Chapter Thirty-Eight Nobody’s Girl #2
Pressure to be a “good girl” is everywhere, and the last thing I wanted to do in this book is to place more of that pressure on anyone, particularly on survivors of abuse.
I’ve written a lot about bravery because I admire people who do what is right, even when that comes at a cost, but I want to be clear: while we need to be brave about naming our abusers, we also must protect ourselves.
You may notice that while I’ve named some men in this book, I have not named all the men I was trafficked to.
Partly that is because I still don’t know some of their names.
Partly, too, that is because there are certain men who I fear naming.
The man who brutally raped me toward the end of my time with Epstein and Maxwell, for example—the man whom I’ve called “the former Prime Minister” in court documents—I know his name, and he knows what he did to me, even though when others have sought comment from him about my allegations, he has denied them.
I fear that this man will seek to hurt me if I say his name here.
There are other men whom I was trafficked to who have threatened me in another way: by asserting that they will use litigation to bankrupt me.
One of those men’s names has come up repeatedly in various court filings, and in response, he has told my lawyers that if I talk about him publicly, he will employ his vast resources to keep me in court for the rest of my life.
While I have named him in sworn depositions and identified him to the FBI, I fear that if I do so again here, my family will bear the emotional and financial brunt of that decision.
I have the same fears about another man whom I was forced to have sex with many times—a man whom I also saw having sexual contact with Epstein himself.
I would love to identify him here. But this man is very wealthy and very powerful, and I fear that he, too, might engage me in expensive, life-ruining litigation.
I do not make this decision to hold back lightly.
Part of me wants to shout from the highest rooftop the names of every man who ever used me for sex.
Some readers will question my reluctance to name many of my abusers.
If I am, indeed, a fighter for justice, why have I not called them out?
My answer is simple: Because while I have been a daughter, a prisoner, a survivor, and a warrior, my most important role is that of a mother.
First and foremost, I am a parent, and I won’t put my family at risk if I can help it.
Maybe in the future I will be ready to talk about these men. But not now.
In the meantime, there is important work to do.
We need to make it easier to punish those who victimize others.
Siggy and I want to eliminate laws that limit the period in which survivors can seek justice for their abusers.
As I’ve said, New York State has made a lot of progress, first, by opening up a look-back window for child victims of sexual assault and then, in November 2022, by passing the Adult Survivors Act: a yearlong window in which people who were sexually assaulted as adults can file civil suits against their alleged abusers, no matter how long ago the assaults occurred.
After the Child Victims Act opened its window, more than ten thousand lawsuits were filed—mine among them.
Other states have made changes as well. In 2020, my childhood home of Florida passed new legislation titled “Donna’s Law,” named after Orlando resident Donna Hedrick, who was allegedly abused by a former high school teacher in the early 1970s.
This law removed the statute of limitations for prosecuting acts of sexual battery committed against children younger than eighteen years of age.
However, the law only applied to crimes committed on or after July 1, 2020. There was no look-back window.
Federally, meanwhile, numerous updates have been made to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act, which struck from the books the statute of limitations for TVPA claims brought by minor victims of sexual abuse, human trafficking, forced labor, and child pornography.
After Biden did so, more states eliminated statutes of limitations, and lawmakers in other states, such as California, proposed bills that would do the same.
(Currently in California, if a person is sexually abused before the age of eighteen, they must file a civil claim before turning forty.)
Awareness is growing about the need for change.
And now that my settlement from Prince Andrew has come through, I have begun the slow process of turning my fledgling foundation, SOAR, into a professionally run organization.
My goal is for SOAR to combat human trafficking by supporting organizations that focus on prosecution, protection, and prevention.
Eventually, I plan to make grants that make it easier for members of the public to detect trafficking when they see it and that support victims’ recovery.
I look forward to disseminating some of the Crown’s money to do some good.
But frankly, I need a rest. While finishing this book, I’ve had many setbacks.
I’ve had a second surgery on my broken neck, but it still causes me immense pain; doctors believe I may need a third.
And my mental health has faltered at times, too—as it may continue to falter for the rest of my life.
Lately my doctors have prescribed me a series of ketamine treatments that seem to be helping to untangle my PTSD.
Still though, I’m learning to accept that sometimes I will simply not be okay.
That is the price of serious trauma: it lays you low, and sometimes makes you your own worst enemy.
My goal now is to prevent the emotional time bomb that lives inside me—my toxic memories and devastating visualizations of myself being hurt—from ever detonating again.
But sometimes I have trouble holding to that goal.
There have been silver linings to my recent struggles—my mother and I have been talking more frequently on FaceTime, for the first time, she’s told me she was sorry for what my father did to me when I was a child.
“I should have been there for you,” she told me through tears.
To finally hear—and see—her acknowledge my experience had more power than I’d ever realized it would.
But nevertheless, I have found myself yearning for a lasting peace.
Recently, the second of the two televised dramas I told you were in the works about Prince Andrew’s interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis aired on Prime Video.
The three-part miniseries, A Very Royal Scandal, which is based on a book by Maitlis, focuses mostly on the planning, execution, and aftermath of that BBC interview, and I learned a few things while watching it (though I’ll admit I grimaced when the miniseries’s producers chose to use actual footage of me talking, and to end the show with a close-up of my actual seventeen-year-old face).
But there’s a particular scene in the show’s final episode that really affected me.
In the wake of her sit-down with the prince, Maitlis has been heralded around the world for her brilliant interview.
But now, she is sitting with her laptop in her darkened kitchen, playing back audio of herself being interviewed.
The topic: a stalker whose relentless fixation with Maitlis upended her life before he received an eight-year prison sentence.
When Maitlis’s husband enters the kitchen and hears what she’s listening to, he asks her why.
“Because,” she tells him, “I wanted to remember how it felt to be interviewed about something that wasn’t my fault.
And what happened to Epstein’s victims wasn’t their fault.
Yet they still had to be witness. They still had to, you know, parade their pain in the hope of even the slightest justice.
I’m not saying that what happened to me was even, you know, remotely similar.
Of course it wasn’t. But just the, you know, the parading—the endless bloody talking about it, to get anyone to take it seriously. Remember that?”
Her husband nods. He does remember.
“And that’s true of every woman who ever complained about any kind of harassment,” Maitlis, played by the actress Ruth Wilson, continues.
“Always uphill. Always against the tide. Always a battle against the unspoken. You know, the look in their eyes that says, ‘Really? Did he really?’…When I sat down with Prince Andrew, I was only ever hoping to ask the right questions. I didn’t know how he’d be or what he’d say.
But it was the arrogance. The entitlement.
He just couldn’t help himself. You know, the way that certain men, whatever their sickness, assume certain rights without ever giving it a second thought. Their want. Their need. Their impulse.”
To which I say: exactly. For fourteen years, since 2011, I’ve repeatedly revealed to the world what was done to me in the hope of preventing others’ suffering.
Like Maitlis says: parading my pain—“the endless bloody talking about it.” I don’t regret it, but the constant telling and retelling has been extremely painful and exhausting.
With this book, I seek to free myself from my past. From now on, anyone who wants to know about what happened can sit down with Nobody’s Girl and start reading.