What the Epstein case teaches us about grooming

Summary

Podcast Summary: “What the Epstein case teaches us about grooming”

Podcast: Today in Focus (The Guardian)
Host: Annie Kelly, with Guardian interviewers
Date: March 23, 2026
Guest: Lucia Osborne Crawley (Legal Journalist & Author)

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Overview

This episode delves into what the high-profile Epstein-Maxwell case reveals about the mechanics of grooming and organized child sexual abuse. Featuring legal journalist Lucia Osborne Crawley, who covered the Ghislaine Maxwell trial in-person and drew from her own experience as a survivor, the conversation moves beyond the lurid headlines to dissect the “playbook” of predators—emphasizing that such abuse is alarmingly common, insidious, and poorly understood. Key themes include the structure of grooming, complicity, trauma, flaws in the justice system, and what society can learn to better prevent abuse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Lucia Osborne Crawley’s Personal and Professional Connection

• Reporting Embedded in Personal History

  • Lucia recounts her own abuse as a child gymnast, by a trusted mentor, illustrating grooming’s universal playbook (05:00–07:49).
  • The emotional manipulation, secrecy, and power dynamics mirrored those seen in the Epstein case:

    “I used to think he chose me because I was good. But actually in some ways the truth is I was good because he chose me.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (05:22)

  • Survivors often become hyper-focused, talented, or compliant as a result of this manipulation.

• Epstein’s Case as Universally Relevant

  • Lucia viewed Epstein and Maxwell not as exceptional monsters but as archetypes for a pattern found “everywhere in our communities and our institutions” (03:19–03:50, 20:16).
  • Coverage often focused on their wealth/power instead of the mechanics and warning signs of their crimes.

The Grooming Playbook: How Predators Operate

• Stages of Grooming ([10:46–16:56])

  1. Identifying: Predators spot and target vulnerable children—emotional, financial, or familial need.
     • Example: Epstein’s Palm Beach home’s proximity to poor neighborhoods; deliberate seeking of vulnerability.

     “They know they need to find children who are vulnerable in some way ... some kind of need that’s not being met.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (11:22)

  2. Isolating: Increasing access to the child by separating them from protective adults.
     • Ghislaine Maxwell often played the "big sister" role, building trust and emotional connection.
  3. Building Trust and Attachment: Showering with attention, making the victim feel “special.”
  4. Normalizing Inappropriate Behavior: Conversations about sex, progressive boundary push (“can you give me a massage?”); use of nudity to desensitize (17:10, 18:13).
  5. Creating Transactional Dependency: Financial or emotional support creates leverage; e.g., Epstein helping “Jane’s” family after her father’s death.
  6. Escalation to Abuse: Gradual physical touch leads to the actual abuse, often in steps blurred by initially “acceptable” contact.
  7. Threats and Fear: Victims are manipulated into secrecy, threatened with consequences for “betrayal,” and made to feel complicit.

• “Hiding in Plain Sight”:

  • Predators exploit situations that appear legitimate (e.g., mentoring artists, supporting gymnastics/dance, philanthropy).
  • The normalization of physical contact in certain fields facilitates abuse (18:31).

Survivor Case Study: “Jane” ([13:34–17:10])

• Described a girl at summer arts camp, targeted after the death of her father.
• Epstein used his donor status to gain access, quickly identified her vulnerability, and offered support.
• Grooming included financial support, isolating her from her mother, eventually leading to abuse.

Systemic Enablers & Complicity ([26:00–28:27])

• Many adults actively or passively facilitated Epstein’s crimes, from pilots to doormen to assistants.
  • “It is implausible to think that they would have genuinely thought there was a legitimate reason for these people to be there.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (27:10)
• Epstein would compromise others to secure silence (blackmail, moral corruption, holding “dirt” on them).

Psychological Toll and Justice System Failures

• Trauma and Legal System ([21:07–22:54])

  • Trauma disrupts memory and narrative, hampering credibility in court.

    “The court system demands narrative...but if you have a traumatic memory...it is impossible for us to remember a sequence of events.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (21:27)

  • Delayed disclosure is common and misunderstood; victims may defend or feel loyal to perpetrators long after recognizing the abuse.

