Chapter Twenty Welcome to the World #2
In addition to changing our lives in a thousand other ways, Alex’s arrival made me think a lot about the importance of family.
I wanted my son to feel connected to his relatives in a way that I didn’t.
Robbie’s extended family was there for us, for sure, but I found myself missing my parents—or at least the parents I wished I’d had.
In Alex’s baby book, I’d written: “Remember, Alex: Friends come and go but your family is forever! We must always look out for each other and create memories together. Most important thing in life: Family.” And then I’d drawn a heart.
But I felt like a hypocrite: while Robbie’s parents were around all the time, mine had never come to visit, and I talked to them infrequently.
Now I began to wonder how I could make things okay between me and my mom and dad.
“I’ve had too much hate towards them,” I told Robbie.
“The past is the past. We have a happy family now. I want to let go of my hate.” An idea had been percolating in my head: I knew Mom, who is afraid of flying, probably couldn’t handle a sixteen-hour trip, but I was thinking of inviting Dad to come meet Alex.
“I want to give him another chance—a do-over,” I told Robbie.
My husband was reluctant. “I mean, what kind of man does to his daughter what he did to you?” he asked.
But seeing how much reconciliation mattered to me, he gritted his teeth and said okay.
In September 2006, Dad arrived, and my mother-in-law insisted on making a huge breakfast feast to welcome him.
As we headed over to their place, just a few blocks away, I was fretting, worried that Dad would embarrass me.
And he did, the moment we walked in Nina’s door, by announcing that he wasn’t hungry.
“I already had McDonald’s this morning,” he said, which basically guaranteed Nina wouldn’t like him.
You don’t tell the Giuffre clan that you won’t eat their food.
We stayed an hour, then headed back home.
After that, we didn’t take Dad out much, but the rest of the weeklong visit went okay.
My dad, however, was still my dad. There’s a photo of him in Alex’s baby book, holding a beer bottle to my infant son’s lips.
“You and Grandpa Sky sharing your first brewsky together,” reads the caption I wrote, making the best of it.
Today, though, I see the inappropriateness of my dad’s behavior, as well as how triggering it was for me.
Forcing an adult beverage on a baby, even in jest, isn’t the same as forcing adult sexuality on a child—but it’s rooted in a similar logic.
Adults have the power to manipulate small children, who don’t yet have the capacity to make their own choices.
Sometimes it seemed as if my dad enjoyed doing things that were taboo, if only to watch others react in horror or chagrin as he pushed past boundaries.
But I so wanted for us to be a tight-knit family that I let it slide.
Maybe that’s why it meant so much to me that, in contrast to my dad, the man I’d married was proving to be a devoted father.
For example, when Alex was seven months old, he was suddenly determined to learn how to walk.
He would use a coffee table or a chair to hoist himself to a standing position, then look around for help.
That’s when Robbie figured out how to loop a rolled-up bath towel under Alex’s arms like a harness, to show our son what walking felt like.
Together, we often took Alex to Homebush Bay Aquatic Centre, where we could soak in the whirlpool, and to Featherdale Wildlife Park, which is home to the world’s largest collection of Australian wildlife.
Alex loved to go to Featherdale to pet the kangaroos and wallabies.
In early 2007, we had a scare about baby number two.
During a routine ultrasound, doctors observed that our unborn baby might have a tiny hole in his heart.
I remember the doctor counseling Robbie and me about what that would mean for our family—perhaps several surgeries, with no guarantee of success—and he suggested we consider aborting.
“You’re young and healthy,” he said. “You can just try again.” But we were several months along—I felt as big as a house—and our baby in utero had already won a place in our hearts.
“Think about it,” the doctor urged us, but Robbie and I told him no.
This child was ours, and we would love him or her no matter what.
Having been told (wrongly) that I wouldn’t ever have kids, I felt that any child that I carried inside me was a gift.
—
Alex was taking a nap one afternoon in 2007 when the phone rang.
When I picked up, I would have known the British accent on the other end of the line anywhere.
“Hi, how’s life?” Maxwell cooed, and my heart lodged in my throat.
