Chapter Twenty-Two “He’s a Tyler!” #2
Robbie kept urging me to talk to a therapist, as I was still having nightmares.
I had consultations with more than one doctor but didn’t feel I clicked with them.
Then a terrific counselor who was helping me with Tyler pulled me aside one day.
“How are you doing?” she asked, and the warm way she looked at me made tears pop into my eyes.
This woman—her name was Elizabeth—would prove pivotal, not just for Tyler’s well-being but for mine.
She and I became close, and for the first time I started to examine, in detail, the events of my childhood.
Elizabeth helped me understand how extremely damaging sexual abuse is for children.
It wasn’t just about sex, though that part of one’s life was obviously impacted.
It was about how being so fundamentally betrayed often made a person feel deserving of betrayal.
Through that lens, I began to make space for the girl whose worst experiences I’d sought to erase—all those bad things that had happened that my rational brain knew weren’t my fault but that my emotional brain still felt shame about.
Elizabeth also helped me examine another part of my past that filled me with guilt.
When I recruited other girls to suffer as I was suffering under Epstein, she reminded me, I was caught in a system I couldn’t control.
I still blamed myself—I probably always will.
But Elizabeth was the first to tell me about the importance of self-forgiveness.
Around this time, Robbie made us an appointment with Petra, the woman who’d foretold our lifelong bond.
He’d reconnected with her somehow and asked if we could both come see her.
Driving to meet her for the first time in October 2008, I didn’t know what to expect.
A woman with feathers in her hair and a scarf wrapped around her head?
A mystic with cloudy eyes and a whispery voice?
As it turned out, when we knocked and she opened the door, I saw that Petra was just a normal-looking woman in a floral skirt.
She appraised me knowingly, then waved us into her modest home, indicating we should sit around her circular dining table.
“So how are you?” she asked, and I could hear she had some sort of Eastern European accent.
We told her we were well—our two growing sons filled our lives with happiness.
She nodded and reached for a pack of cigarettes.
Fishing one out, she put it in her mouth, lit it, and said in her thick accent, “So, how is your little girl?” Robbie and I looked at each other, then back at her.
“What little girl?” Robbie asked. Petra turned her gaze away, concentrating as if she were fine-tuning her mental reception, then said, “You will soon be pregnant with a girl.” I couldn’t help but smile.
I’d hoped we’d someday have a daughter. And Petra had been right before.
Just after Tyler’s second birthday, I discovered I was pregnant.
I would get bigger this time, which I know many women do as they have more children.
But looking back, I see that I was growing in lots of ways—stepping into my own power, both physically and mentally.
I’ve read that carrying a baby to term takes about the same endurance as climbing Mount Everest. Well, I’d climbed that mountain twice now and was in the midst of doing it a third time.
Despite Epstein and Maxwell’s unwelcome intrusion, building my own family with Robbie and handling all the joys and struggles that came with parenthood was helping me regain my self-confidence.
Which is partly why I now began thinking that we should move to the United States.
We’d spent so much time with Robbie’s extended family, which I loved, but it only made me miss my brothers more.
I nurtured fantasies of an extended reunion where all our kids could get to know each other.
I began to lobby Robbie, and while he was skeptical at first, eventually he agreed that we could apply for tourist visas.
I was so excited that I began selling what little furniture we owned to prepare for the trip.
But I had to change course when our visa applications were denied.
Apparently, we had to prove that we had enough money in the bank to support our two children during the period we were in the United States, and our net worth was too low. We were staying put, at least for now.
—
As expected, meanwhile, Epstein’s shadow still loomed over our lives.
In 2008, I’d received a letter from the US Department of Justice that said I was being contacted because I was “an identified victim of a federal offense.” There was an ongoing investigation into Epstein, the letter said, and apparently scores of women were receiving these letters.
The letter included the name of a lawyer I was encouraged to contact.
I thought this meant that Epstein was finally going to be prosecuted.
But that was wrong. Unbeknownst to any of his victims, a year earlier, in September 2007, Epstein had entered into a secret nonprosecution agreement with the government, which canceled a trial that had been tentatively set for January 2008.
And in June 2008—more than two months before I would hear from the DOJ—Epstein had made an unprecedented plea deal.
As part of that deal, the government had agreed not to punish his associates and conspirators, both unnamed and named—a list that included Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, and two assistants named Lesley Groff and Adriana Ross.
Finally, in return for his pleading guilty to two state charges—procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute—Epstein was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
I only learned of the nonprosecution agreement after I contacted the lawyer—his name was Robert Josefsberg—the DOJ had recommended to me.
He and his daughter, Amy, who was also a lawyer, interviewed me for months, and during that time, I foolishly thought they were preparing me to testify against Epstein.
“Oh, there’s no trial,” they finally explained.
“The government made a deal. But there will be restitution. What you need to decide now is: what’s your number? ”
I didn’t want money. I wanted justice. I told that to the Josefsbergs, but they said it was too late.
