that, you know, tells us why so many of us don't do it. I, for example, have never done it in, in my own cases of, of sexual violence. And, you know, I'm so amazed at the survivor witnesses who, who were able to do it, because when you're watching it, it is just such a horrific Experience to have to go through to, to recount some of the worst things that have ever happened to you and, and the law. This is why I think the criminal law fundamentally not fit for purpose when it comes to sexual offences. It demands a narrative, you know, a clear narrative of tell me what happened, beginning, middle, end. And what we know about traumatic memories is that they don't function narratively, they can't be stored in the brain as narrative memory. So it's very hard. It's like you're being set up to fail, essentially. And then the other thing I learned, you know, I've covered a lot of trials in the uk, but I have never seen anything as awful as the way the defence lawyers treated the victims when they were cross examining them. It was, and again, you know, I knew, I knew that they would be nasty, but this was, I would say, bordering on bullying. It was incredibly vicious. So, you know, one example is one of the victims who testified under a pseudonym. She is now an actor. As we all know, this was part of Epstein's grooming process. He would find people often in the kind of performing arts, he would find vulnerable kids who had dreams of being artists. And he would say, I'm gonna save you, I'm gonna help you do this. I'm gonna make your dreams come true. I believe in you. That's how he got access to children. A lot of the time this particular woman went on to become a successful actor and that's all totally entwined with her story, her Jeffrey Epstein experience. And yet the defense got up and said, so, so you're an actor? And she said, yes. And they said, so you make things up for a living?
- [16:16]
Interviewer
Oh my God.
- [16:18]
Lucia
And then they just kept asking that same question, a version of that question. You tell stories for a living, you pretend for a living, you know, saying you would be very skilled at getting this jury to convince that you're emotions about this are genuine. And it's just, you know, I personally don't think that kind of questioning should be allowed. There's another one of the victims, like
- [16:43]
Interviewer
saying an actor can't tell the truth.
- [16:45]
Lucia
Exactly. Right. I mean, it, you know, it's, it's absurd and that kind of absurdity has no place in the law. Like, I just, I just don't understand why judges allow these kind of questions to be asked. And another one of the survivors had, well, many of them, but this one in particular had struggled with addiction. And we know, and we'd heard from an expert witness, we know from all the research that abuse in Childhood is very, very, very highly correlated with addiction in adulthood. There's a very, very clear connection between the two. And in this case, this victim had actually said to this jury, she was brave enough to say to this jury, when I was 14, 15, 16, I started taking opiates in order to block out the memories of what Jeffrey was doing to me. So she said that she started getting opiates in order to deal with this incredibly traumatic situation she was trapped in. And opiates stop things like nightmares and help you kind of black out memories. So she said that. So it's very clear that as it is with so many child abuse survivors, that the addiction is. Is linked to the abuse. And yet the defence barristers were allowed to get up and. And at one point they said, well, I mean, you're a heroin addict. Why should we trust anything that you say? You're just a junkie and you know it. It's just so. It's so cruel.
- [18:22]
Interviewer
And.
- [18:23]
Lucia
And again, if you understand the research, you know that someone struggling with substance abuse makes the story more likely to be true, not less likely to be true.
- [18:34]
Interviewer
So you're either a successful actress and then you can't be believed, or you're struggling with substance abuse abuse and then you're a junkie and you can't be believed.
- [18:43]
Lucia
Exactly.
- [18:44]
Interviewer
So there's really no way that anyone's going to be believed because no matter what, what you've managed to do or not do, post this abuse, this ritualized, continuous abuse where you just can't be believed.
- [19:01]
Lucia
Exactly.
- [19:02]
Interviewer
But she was believed. But they were believed because Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced. What was it like when she was. When she was found guilty?
- [19:13]
Lucia
Oh, my goodness. So this was, as I've told you before, I lined up about one o' clock in the morning every night, but there was one night where I didn't go back to my hotel at all. I just came out from the day before and stood right in front of the courthouse and just stood there from 6pm till 8 o' clock the next morning. I didn't know this at the time, but that was verdict day. So in these kind of trials, when the jury goes out, basically you have to be there all day, but nothing happens. You're just waiting. But you can't leave because they could come back at any time. So you can't go get a coffee, you can't go get food because you might miss it, you know, it doesn't take. It doesn't take very long to read out a verdict. Well, yeah, I was I was feeling very poorly by the, the jury deliberation days were by far the worst.
- [20:08]
Interviewer
But you can't go and get a coffee.
- [20:10]
Lucia
I mean, you can, but it's just very risky because you might, you might miss the verdict. And by then I was so invested, I didn't want, I didn't, I didn't want to miss it. And you don't get any warning or anything. They just come in and then they just read it and it's all over in a few minutes. So. And, you know, I had some, I had some good, good friends and we kind of, we, we tag teamed, you know, so we did manage to get ourselves some nourishment. But also we remember, we, none of us were allowed phones, so it's not like we could text each other and say, the jury's coming back, come upstairs from the cafeteria. We couldn't communicate with each other at all. So we'd had four days of that, just kind of waiting around, doing crosswords, chatting to each other. The jury would come back with questions, and questions are often very helpful to us to understand what the jury's thinking. And then it was right at the end of the fifth day, and the jury usually goes home about 4, 4:30, and there was a note from the jury. So we were all sitting there and the judge said, we have a note from the jury. And it was about 10 past 4, and we just all kind of said, I bet they're just asking to be released a bit early. You know, it's been, I think it was a Friday. I, I could be wrong about that, but we just thought they probably just want to go home early. And she kind of looked at the note and she just nodded. The judge didn't give any indication of what the note said. And then this one security guard who we had all had many interactions with, he screamed at me at one point about trying to offer my seat to this survivor. He was a very aggressive man, very hostile to the press, very hostile to the victims. He came running into the courtroom and he was always in this really fancy suit and he was in jeans. And I just looked at him and I thought, something urgent is happening because he had left for the day. He'd obviously changed into his casual clothes and he hasn't changed back. So something very urgent is happening where he doesn't even have time to change back. And I nudged someone and I said, look, look at him, he's in.
- [22:17]
Interviewer
Jean. Well, sleuthed.
- [22:19]
Lucia
Thank you.
- [22:19]
Interviewer
A Sherlock Holmes moment on your part.
- [22:22]
Lucia
Thank you. And I was just Like, I just. When, you know, this man, as I did over these five and a half weeks, there's no way that man would be caught dead in jeans in a courtroom situation. So that it was obviously, you know, he had no choice. So I said, I think we have a verdict. And everyone kind of said, oh, yeah, maybe. And then five FBI officers walked in and stood at the back, which had never happened, with a question from the jury. And we were like, right, yeah, this is happening. And the jury came back and they said, we have a verdict. And everyone was just holding their breath. You could hear a pin drop. And so there were, there were five charges and they have to read them out in order. And interestingly so, they. The jury convicted Ghislaine on all but one of the charges. And that one charge, the one they found her not guilty on, it happened to be second on the indictment sheet. So they read out the first charge and they said guilty, and they read out the second charge and they said, not guilty, guilty. So we then were thinking, this is going to be a very mixed verdict just from. But then it, just then it was guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty for the rest.
- [23:31]
Interviewer
What was her reaction?
- [23:34]
Lucia
Absolutely nothing.
- [23:35]
Interviewer
She didn't look shocked.
- [23:37]
Lucia
She didn't. I mean, to be fair, I'm sitting behind her, so I, I can't see her face when this is happening because she has to be facing the judge. I mean, I tried very hard to kind of have a look, but it was very hard to tell. But it seemed like she was trying very hard to not have any reaction at all. She just looked frozen to us.
- [23:59]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [24:00]
Lucia
There was no detectable emotion in her. I mean, she was very, very chummy with her lawyers. And after the verdict, she got up and stormed out. So there was, that wasn't one of the only displays of kind of emotion. And you could see in that that she was shocked, she was angry. She was. You know, because normally after a court day ends, she'd chit chat with her lawyers and, you know, they'd all talk for a while and she just got up and she just walked out. So from that you could tell that she was shocked. But when it, when, when it was actually being read out, she just looked like she was made of stone. She just wasn't moving or making any facial expressions. It was, it was wild. And then, and then we all obviously had to try and get out of the courtroom as soon as possible, get our phones back so we could report it because, you know, we wanted the world to know that this had happened and we couldn't have our phones with us. So we all then just had this mad rush and, you know, no one wanted to trust the elevators. We all took the stairs and just like ran outside, got our phones, posted the thing. And then you, as with any high profile case, you just kind of wait outside and the lawyers will come out and do a press conference. So we were just standing around waiting for that, and Ghislaine's lawyers came out, they made a statement, the prosecutors came out, and then we, all the journalists that I had made friends with, we all went out to dinner and then went to sleep properly for the first time in about six weeks.
- [25:47]
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- [26:18]
Interviewer
And then did you write a. Were you all writing your articles for various newspapers and things? Did you put it all into your book and not write an article at the time?
- [26:27]
Lucia
Exactly. So the other journalists were all there with their newspapers, so they were doing daily coverage, but I was on my own. I was just a freelancer who had decided to write a book about this. So I had no. Even if I wanted to do daily news coverage, there wasn't any outlet that would want that from me, you know, because they all had their own people in the overflow rooms. So I wasn't doing any of that. I was doing a lot on Instagram, on social media. So the main thing I was doing every day was I would duck out of the courtroom and say, this has just happened. And so I posted it on Instagram immediately and did all my posting to make sure that everyone who was following me in order to follow the trial knew that she had been convicted. And then that was it. I didn't, you know, and I think. I think I just did an Instagram story as I was falling asleep that just said, I will put my thoughts together properly in this book. But for now, I just want to say the jury believed Annie, the jury believed Jane, the jury believed Carolyn. The jury believed all the survivors. And that's the message that comes out of this. And then I think I just said, I'm going to bed for a long time.
- [27:43]
Interviewer
I mean, I bet. I bet you were wrecked your body. It's probably the equivalent of running several marathons, what you did, just all that sleep deprivation and food deprivation and standing up for hours overnight and things like that. I can't even imagine. How do you feel about the fact that there have been no men go to jail for this except Jeffrey Epstein, who we don't know really what's happened to Jeffrey Epstein? Varying clashing stories and theories. But how do you feel that nobody else, that a woman who clearly is highly reprehensible and guilty has gone to prison, but no, there's been no justice for any man?
- [28:25]
Lucia
Yeah. I think it's an absolute travesty. I think, you know, it's very hard to overstate just how much of a failure this is on the part of a. Of a justice, quote, unquote justice system that has been failing these victims for 30 years and is continuing to do so. So, you know, I think in some ways the Department of Justice, after having let Jeffrey get away with not being tried for his crimes because he died in prison, they really wanted.
- [29:02]
Interviewer
If indeed he did.
- [29:03]
Lucia
If indeed he did. Exactly.
- [29:06]
Interviewer
And if indeed Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison.
- [29:09]
Lucia
Is in prison. Exactly.
- [29:11]
Interviewer
It's not some kind of stunt double.
- [29:13]
Lucia
Yes.
- [29:13]
Interviewer
Maybe you just feel. I feel stupid saying these things because I think, like, have I become a conspiracy theorist? But it does say now it feels like they just do it in front of our faces. They don't exactly. They almost don't worry about trying too hard to hide these things. So you never. You just feel like you don't know anything anymore.
- [29:31]
Lucia
Yeah. And, you know, let me tell you, I have had the thought that you just articulated so many times in the last six or seven years that I've been covering this of like, do I sound like a conspiracy theorist? But, you know, a couple of things, and I think I've said this to you before. You know, Ghislaine was convicted on multiple counts of conspiracy. That's the crime that she was convicted of by a jury of her peers. And that has been affirmed by every court right up to the Supreme Court. So at this point, this is not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy fact. You know, this has been conspiracy. Yeah, it's a conspiracy. Exactly.
- [30:06]
Interviewer
Yeah. Conspiracies do happen.
- [30:08]
Lucia
Exactly.
- [30:09]
Interviewer
They're not all wild and fanciful theories. Some of them are conspiracies. Yeah.
- [30:13]
Lucia
And this one we know. You know, it did. It did happen. And one element of that is that all of the co conspirators at the moment are just living their lives. They're not facing justice. We haven't had any investigations, let alone indictments or arrests of any of these clients. And you know, I know there are survivors talk in my book about being trafficked to various different men by Jeffrey Epstein. And those men are out there and they're living their lives. And not only that, in some cases, they're living some of the best possible lives. You know, these are wealthy, powerful men who have just been allowed to get away with this. And like I said, it's an absolute travesty. I still find it, even though, you know, I'm the last person to have any faith in the police or law enforcement or anything. But I'm still shocked by the fact that not a single person has faced any consequences for that. Even though there is black and white evidence in the files, there's black and white evidence in depositions from victims who've been saying this for a long time. Like, you know, there's. There's various depositions that on their own would be enough to warrant an FBI investigation into certain named people. And the FBI is choosing not to do that. And that is, you know, just goes against every principle of justice. And I think, I mean, I always say this when I'm talking about this, but I think it's important to say is that even though I'm sure there is an element of Ghislaine being a woman and that being why she is the only one who's faced justice, but I always like to reiterate that I don't, I don't want that, which is certainly true societally, to kind of underplay just how crucial she was in this scheme and just how heinous her crimes were because a lot of the victims.
- [32:14]
Interviewer
Yeah, absolutely. So guilty.
- [32:17]
Lucia
Yeah.
- [32:17]
Interviewer
And it's woman on woman violence.
- [32:19]
Lucia
You. Yes. Yeah. And you know, she. Geoffrey was a. Was terrible at talking to people, he was terrible at socializing. There is no way he could have gotten access to 14 year old middle school girls if it weren't for Ghislaine. And a lot of the survivors feel that way. She is to blame as. As much as he is. And so, you know, it's. It's hard. It's like, you know, you have to hold both thoughts in your head at the same time. One is that of course there's a gendered element. You know, of course there's a reason that only a woman is in prison for this. But then also we don't want to take away from the fact that that woman is Criminally responsible for a number of heinous crimes.
- [33:03]
Interviewer
No, absolutely, both of those things can be true. I would also like to see some men face justice as well. And I don't even believe in the prison complex. And the, you know, I just think is designed to either oppress marginalized people or to take guilty people who are deeply lacking in empathy and probably sociopathic or psychopathic, and put them in the worst possible environment for a sociopathic, psychopathic person. That strips them of any semblance of empathy they did have and hardens them and then re releases them rather than putting them in an environment where they can grow and develop empathy. However, that's the situation that we've got at the moment and it's really difficult to look at. You saw that story about a woman who, in Hurricane Katrina, there was a couple who. She clearly wasn't producing milk for her baby and they couldn't get formula. And the government response was not such. Where in lots of places the government response would be like, get formula there, get nappies there, get all of these things that people need. But they didn't. So there was no formula available. Her baby was starving. So she gave the baby cow's milk because that's all there was and a baby died. So she's been in jail now for 18 years and her husband too. Their other children were put into care. So their children have been raised in foster care and she's just been up for parole and they didn't let her have parole after 18 years for giving her baby the only thing there was. But of course, she is a black woman who was disenfranchised and that's why she didn't have anything in the first place in a. In a disaster zone. Whereas these men are living the lap of luxury. They've got all the contacts in the world, they can afford the best lawyers in the world and. Exactly. You know, that breaks. It just breaks my heart that a grieving mother who will already feel responsible even though she literally had no other options.
- [34:59]
Lucia
Exactly.
- [35:00]
Interviewer
Will be then put into some horrendous prison. 18 years of torturous punishment, while her other children. If you're worried about her being a good mother, well, where are these other children? And they've. They've lost their attachments. So you've destroyed the life of other children now who already had a grieving mother. And if she's not allowed out on parole, like, what's she going to do it again? She's not going to have a baby now, like, what are you talking about like, this is absurd.
- [35:26]
Lucia
And these two, these two examples, like, perfectly paint the picture of what's wrong with the carceral system. Right. Because you've got this awful example of a person who has done nothing wrong,
- [35:42]
Interviewer
who was let down by the state, who was let down by society, who didn't want to give her baby the wrong thing, but thought, well, and also Hurricane Katrina. They're not like, you can, you know, the Internet was down everything. Could you Google what happens if I give my baby cow's milk?
- [35:58]
Lucia
No.
- [35:59]
Interviewer
I think a lot of people would have gone, well, this has got to be better than nothing. At least it's got nutrients in it. At least it's got. At least I'm not going to watch my baby screaming baby starve.
- [36:08]
Lucia
Absolutely. I'm sure that's what I would have done if I were in that situation. You know, like, it's just, just. It's survival.
- [36:15]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [36:15]
Lucia
And you. So you've got this. A black woman being punished in the Castle system, which is one of the most traumatizing institutions we've ever created. You know, it just reinforces trauma, being punished for, you know, not doing anything wrong. And then you've got this group of men who we know have done something which again, we at least pretend to agree is one of the worst things that you can do. You know, one.
- [36:47]
Interviewer
One person was trying to protect a child.
- [36:50]
Lucia
Exactly.
- [36:50]
Interviewer
And one person was trying to protect her own child and nourish her own child misguidedly. But that's what she was trying to do when she had another option. The other one. The other ones were sadistically seeking out vulnerable children and young women and deliberately abusing them in a strategic and long term organized way. And yet here we see the disparity between. And this is the same justice system at work. And you just.
- [37:18]
Lucia
Exactly. And these men who are committing horrific crimes against children and are causing lifelong damage to children. I mean, you know, we've. Many Epstein survivors have lost their lives in adulthood. It was Virginia's anniversary just last month. You know, so these men are harming children for life, often costing them their lives, and they're not coming within inches of the carceral system of the justice system. And, you know, so those two examples kind of perfectly illustrate how not fit for purpose it is. And you know, that it is not punishing the people who have actually committed crimes, and it's punishing people.
- [38:05]
Interviewer
I think it's desperately. The whole thing desperately needs an overhaul. I've written about this in my book Six Conversations. We're scared to have about all the reasons why prison for almost everybody is not the answer. And you're much better with community intervention. And there's now ankle bracelets you can wear. They can track. Are they at their rehab? Are they at their community service? Are they here? Are they.
- [38:26]
Lucia
I love your book. That's.
- [38:28]
Interviewer
Oh, thank you. But. But it's really important, I think, to, like, say, this is not the. The jurisprudence expert I talked to in Australia says virtually no women, almost no women, this is being an obvious exception, need to be in prison. But there are some, mostly men, with such severe personality disorders, we have to keep them away from society. But then it doesn't. It should be a place that's trying to build empathy, at least. It should not be a place that's deliberately brutalizing you, dehumanizing you, calling you by your last name or number and making you. It should be a place where you're learning and being educated. That's better for society as a whole. That is better for society as a whole. But people have this punitive idea in their head, but that's not getting us to the next level as we need to be. But what I don't want to have is a woman who has tried to feed her baby in the best way she knew how in a disaster zone, being in a terrible, inhumane place, and these men walking free. Like, that's not fair. Absolutely. That's not fair at all. So if women are. Who are not violent criminals are shoved into these places, you cannot have men who are extremely violent criminals walking around like, you can't have that. And yet that is what we do have. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell us that you came to say and you didn't get to say about the trial or anything else, anything else you feel about this whole case?
- [40:04]
Lucia
One of the things that I think about a lot at the moment, and that I think is really, really important, is that we are in this cultural political moment where we're seeing the Atogene files being released, and a lot of people aren't giving credit where credit's due for that. You know, the reason the act of Congress was passed was because the survivors campaigned to pass it and because they worked incredibly hard to get Congress people on side. None of that would have happened if it hadn't been for that core group of survivors and all the other survivors who were supporting them. And, you know, so a lot of people talk about the Epstein files as if they just happened to be released or even sometimes as if. As if Trump chose to release them, but he didn't. You know, he was so determined not to release them. And then a bunch of women who have been disbelieved, discredited, treated like criminals for decades stood up and kept going and kept fighting and said, no, we want to pass a law that says they have to release these files. And they did that. You know, one of the survivors said to me that when you grow up in America and you ask for something outrageous, like if you're like kind of a pony or something, their parents will say, oh, well, you'll need to pass an act of Congress before that happens. You know, it's like an expression. But they did that. You know, they did pass an act of Congress, and that's why we have all this new information. And I think a lot of people don't give them enough credit for that. I also think having covered this for seven years and seeing it come into the news a lot and then fade out again, I do think that we're at a kind of tipping point where things are going to change. And I. And I don't want to say that people, some of these men definitely will be investigated, because again, this is something that I think a lot of people don't know, is that the FBI, any law enforcement agency, have complete discretion over what they prosecute, what they investigate. A lot of people think that, and I've realized this since speaking about the Epstein files, a lot of people think there's a mechanism in place by which if there's evidence of a crime, the police are obligated to investigate it. That is not true. They have absolutely no positive obligations to investigate anything. If they see evidence of something and they don't want to investigate it, they just. Just ignore it and move on, which is what the FBI had done for 30 years. So if you look at kind of the documents regulating the FBI, and it's the same police forces here, there are rules about what they can't do. There's, you know, rules about use of force and things like that, which, you know, we know they often violate anyway. But there are no rules that say if you come across evidence of a crime, you have to act on it. There is nothing that says that, really. So they.
- [43:07]
Interviewer
Yes.
- [43:07]
Lucia
So they are absolutely free to see all these emails that we're all seeing and say, no, we're not going to investigate that. And that it's. That's. That's the discretion that they have. That's the amount of power that they have. And this is one of the really key things to understand about policing in general. This is one of the problems. This is why rape conviction rates are so low, because you can go to the police and say, I was assaulted. Here's the evidence, here's him admitting it in a text message, you know, whatever. And they can still choose to do absolutely nothing about it. And there is no way to hold them to account for that decision. They just get to choose, which is a problem. And that that should not be how law enforcement works, or we'll never see, you know, meaningful justice for victims of crimes like sexual offences that are the ones that police just aren't interested in investigating.
- [44:06]
Interviewer
Can I ask why? We think because there was enough evidence in Obama's administration, There was clearly enough evidence in Biden's administration. Why did the Democrats not do anything about this?
- [44:18]
Lucia
Well, I mean, for exactly the same reason, which is that a lot of people on the left of politics are implicated in this in some way, you know, and that this is not me accusing anyone in particular of criminal activity. But we know that powerful Democrats associated with Epstein. You know, I have a survivor who told me about meeting Bill Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein, the first time she ever met Jeffrey Epstein. And she said to me, at this time, no one knew his face. He was a nobody, right? And someone had called her over to this table and they said, oh, you look like a model. Would you like to be a model? And she said, that would be great. She was living in South Africa. She wanted an opportunity, you know, to make a career. And she came over to this table and Jeffrey was there, but she didn't recognize him. He had no power in that situation. But Bill Clinton was also at the table, and this was only months after he left office. So he was arguably one of the most powerful people in the world. And the fact that he was sitting
- [45:20]
Interviewer
and he's there with the man saying, oh, you could be a model. We really.
- [45:24]
Lucia
Exactly, yeah. And so the fact that he's sitting at that table is a huge part of the reason that she feels safe sitting at that table. And. And that she feels like this is a legitimate operation where she will be trialed as a model, and it wasn't legitimate. And she ended up being trapped and taken to Jeffrey's island. And so, again, I'm not accusing Bill Clinton of any criminality here, but in that situation, he is lending his legitimacy to this operation just by sitting at the table. And. And he, of course, is a Democrat and, you know, a very, very powerful one. So, you know, I think it's fair to say that the reason that the Obama administration, the Biden administration didn't do anything about this is because it is not just Republicans or, or right wing politicians and businessmen who associated with Jeffrey Epstein. He had many, many powerful left wing friends. And so the underlying reason is the same. No matter who the president is, it's that somewhere along the line there will be someone with a lot of power and, or money and, or influence or all three who are very invested in making sure that this is not investigated, this goes away.
- [46:38]
Interviewer
It's so disappointing that there doesn't seem to be any moral compass anywhere in politics, especially when it comes to women and children. Yes, thank you so much Lucia, for your efforts to sit out this trial under very difficult circumstances because also we're looking at the physical toll it took on you, but it must have taken a great emotional toll to sit there all day and then not have the comfort of a good night's sleep. So we really appreciate you doing it. Everyone should read your book and we've got a link to that in the show notes and you were wonderful live in the theatre, but it's been so excellent to get this extra time to really just have a chat, you and me, and to tell our audience more because I know that the listeners will really want to know this stuff and be intrigued by the experience you had and your very intelligent responses to it. So thank you so much.
- [47:30]
Lucia
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back. It's a real pleasure.
- [47:34]
Interviewer
Anytime.
- [47:39]
Lucia
Sam,
- [48:09]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [48:26]
Lucia
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- [48:34]
Lucia
then full price plan options available.
- [48:36]
Prime Video Advertiser
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