• Victim Recruitment & Abuse Cycle ([23:20–25:06])

  • Some survivors were forced/manipulated into bringing new victims—misunderstood by outsiders as willful complicity, when it was extreme manipulation and confusion.
  • Older victims were sometimes passed on to other abusers, shifting from direct abuse to human trafficking.

• Cover-up and Institutional Betrayal ([30:08–32:08])

  • Much evidence remains unreleased; authorities historically ignored or actively helped cover up complaints.
  • “Anyone who’s surprised by the FBI and The Department of Justice mishandling this clearly doesn’t know this story very well.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (31:11)

Hope and Systemic Change

• Legislative and Social Shifts ([32:16–33:57])

  • Survivor activism led to legislative change (“an act of Congress”).
  • Lucia expresses hope that growing awareness will spawn intervention.
  • Key takeaway: Intervention by even one informed adult can disrupt abuse.

    “You just need one adult to intervene ... to save a victim and then every future victim of that perpetrator.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (33:33)

• Personal Growth ([34:15–35:11])

  • Lucia attributes her continued reporting and healing to relationships with survivors:

    “It’s been really fortifying ... what the survivors have taught me about strength and how to deal with trauma and also welcome joy.” (34:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the universality of grooming:

  “It is not the case that Jeffrey Epstein is dead so we don’t have to worry about this kind of thing happening. This kind of thing happens in neighborhoods all over the world, in institutions all over the world.” — Lucia Osborne Crawley (20:16)

• On survivors’ persistence and hope:

  “What these survivors did is they campaigned for and succeeded in getting an act of Congress passed. That gives me a lot of hope. I do have hope. And that’s all down to them.” (32:26)

• On complicity:

  “He had found the people in society who just, who don’t have a moral compass, who are looking out for themselves in the same way that Jeffrey Epstein looks out for himself.” (27:18)

• On court’s mishandling of trauma:

  “The court system demands narrative... but if you have a traumatic memory ... it is impossible for us to remember a sequence of events.” (21:27)

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Key Timestamps & Segments

• Lucia’s personal abuse story: 05:00–07:49
• How the grooming playbook works: 10:46–16:56
• Case study: "Jane" and grooming at summer camp: 13:34–17:10
• On trauma’s impact and delayed disclosure: 21:07–22:54
• Network of complicity in Epstein’s operation: 26:00–28:27
• Missing evidence and alleged cover-up: 30:08–32:08
• Survivor activism and hope for change: 32:16–33:57
• Personal evolution and survivor community: 34:15–35:11

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Takeaways

• Grooming is methodical, sophisticated, and common—understanding the “playbook” can empower communities to prevent abuse.
• The justice system often fails trauma survivors due to misconceptions about memory, disclosure, and loyalty.
• Predators exploit not just victims but also systemic enablers—awareness and intervention are critical at all levels.
• Meaningful change is possible through survivor activism, community vigilance, and readiness to support and believe victims.

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Book plug: Lucia Osborne Crawley’s “The Lasting Harm” is now out.

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This summary omits advertisements and non-content sections for clarity and depth.

Transcript

[Annie Kelly]

This is the Guardian. Today, what one journalist learnt from Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.

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[Annie Kelly]

On 29 November 2021, Lucia Osborne Crawley got up in the depths of the night and made her way to an imposing slate gray courthouse in Manh.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

I got there at 2, 3 in the morning on that first day. You have to be there first if you want to get in the courtroom. And there were only four spots. I was trying to keep myself warm. It was freezing. We were there for hours in the dark. That first morning there was a bit of snow. In later weeks there was a lot of snow.

[Annie Kelly]

Lucia is a legal journalist and for six weeks she followed this same routine, determined to be inside that courthouse for every moment of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

There's a big set of stairs. We had to line up down at the bottom. I remember once just getting hailed on and I walked up to the top just to get some shelter and this security guard screamed at me, like really, really yelled at me. And I said, oh, look, you know, I've got an autoimmune condition. Can I just have some shelter for a few minutes? And he said, absolutely not and chased me down the stairs.

[Vanta Advertiser]

Opening statements begin in the trial of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

[Stamps.com Advertiser]

British socialite is on trial accused of helping her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, recruit and groom underage girls for sex.

[Annie Kelly]

There had already been a lot of coverage of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's crimes.

[Guardian Commentator]

Yeah, plenty of intrigue surrounding this case

[Annie Kelly]

and some tried to shine a light on what made a powerful billionaire and a glamorous socialite traffic and exploit children and young women.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

It's here in New York where Maxwell used her friendship with Prince Andrew to

[Annie Kelly]

access America's high society, on their glittering lives and the famous people they knew, on the enigma of his wealth and the tragedies in her life.

[Guardian Commentator]

We've heard talk about this black book, an address book that Ghislaine Maxwell had kept with some fairly famous names.

[Annie Kelly]

But for Lucia, Epstein and Maxwell weren't special or mysterious. They were just predators. And she had met predators like them herself. What she wanted to understand was how crimes like this could happen, not just on private islands or in million dollar mansions, but everywhere in our communities and our institutions.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

I thought, I really want to find a way to be able to recount that to everyone who's not in that room and help other people understand how this kind of grooming and this kind of organized child sex abuse works because it is so common and unfortunately, it's just very poorly understood.

[Annie Kelly]

From the Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in focus, Jeffrey Epstein's playbook and what we can all learn from it.

[Guardian Interviewer]

Lucia Osborne Crowley, thank you so much for joining us today in the Guardian studios. Welcome to Stay in focus. It's a real pleasure to have you here.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Thank you so much. It's a real honor to be here.

[Annie Kelly]

So you're a journalist and you've been reporting on the Epstein story for years now. And I know you've met and you've interviewed many of Epstein survivors and you've also spent a lot of time combing through the Epstein files, as well as you write in your book about how this was also very personally resident for you because of the experiences that you yourself have gone through. And I wondered if you would mind just telling us what happened.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

So I was a very, very serious gymnast. This mentor and authority figure was very, very, very good at making us feel incredibly special and understanding whatever it was that we needed to hear in order to feel loved.

[Guardian Interviewer]

How old were you at this time? You were very young.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yes, I was nine. And in some ways, you know, I used to think he chose me because I was good. But actually in some ways the truth is I was good because he chose me. Because the thing is once, once you're chosen, then you get so much attention, so much time with that person who's teaching you this skill, and you get much better because you're the focus. He would say, I love you. I love you like a daughter. So the emotional attachment would start to be about more than just pure talent or pure hard work. And that also comes with because this is so special, no one will understand it. So it's best if you don't tell anyone how close we are. And then there's a very confusing kind of emotional attachment that I used to feel all the time, which was once I had been told all of these things. What he did and what these perpetrators do is they then kind of threaten you with the idea of what might happen if you ever stopped being good or special. You know, the idea of disappointing this person seems like the most, you know, the most terrible thing you could do. And we'd be really seriously punished by him if we did. So there'd be this kind of flip side, which was really serious anger, aggression, which would then turn into, I'm so sorry, I'm just so disappointed in you. You've really let me down. I thought you were better than this and you're talking to a 10 year old. So then that becomes really, really emotionally scary because you feel like this attachment figure is going to leave you behind if you're not good enough.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And the abuse itself happens within that dynamic then. And does it happen gradually or is it.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yeah, yeah. So it began for me, and I know for others, with talking to us about sexuality in a way that was, I now understand, is incredibly inappropriate. And so he would, he would, he started to tell me things about my body and about sex that were very explicit and about things that he liked, things that no one should be saying to a 10 year old. But by this time he was like,

[Guardian Interviewer]

God, to me, I'm so sorry. And also, kind of at that age, you don't have any idea of your own sexuality anyway, do you? So it's just this thing that's being imposed on you that you don't recognize in yourself at all.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yes, exactly. And, you know, that's the difference is, you know, when I hear my friends talk about them discovering this part of themselves for the first time, it's so interesting because I never got to get to that point of discovering it for myself. I mean, it's so much more common than anybody imagines. And these people really do hide in plain sight.

[Annie Kelly]

In 2016, when the Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown first began publishing her investigations into the allegations of sexual abuse and trafficking that surrounded Epstein, Lucia followed these new reports closely with a really,

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

really amazing focus on the victims themselves. She ran an investigative series where the victims told their stories. And I heard in their voices these things that I had experienced, and that was huge.

[Annie Kelly]

In 2019, Epstein was indicted on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy, only to be found dead, apparently by suicide, in his prison cell 35 days later. Two years later, Ghislaine Maxwell would face those Same charges in a New York courtroom.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

And then I just really wanted to follow it from there because it was on this scale that was just. It's just so hard to really get our heads around the scale of this and how many people were harmed by it. So I felt this kind of pull to follow it through.

[Guardian Interviewer]

What was it like sitting in that courtroom and watching the survivors, the women standing up there and going through cross examination, being pulled through the criminal justice system?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

It was. I mean, it was so, so, so hard to watch. In a trial, you begin with direct examination of a witness, so the first thing you'd hear is their story through prosecutors. I was just watching them be so incredibly brave and so courageous, and I was just amazed by it. And then I had to see them be so incredibly brave and so courageous through something that was so much more awful than even I expected. And I've covered lots of trials, you know, but the way the defence treated these victims was really shocking. I watched them be spoken to by these defence lawyers like they were worthless. You know, like it's bringing out this part of them that has been shamed before. It's awful.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And there's so much about that case. Wasn't it was about understanding what grooming is? Could you just explain to us what exactly do we mean by when we. When we talk about grooming?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yeah, absolutely. So what grooming does is it brings the child into a situation where eventually that perpetrator has total access. So it's. It's all about access. It's all about isolation of the child. And in the research, they talk about stages of grooming. So the first one is usually to identify the victim. And this is all through the Epstein files, if you know what to look for. It's basically these kind of incredibly sophisticated perpetrators. They know that they need to find children who are vulnerable in some way, so have something in their lives that they need, some kind of need that's not being met. Whether it's emotional or financial or psychological. They say, I'm here now. I see that the adults around you have not done what you need, but it's okay, because I'm here now and I'm going to help you and I'm going to save you. What I think is a really good example of this is that Epstein's mansion in Palm beach was on one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the country. And then you just have to do a short drive. I've done it myself, over a bridge. And you're in an incredibly poor area where there's a lot of very, very vulnerable families. And that's where he told Ghislaine Maxwell to go. So identifying is the first one. The second is isolating the victim. So basically that means finding a way to get them away from adults who would protect them. And that takes work. That part of the manipulation is important because you need to get yourself into a relationship with a child where it's okay for you to be alone with that child. So that's where building the trust is really, really important. And in this case, Ghislaine would be responsible for a lot of this, based on what we heard at trial, because she was younger than Jeffrey, she was a woman, and she would kind of play this almost big sister role is how some of the survivors have described it to me. So she would meet them and she would ask them about their day, and she would ask them how they were feeling, and she would ask them what they wanted to be when they grew up. And she earned their trust by saying, same textbook, I see something special in you. I believe in you. She would make that connection with them, and that's the beginning of this really important relationship, because then the child feels attached to that person. They start to feel a sense of safety, and so they want to trust this person who's saying, I'm going to help you.

[Annie Kelly]

And, I mean, it's not just kids

[Guardian Interviewer]

from kind of difficult economic backgrounds or

[Annie Kelly]

who might have had experiences of childhood sexual abuse before they met Epstein and Maxwell. Is it in your book you give this example of a survivor that you call Jane, although that's not her real name. Could you tell us about how she met Maxwell and Epstein?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Absolutely. So she went to a summer camp that was for ambitious young people who wanted a career in the arts. So she wanted to be a singer, she wanted to be an actor. So she would go to this camp. And what Jeffrey Epstein did, he would donate huge amounts of money to that camp. What he asked for in return for his money was a permanent lodge on site so he could live at a summer camp for middle schoolers. He would not usually be there all summer, but he could come and go as he pleased. He would stay there for the weekend. And he was there with Ghislaine one weekend, and he approached Jane. She was with a group of friends. A lot of the others kind of walked away and they started talking to her. And he said something like, I'm an investor in this camp, so I'd love to hear how. How is it, you know, are you happy with your experience? Are you having Fun. And she says, yeah, you know, it's really great. And then he uses that to say kind of, oh, you know, tell me more about yourself. Why are you here? You know, what do you want to be? And then they worked out that they were from similar areas and one of them said, oh, maybe we know your parents. Like, we know a lot of people. Maybe we know your parents. What do your parents do? And she said what her mum did. And then she said, and my dad just died. And so that's immediately to them, the vulnerability. The vulnerability. And we now know from trial that after he died, they really didn't have very much money. They lost their house, they had to live with friends, so they got all of that information out of her. So she'd just very recently lost a parent at, I think she was 14 that summer. And also she'd been flung into a financial situation that was. That was incredibly vulnerable and very precarious. So just in one conversation, they were able to, through what they were masquerading as small talk, find out if there was a vulnerability or not. And as soon as they did, you can hear in the way she describes the conversation, they just absolutely went for it. So they kind of said to her, we're going to help you. We're going to make your dreams come true. We think you're going to be a star. And then they would start helping her mum with rent, they would start giving her money to give to her mum, saying, like, look, I know it's a really hard time, we just want to help out. And then this is kind of another stage of the grooming is when that power imbalance, they take it to a level that becomes transactional in some way. So they give you something, either money directly or pay for something that you need. And that's kind of the next phase of them ensuring that access, because then they have something to hold over you if you try. And. And again, in emails, you can see this. You can see the way Geoffrey says to them, you should be grateful I've done so much for you. When they're trying to withdraw, and for Jane and her family, that's exactly what he did.

[Annie Kelly]

So you've talked about this kind of grooming process, the isolation phase. In Jane's case, she started being taken to Epstein's house away from her mother. What did they do next?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yeah, so, you know, it's very similar to my story in the sense that it started with normalising, talking about that kind of thing. So Ghislaine in particular would kind of ask her about her life and then would start to ask her, do you have a boyfriend? And then start to ask more graphic questions. The purpose of that part of grooming is to normalize having that in a relationship between an adult and a 14 year old, which of course is not an acceptable thing to be doing. For Jane, one of the next steps is that when she would arrive, Ghislaine would be topless and some other women there would be topless. And so they'd start to normalise nudity. And then there'd be initial kind of approach to normalise physical touch, which would often be, can you give me a shoulder massage? Or, you know, can you give Jeffrey a foot massage? Something like that. These perpetrators are very, very, very good at doing this in a kind of step by step way and is incredibly hard to see as what it is.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And all the way through your book, all the way through these stories, it's this massage thing. It's interesting, isn't the parallels with the Weinstein case as well, Harvey Weinstein, this idea of this almost kind of acceptable physical contact masking something else. But you're not sure when the line is crossed.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Exactly. So what you'll see that's common in all of these is, as you say, different forms of physical touch that are acceptable in society and seen as consensual and acceptable. You know, there are survivors who were targeted because they were young dancers. And when you're a dancer, it's the same as me as a gymnast, you massage each other. Massaging is a big part of professional sport. So in those situations, Geoffrey would know that these young dancers were used to that happening in a legitimate way and he would use that to present himself as legitimate. And then once again, this is kind of the final stage is once they've been able to be alone with the child, when there is no one else around, then they'll cross a line that goes beyond legitimate physical touch. And as you say, by that point, it's incredibly hard for the child to understand that a line has been crossed.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And also the fear, I guess, of going home and telling someone and they saying, well, why were you in a room with him?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Exactly.

[Guardian Interviewer]

Why did you let yourself get into that situation?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Exactly.

[Guardian Interviewer]

In my old job, I spent a lot of time, a lot of time reporting on exploitation and sex traffickings and the way that child sexual abuse plays into these dynamics that can trap people for their whole lives in these very exploitative situations. And everything that you've talked about in terms of this grooming playbook, it's just literally Like a kind of paint by numbers. In this case, it's very rich and powerful people with lots of money and lots of kind of glamour. It can be translated into models of sexual violence and sex trafficking around the world.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Absolutely. And I think, you know, this is one of the dangers with this, is when people talk about Jeffrey Epstein as though he's special or as though he's mysterious in some way, as though he's this kind of someone that we really need to try and understand because there's no one else like him that takes away from the truth of it, which is that there are lots of people like him. It's not the case that Jeffrey Epstein is dead. So we don't have to worry about this kind of thing happening. This kind of thing happens in neighborhoods all over the world, in institutions all over the world. And when you understand the playbook, you can see that it is the same playbook all the time. And that's how we know that it is so much more common than anybody thinks.

[Guardian Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, it's so common.

[Annie Kelly]

And in your reporting, you also highlight just how survivors experience trauma and how the way that trauma impacts them can be misunderstood and also be treated with suspicion by the criminal justice system.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Well, exactly. And the problem is that the court system demands narrative. It sees credibility as being our ability or otherwise to tell a story in a truthful sequence. And the problem with that is that if you have a traumatic memory that has not been processed and hasn't been put into a narrative, it is not only hard, but actually impossible for us to remember a sequence of events.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And it allows the defence to pick holes in your case.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Exactly.

[Guardian Interviewer]

Does that also relate to how it can take people a long time to disclose as well?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Absolutely. So we heard a lot about what we call delayed disclosure at trial. And basically it's the idea that it takes a victim of trauma, but sexual abuse in particular, a very, very long time to disclose what happened to them. And that's because, particularly in a. In a grooming situation, you have an adult who's. Who's come and said that you can trust them and said that they'll help you, and then they've betrayed you and they. They've then set up in you a world that is kind of inherently dangerous. You know, they've set up a world where adults are not to be trusted. There's also the relational aspect, which is that victims feel very, very, very afraid of. Of betraying their perpetrator even years after they understand.

[Guardian Interviewer]

It goes back to the trauma bond as well. Doesn't it?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Exactly. So they feel so worried about getting that person in trouble. Even if they know how to name what happened to them, they know it's a crime. It still feels very hard to betray that person because that person has made you feel so loyal to them.

[Guardian Interviewer]

One of the most awful things about this whole model is the way that victims can then be kind of turned into abusers or certainly recruiters themselves. So you've seen this model where girls who are abused by Jeffrey X being then go on to recruit others for them. Could you just explain how?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

So again, it's all about manipulation. Predators like this, they create a situation where victims can become recruiters because by this time in the grooming, they have made the victim feel firstly like they owe this person so much and they can't say no to him by that point. And I know from survivors that he did used to threaten them when they tried to say no about introducing him to other friends. He did become very, very, very threatening. There's also this idea that because when you're in it, and especially when you're young, it's very hard for you to even understand what's happening to you. So to understand what will happen to another person that you introduce to Jeffrey Epstein is almost impossible. So now people are saying, oh, well, this person introduced someone knowing what would happen. But that misunderstands the kind of extreme state of confusion and manipulation that you are in as a victim by this point, because you don't even understand what's happening to you and you don't even necessarily understand how harmful it is because you still want to think that this person is good, and so you don't want to think that they're hurting you.

[Guardian Interviewer]

There was also this thing about him wanting younger and younger girls, and also the idea of girls who he tires of them being passed on to other men. Can you tell us a bit about that kind of part of the model as well?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is something that is not very well understood in terms of this operation. It does seem, from what I've been told, and again, this is all corroborated by the emails, that it seems like Jeffrey Epstein would abuse younger girls and when they got older, their role would shift, and that's when he would begin to traffic them to other people. So he would, in some cases stop his own abuse of them because of whatever predilection he had. But he wouldn't stop the abuse. He would change the abuse to a human trafficking situation. And by that point, victims, they are completely trapped in this situation, there is no way that they can get away from these other men, say no to these other men. And that was a huge, huge part of the operation.

[Guardian Interviewer]

Over the decades. Another thing that really struck me about this case as well was about all

[Annie Kelly]

of the people, all of the adults

[Guardian Interviewer]

that have been involved in facilitating this. Chauffeurs, doormen, assistants, scheduling appointments, pilots of private aircrafts. In Jane's case that we've talked about, the other adults who were in the room with her when she was being abused. Can you talk to us a bit about this kind of huge network of people who are also complicit in this abuse?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yeah, I mean, what is really important to say is just how many people are in this category. And again, when you look at the emails, it's obvious how sophisticated this operation was and how many people were needed to keep it running smoothly, you know, to keep appointments, to book flights, to everything. There were so many people who were really important parts of this operation. And it seems like in a lot of cases what Jeffrey Epstein would do is identify other adults who were corruptible in some way. And he would find those people who were willing to abuse their power, were willing to use other human beings for their own benefit and wouldn't have a problem with, with what they were seeing. There are all these people who would see on the island, on planes, in the New York house, would see these young girls around and it is implausible to think that they would have genuinely thought there was a legitimate reason for these people to be there. But they didn't say anything because he had found the people in society who just, who don't have a moral compass, who are looking out for themselves in the same way that Jeffrey Epstein looks out for himself. And then it seems like he would also, at a certain point, get them to do things for him that were not quite above board, things that he could then use later if they ever said, hey, what's going on here? If they started asking questions. And the victims have been telling us this for a very long time, that he was trying to blackmail people into not saying anything.

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[Guardian Interviewer]

Right. At the end of February, reports came out there'd been testimony given to the FBI from a victim who said she'd been sexually abused by Epstein from the age of 13 to about 15, right back in the early 1980s and that Donald Trump assaulted her during this time. This hasn't been substantiated and Trump denies the allegations. But what's interesting is that those reports weren't in the millions of documents that were released in January.

[Annie Kelly]

What do you say about that particular allegation?

[Guardian Interviewer]

And how much more do you think there is in those missing documents that we don't know about?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

I mean, there is so, so much that we don't know about. The Department of Justice itself has said it's only released 2% of what it has. And then on top of that, we've got the fact that we can see redactions that are quite obviously not lawful under the act that was passed by Congress, which very clearly says that you can redact names because they're a victim or because to reveal their name would threaten the integrity of an ongoing investigation. Now, that's hard for them to argue because they told us a few months ago that they'd closed all of these investigations. You know, they said there's nothing to implicate any third parties. There's no investigations. And now they're saying, oh, all these redactions are about ongoing investigations. So one of those two things is not true.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And when you see how this has been handled, the redactions, the delays, the refusal to prosecute, the millions of files as we've just talked about not yet to be released, the treatment of the survivors. Do you consider this a cover up?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

I mean, the survivors that I speak to consider it a cover up. And I agree with them. I think that their voices are the most important to be listening to right now. The thing that the survivors feel is that anyone who's surprised by the FBI and The Department of Justice mishandling this clearly doesn't know this story very well, because what they're doing now is what they've always done to these particular survivors. The FBI had reports about this happening decades ago, and they did nothing about it. And then more people reported and more people reported, and each time they did nothing about it. And even more than that, when the state police came to them with an investigation, they actively went out of their way to help this deal be put together, where this person who should have been stopped then, was able to keep offending until 20, 19, 12 years later.

[Guardian Interviewer]

And do you think that there's anything that needs to change in order to see justice being done?

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

You know, I do actually feel hopeful in this case, even though what we're seeing at the moment is so horrific, because, you know, one of the survivors said to me that when you're young in America and you ask your parents for something outlandish, something that's never going to happen, a parent might say, what do you want, an act of Congress? And what these survivors did is they campaigned for and succeeded in getting an act of Congress passed. That's why we have all of this information. That gives me a lot of hope. I do feel like now there will be consequences. And I know that the survivors do feel that the needle is moving. So, you know, I do have hope. And that's all down to them. What they've done is been able to raise awareness about these dynamics. And ultimately what that means is that a lot of adults will now be able to look out for these signs and understand when a person is using their power in a way that indicates that they're grooming a child. All of these cases are about intervention. Ultimately, it's about these hundreds of people we were talking about who saw this and didn't intervene. And, you know, the harm, it culminates over time. And what we need to do is teach adults to be able to see when this is happening and intervene, because you just need one adult to intervene in a situation in order to save a victim and then every future victim of that perpetrator. So we need to teach our friends, our colleagues, what grooming might look like and how to intervene if you think it's happening.

[Annie Kelly]

This must have been such a huge kind of journey.

[Guardian Interviewer]

That's a bit of a cheesy way of putting it. For you to have gone through everything you've gone through personally and then to have worked on this story. How has this changed you? And do you think you'll still continue doing this? Reporting.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Yes, I will. And you know, I really, it feels really important to me to keep it going. But in terms of how it's changed me, the thing that I think is the most important thing is what I've learned from the survivors that I'm close to. Just having relationships with them has taught me so much, not only about how these things work, but about trauma and about myself. It's been really fortifying and it's given me strength because of what the survivors have taught me about strength and also have taught me about how to deal with trauma and also welcome joy. And I feel like a very different and a much stronger person because of them. So, you know, I think that's what will mean that I am able to keep reporting on these kind of things.

[Guardian Interviewer]

Lucia, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. And you know, thank you for answering some really difficult questions as well. I really appreciate it.

[Lucia Osborne Crawley]

Thank you for having me.

[Annie Kelly]

And that's it for today. That was Lucia Osborne Crawley and her book the Lasting Harm is out now. This episode was produced by Ruth Abrahams and Alex Atak and presented by me, Annie Kelly. Sound design was by Tom Glasser and the executive producer was Homa Khalili. And we'll be back in your feeds later today with the latest foreign. This is the Guardian.

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