Chapter Twenty-Three My Very Own Princess
Twenty-three
My Very Own Princess
Convinced by Petra’s prediction that our third child would be a girl, I set about decorating a nursery I’d dreamed of creating since I was a child.
One wall was painted watermelon pink, and the crib was surrounded by fairies and teddy bears.
In contrast to Alex and Tyler, who’d slept in borrowed bassinets and worn hand-me-down clothing, this baby had a mom who had the ability to splurge.
Walking into a baby store near our house, I told the salesclerk I was looking for “everything princess.”
I know all parents think their babies are beauties, but Ellie really was one.
She had impossibly long eyelashes and an impish smile, and as I held her in my arms, I realized I felt different becoming the mother of a girl.
I adored my sons, but their births hadn’t sent me on a trip down memory lane.
Ellie’s did. Looking at her, I could picture myself as the vulnerable girl I’d once been.
I knew what could happen to Ellie because it had happened to me.
From the start, having a daughter changed me, awakening something fierce down deep inside.
I began talking to Robbie about wanting to do more to stop powerful men like Epstein from victimizing others.
Ever since I’d met the lawyers who’d filed my civil claim against him, anger had been building inside me.
For so long, I’d tried to forget—to throw my memories in the back of the garbage can in my head.
“I wanted to move on with my life—to move past those memories,” I told Robbie.
“But you know what? They won’t go away. And now Epstein has gotten away with everything, and I’m pissed off.
” I wasn’t sure what, exactly, one woman could do.
But just as I’d discussed with the Josefsbergs, I was now talking to Robbie more and more about my stepping forward in some public way.
We knew too well what some daughters were forced to endure.
What could we, the parents of our own daughter, do about that?
I remembered how Ruth Menor, my childhood mentor, had started her nonprofit Vinceremos with just one horse.
Could I create something like that, but for people like me?
Sometimes after the kids were in bed, Robbie and I would whisper our fears and hopes to each other before falling asleep.
Increasingly, I was feeling I needed to play a more active role in holding those who had abused me accountable.
At the same time, I was trying to heal the rift with my father.
I know that may sound counterintuitive, or even insane—that at the very moment I was pondering how to be more assertive in taking on predators, I was reaching out to the first man who had preyed on me.
I now know that it is common for survivors of abuse to try to “fix” their pasts by continuing to engage with their abusers.
But I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that I wanted things to be okay with my dad—and with my mom too.
Just before his granddaughter turned three months old, in March 2010, my dad came to Australia for a second time to meet Tyler and Ellie.
But this visit was rockier. Knowing my dad was good at fixing things, I suggested he and Robbie build a deck around the tiny pool in our backyard, and that kept the peace for a few days.
Robbie’s birthday was coming up, and I was determined to get him a small fishing boat because he’d told me how much he’d loved fishing as a kid.
So I asked my dad for help picking out the right boat. So far, so good.
But then Dad started crossing little lines.
I tended to avoid his touch, but he would come up to me in the kitchen while I was cooking and try to hold my hand or would insist on dancing with me.
Robbie was seething. “I wouldn’t do that with my daughter,” he said, through gritted teeth, when we were alone.
I didn’t defend my dad but asked Robbie not to make a big deal of it.
Then, one night, my dad started showing us sexually explicit photographs on his phone.
The people in the photos appeared to be adults, but the images were still disturbing.
Seeing my father smirking and trying to get me to look, Robbie completely lost it.
“Why are you showing naked pictures to my wife?” he demanded, and when my dad got huffy, Robbie went off.
“I know you’re a fucking pedophile, and you need to get out of my house.
” Were it not for me, standing in the middle, they would have hit each other.
Robbie was screaming, and my dad was screaming back, refusing to retreat.
Finally, I took hold of my dad’s arm and dragged him to the front door.
“Robbie, please calm down!” I begged. “I will get rid of him.” Somehow I got Dad in the car and drove him to a lake, ten minutes from our house, where I knew there were cabins for rent.
I booked Dad into a cabin and told him to stay put.
I probably should have slammed the door behind me as I left for home, but I didn’t.
Instead, I promised to visit him again before his flight back to the United States.
I paid to change his itinerary, since he was leaving before he’d planned, and of course paid for the cabin too.
I guess I still was trying to prove that I was a good daughter.
Even then, I needed his approval. Only after Dad finally left did Robbie and I breathe easier.
To commemorate Ellie’s birth, Robbie had gotten a new tattoo on his ribs—an affirmation, he said, of the family we’d built.
I’d watched him design it for months. At the top, just under his left armpit, were the words “Twin Flame,” because we were a team, he said.
Two large figures, a man and woman, embraced below—“yin and yang,” he explained—and they were surrounded by fire.
“The flames signify the intensity of our love,” Robbie told me, “but also the hardships that test any relationship that is based on the truth.” At the bottom of his rib cage, right above his waist, he’d added in beautiful script, “In Love With Jenna G.”
Life went on. Every once in a while, I’d be reading the news or watching TV when I’d stumble across a name or a face that I recognized.
Numerous other well-known men who Epstein and Maxwell had forced me to service sexually would pop up in my newsfeed.
Almost as disorienting was when I’d see a photo in the newspaper of some other boldfaced name who hadn’t abused me but whom I clearly remembered meeting.
Bill Clinton would be in the news—traveling to Haiti with George W.
Bush, say, to coordinate recovery efforts after a terrible earthquake—and I’d flash on the hard-to-believe fact that once, in what felt like a former life, I had actually met this man who’d served as commander in chief.
Unbeknownst to me, meanwhile, a journalist named Sharon Churcher had begun trying to determine the identity of Jane Doe 102, the pseudonym I’d used in my civil suit against Epstein.
First, she reached out to a Florida attorney named Brad Edwards, who was representing several of Epstein’s victims. Edwards had figured out my identity because my name appeared repeatedly on various pieces of evidence he’d collected.
He also knew from his sources that I’d been lent out for sex with others.
In his 2020 book, Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein, Edwards wrote that he believed that because I’d traveled extensively with Epstein, and had been trafficked broadly by him, I “held the key to unlocking another level of Epstein’s depravity.
” He wanted to speak with me, so he passed along the few leads he had to Churcher.
“If some dogged reporter was willing to take a chance traveling across the world to knock on her door,” he wrote, “I was happy to share what I knew.”
Churcher, who worked for the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail, was nothing if not dogged.
First, she tracked down Tony Figueroa, who was then living in Georgia.
Tony told her my father’s name and where he thought Dad resided in Florida.
My father had temporarily returned to California at this point, but Churcher eventually found him.
She called and left a phone message, which Dad then passed on to me.
Discovering that a reporter wanted to hear my side, after all this time, was at once validating and terrifying.
Robbie and I had been talking for months about what my role could be if I shed my anonymity and spoke out against Epstein and Maxwell.
More and more, I thought I was ready. I had done so much healing, and I thought other victims of sexual abuse—those hurt by Epstein and Maxwell, of course, but also by others, too—might benefit from hearing what I’d experienced and how I’d survived.
Also, I was furious about how small a price Epstein and his crew were paying for what they’d done.
And yet I hesitated. I’d worked so hard to build a life that wasn’t tied to Epstein and Maxwell.
I was still afraid of them and the other abusers they had enabled.
Unsure whether I could go through with an interview, I sent Churcher an open-ended email.
“Hi Sharon,” I wrote on February 4, 2011. “My Father, Sky Roberts, informed me of your call and I thought I’d send you my contact details so we can get in touch.”