I was outraged—an emotion I’d soon discover I shared with so many of the countless women and girls Epstein had harmed.
While I’d initially been afraid to testify in public, I’d soon realized I had to if I wanted to hold Epstein accountable.
It was time for me to stand up, I now knew, and once I’d made that choice, I had warmed to the idea.
But the Josefsbergs now said filing a civil lawsuit against Epstein was the only avenue left open to me.
So I stepped back from revealing my name to the world.
In May 2009, I filed suit under a pseudonym: “Jane Doe 102.” My suit alleged that Epstein had “a sexual preference for underage minor girls” and made clear that I was one of them.
The filing described my first encounter with Epstein and Maxwell and accused them of “sexually assaulting, battering, exploiting, and abusing” me.
It said I believed I’d been recruited by Maxwell from Mar-a-Lago in 1998, when I was fifteen years old (I was mistaken about my age; later, employment records obtained by other attorneys of mine would show I’d begun working at the spa one year later, in 1999).
My suit said I’d been forced to satisfy Epstein’s “every sexual whim” and that I was also “required to be sexually exploited by Defendant’s adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen,” and others.
As a result of all this, the suit said, I had “suffered, and will in the future continue to suffer, physical injury, mental anguish, humiliation, confusion, embarrassment, loss of educational opportunities, loss of self-esteem, loss of dignity, invasion of her privacy, separation from her family, and other damages.” As I reread my lawsuit now, two lines stand out: “Plaintiff has suffered a loss of income, a loss of the capacity to earn income in the future, and a loss of the capacity to enjoy life. These injuries are permanent in nature.”
—
In July 2009, Epstein was released from jail after serving only thirteen months; he was placed on house arrest for a period of another year.
It would later be revealed that for most of his jail sentence, he’d been allowed to go “on work release” to the office of a nonprofit he’d newly created called the Florida Science Foundation.
As delineated in a handwritten addendum to the nonprosecution agreement, he was permitted to visit this office up to twelve hours a day, six days a week.
He continued to molest girls there, and after he got out of jail, he dissolved the foundation.
After that, his period of house arrest was equally lax: he was allowed frequent trips to New York and getaways to his private island.
No wonder he showed no signs of being chastened by his time behind bars.
In late 2009, Epstein kept up his self-justifying narrative in a twenty-two-minute conversation with George Rush, the gossip columnist for the New York Daily News.
Rush taped it and, much later, described Epstein’s spiel to Vanity Fair.
“It was just kind of this self-serving rationale for how he had been tormented by the lawyers for these girls, whom he characterized as these preexisting prostitutes and strippers who’d already been indoctrinated into the sex world,” Rush said.
“You got the sense that he could adopt many masks. He played up his working-class roots on Coney Island, and how he understood that this was a good story that sold newspapers, and how everybody hates a rich guy. He basically said, I get why this is a good story for you, but I think a better story would be how these con artist lawyers are abusing the legal system…He showed little remorse and no pity for his victims.”
Had anyone asked me, I could’ve predicted that Epstein would remain free of remorse.
I’d sure never seen him have any. But at least I didn’t have to witness his self-satisfaction firsthand.
My only contact with Epstein at this point was through lawyers.
In November 2009, I agreed to a confidential settlement.
The terms: my lawsuit against him would be dismissed; we would both keep the settlement secret, and Epstein would not contact me again; and while he was not admitting that he’d violated any federal statutes, he would pay me $500,000.
That was the number I’d named, and I’ve since been told it was far too low.
I’d chosen the amount after looking at the average home prices in our neighborhood.
Later I would learn that at least one victim was paid ten times what I was, but back then, I simply didn’t know to ask for more.
There are those who’ve criticized Epstein’s victims for entering into confidential settlements with Epstein because, they assert, that allowed him to sweep his problems under the rug.
People are particularly judgmental about our receiving money from him.
My response to that is anger. The DOJ—not Epstein’s victims—made the secret deal that ultimately let Epstein off the hook in 2008: Alexander Acosta, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, approved the nonprosecution agreement behind closed doors without consulting with (and while actively misleading) Epstein’s victims. Afterward, those of us whom Epstein had abused were told that was the end of it—Epstein wouldn’t be prosecuted, no matter how much we wanted him to be.
We were also told that extracting money from him was the only way to punish him.
(Remember that it was the DOJ that connected me with a lawyer so I could sue.) But here’s the real reason I’m angry at those who judge victims who settle: all that legalese in our lawsuits about pain and suffering and mental anguish—those things are real.
And getting treatment for them costs money.
When I settled with Epstein, I had a little money for the first time in my life.
After years of scrimping—of buying secondhand furniture, driving used cars, and xeroxing baby photos instead of ordering extra prints—Robbie and I could now buy our first house.
We found a brick three-bedroom in the suburb of Glenning Valley, about two hours north of Sydney.
Epstein had taken what was left of my childhood.
But now a tiny fraction of his immense fortune was going to ensure that my children grew up in their own home.