'He liked the fear in our eyes':  Epstein survivors tell BBC of abuse, lasting trauma

Joanna Harrison never intended to go public with the abuse she suffered at the hands of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Like many survivors, she admits his assaults left her steeped in shame and embarrassment. However, after her name was inadvertently made public following the release of millions of US government files, she told BBC Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire that she felt she had to speak out.

"It gets to a point where you're being suffocated and you need to breathe, and I feel this is my way of trying to breathe," Harrison said.

BBC Newsnight brought Harrison and four other Epstein survivors together for the first time in the same room.

During an emotional, hours-long discussion, the women offered one another supportive gestures and wept as they studied photographs of themselves from the period when they first met Epstein.

In the wide-ranging interview, the survivors told their stories of grief and anger. Some recalled their time at Epstein's infamous private island, Little St James, while others recounted "eerie" moments at his New Mexico ranch.

They expressed their belief that the powerful figures with whom he associated would most likely have known what was going on.

Unredacted documents force survivors into public view

Millions of documents relating to the various investigations into Epstein were released by the US Department of Justice, but some of the unredacted material failed to obscure the identity of his victims. Harrison was one of those individuals whose name was made public.

She told Newsnight she never wanted the files to be released, fearing she would lose her anonymity. "It's not normal to see your abuser's face every day for six years on TV," Harrison said.

She recounted meeting Epstein in Florida when she was 18, and like other survivors, she said everything began with a massage. "Everything seemed normal," Harrison said. "When he began to masturbate, I completely froze. I don't think I said two words in the car in the ride home."

She later recounted Epstein raping her on his birthday. Speaking publicly for the first time, Harrison said she doubted she and other survivors would ever get justice now that Epstein was dead. "I have questions I'll never get an answer to."

High-profile travel: Private jets, card games and Clinton

Chauntae Davies shared never-before-seen images of her time travelling with Epstein on his private plane to Africa. The pictures included Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as actor Kevin Spacey and former President Bill Clinton. Spacey and Clinton were travelling on a humanitarian trip to promote Aids prevention.

"I described it in my journal at the time as the most eclectic group of people that you could put together... it was almost like a camp feel because you were travelling to five different countries in five days," she said. On the plane they ate snacks, played cards and told stories.

"It was very much a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and unfortunately, it had to be tainted by what was happening behind closed doors," she said. Davies has said she was raped by Epstein on his private island after being hired to give him massages.

The trained massage therapist recalled during the Newsnight discussion that she gave Clinton a neck and back massage at an airport in Portugal while the plane refuelled. At the time, she said she wrote in her journal that the former president was humble, kind and charismatic.

The former president was asked about this interaction with Davies when he sat for a deposition in front of the US House Oversight Committee in February. He told the committee he wished Davies had told him about Epstein's wrongdoing. But Davies said she never considered telling Clinton: "I was never going to speak about this with anyone."

"What would he have done, really? Could [Clinton] have stopped it?" Davies wondered about Epstein's wrongdoing. "I guess we'll never know." At one point, while in Portugal with Clinton, Davies recalled helping the former president buy jewellery for his daughter, Chelsea.

Clinton has repeatedly said he did not witness Epstein's abuse. His name crops up hundreds of times in the Epstein files. Appearing in documents related to Epstein does not imply any wrongdoing. Spacey has publicly called for the release of all the Epstein files, saying: "For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can't come soon enough."

The Zorro Ranch files

Earlier this year, allegations surfaced in justice department files about Epstein that prompted the US state of New Mexico to reopen a criminal probe into his Zorro Ranch.

The state previously shelved its initial investigation into the ranch in 2019 following a request from federal prosecutors in New York.

"That's where the majority of the assaults happened. I have my darkest memories from Zorro Ranch," Davies said. When she recalled what it felt like to be there, she told Newsnight she had felt "trapped". "It had a cold, dark, eerie feeling in there," Davies said.

Lisa Phillips, another survivor who spoke to Newsnight, echoed that sentiment about the ranch. "I remember being like 'this place is really creepy', it just had that feel to it," she said. Davies said she believes there is a lot more to uncover about what happened at Zorro Ranch.

'Kompromat' and the inner circle: Claims of coerced encounters

Epstein loved to brag about his well-connected and well-appointed friends, Davies said. She said he bragged about lending money to Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York. "It wasn't a secret," Davies told Newsnight.

There were framed photos of Ferguson with her former husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and their daughters at Epstein's property, Davies said.

Phillips, a fashion model at the time, also spoke about Epstein's connections to Mountbatten-Windsor and retold a story of her friend, who has not spoken publicly and wants to remain anonymous, allegedly being instructed to have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor.

She said her friend went to Epstein's Upper East Side New York City apartment in 2003 where she was directed to go into a room and have sex with a man whom she said was Mountbatten-Windsor.

Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied all wrongdoing. Phillips told Newsnight she later asked Epstein why he had made her friend have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor. She said Epstein smirked and replied: "I like to have things on people."

"He liked the fear in our eyes," she said of Epstein's abuses. "I think he liked that we were frozen and scared and didn't know what to do, and I think he got off on that."

In the Newsnight interview, Phillips called on the UK police to speak to her about what she knows about her friend's alleged assault and Mountbatten-Windsor's involvement. Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

The probe centres on accusations he shared confidential, sensitive information with Epstein while serving as a UK trade envoy.

The survivors who spoke to Newsnight said they do not believe Epstein killed himself. "We knew him, we knew the kind of person he was," Phillips said.

Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on 10 August 2019 while he was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges ahead of trial. It was ruled a suicide by the New York medical examiner.

The lasting psychological toll on victims

Jena-Lisa Jones and Wendy Pesante both met Epstein when they were 14. The women were friends then and, years later after surviving Epstein's abuse, still are.

"When you go through something like that so young it kind of distorts your reality for a long time," Pesante said. "You shouldn't have the mindset of a sex worker at 14."

At one point during the interview, all five survivors were given photos of themselves at the age they were when they met Epstein. "I don't smile the same way anymore," Harrison said, looking at the image of her 18-year-old self.

Phillips looked at the photo of herself in a light-pink ensemble, on a boat, and realised Epstein's island was in the background. "I was enjoying my life, and I had no idea what was about to happen to me," she said of herself in the image. "This is not what I looked like when I left the island."