For five years, not a day had gone by that I didn’t think about the possibility of Epstein and Maxwell somehow tracking me down.
Now all my old fears came racing to the surface.
Maxwell was exactly as I remembered her—breezy, charming, pushing an agenda.
After a little chitchat, she zeroed in on the purpose of her call.
“I can’t believe this but, after everything he’s done for all those girls, Jeffrey’s being investigated,” she told me.
“Have you been contacted?” I told her no.
I knew nothing about any inquiry and had no intention of trying to find out.
Maxwell said that I’d be “taken care of” if I refused to cooperate with investigators.
“So long as you don’t say anything, everything is fine,” she said, even implying I might be investigated, too—as if we were all in this together.
“If you need legal help, we’re here to help you.
” All I wanted to do was slam the phone down and rip its cord out of the wall.
But I was afraid that if I expressed hostility, Maxwell would see me as her enemy and punish me.
I was eight months pregnant, with a one-year-old and a husband who was at work from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. As my grandma Shelley used to say, there are times to kick the hornet’s nest and times not to.
This was not a time for kicking. I promised I wouldn’t speak to anyone.
“I’ve started a new life, Ghislaine,” I said. “I just want to be left alone.”
I hoped that was the end of it. But a few days later, Epstein called.
He said hello and tried to make nice at first, as if we were dear friends who’d somehow fallen out of touch.
Never good at pleasantries, though, he added abruptly, “I’m having my lawyer tape this conversation.
” (I would later learn that Epstein had assembled a veritable army of high-profile lawyers to defend him from the allegations: Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, former US solicitor Ken Starr, and other well-known men.) I don’t remember which lawyer this was, but after he introduced himself, he explained that an investigation into Epstein was ongoing and that it was based on allegations made by women who’d worked as strippers and prostitutes or who were drug addicts.
I didn’t need a translator to grasp his not-so-subtle point: the accusers had no credibility, and anyone who turned against Epstein was a skank who would be discredited.
Just as in my call with Maxwell, threatening energy zinged through the phone line and hung in the air.
I suddenly needed to sit down, so I did, resting the bulky landline telephone on my protruding stomach.
When Epstein pressed me—“Have you talked to anybody? Are you going to?”—I was determined to reassure him.
I knew in my bones that if I didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he would hurt me and my family.
“Look,” I said, “like I told Ghislaine, I’m not saying anything to anyone. ”
Epstein repeated some of Maxwell’s crap about wanting to “take care” of me if I needed legal advice or anything else.
“I don’t need your help, Jeffrey,” I told him nonchalantly, trying to mask the terror overtaking me.
“I’m a mom now. I’m happy. I don’t want anything to do with this.
” I remembered how he used to boast about having law enforcement in his pocket.
Now that he and Maxwell had found my phone number, I was sure they also knew Robbie’s and my street address.
“Jeffrey, I have to ask: where is all this coming from?” I said before we hung up.
I guess I was trying to sound as if I were on his team.
But I was also curious. After so many years of surrounding himself with young girls in public, at parties, in airports, and all over the world—after so many years flaunting his predilections and boasting of his superiority—Epstein had made some sort of misstep.
Even as he deflected, ignoring my question, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was.
Only a few days passed before the phone rang again.
The man on the line told me he was with the FBI and that I’d been identified as a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s.
I braced myself for an interrogation, but nothing could have prepared me for how immediately explicit his questions were.
“Have you ever had sex with Epstein?” he asked.
“Has Epstein ever ejaculated in front of you?” The man kept going in this vein, saying photos of me had been found in Epstein’s Palm Beach house.
But was the caller really an FBI agent, I wondered, or was this one of Epstein and Maxwell’s minions, testing my loyalty?
How had this “agent” located me? “This isn’t a good time,” I managed to say. “I have nothing to tell you. Goodbye.”
It would be a long time before I found out what, specifically, had led law enforcement to begin looking into Epstein.
But while I had little sense of what was happening on the other side of the world, I knew this: Epstein had barged back into my life, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon.