A survivor on the Epstein Files

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:06Today, a survivor speaks to us about the latest release of the Epstein Files.

0:17And just a warning before we start, this episode does contain swearing and some reference to sexual assault. Good morning. President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Nearly a week ago, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stood up in front of a crowd of reporters and told the world that the release of another 3.5 million documents put a full stop on the investigation into the Epstein files. I hope that the work that the men and women within this department have done over the past two months hopefully is able to bring closure. But for Lisa Phillips, one of Epstein's survivors, this just didn't land well.

1:06Oh boy. Everything that man says just irks me. It really does because it's just like, it's over. We're not releasing anything. It's not over. It's not over until the survivors say it's over.

1:23Since then, survivors like Lisa have watched as the headlines have been dominated by revelations about the rich and powerful men linked to Jeffrey Epstein. While the documents also include email correspondence between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Epstein, the new emails show that Musk... After emails were discovered, which suggest that Lord Mandelson sent market-sensitive information to the convicted sex-abendant Jeffrey Epstein. Appearing to show Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor crouched over an unidentified woman are featured in the latest disclosure of files... Yet far less attention or airtime has been paid to the other group of people in the files.

2:02The women and girls like Lisa, who Epstein trafficked and abused. I can tell you that we still need answers and no one's been held accountable. And who say they have been betrayed by the US justice system. They have been very careless with these files, very careless with the survivor names. and they're redacting the names of these people, these politicians and these powerful people. Who are you protecting here? From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus. Why the fight for justice for Epstein's victims isn't over.

2:42Maurya Dornigan, welcome to Today in Focus. You're a columnist for Guardian US and you have been following this story for a long time. you've covered every new update, every release, every dead end, every twist and turn. I mean, so much has happened in this last week, hasn't it? But can you just give us a sense of the scale and the reach of the documents that were released on Friday? What was in them? What were these documents? It's a massive amount of documentation. So these documents that were released on Friday and which have been released in previous sort of like drops of Epstein-related material span several federal and state investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, his conduct related to underage girls, and his death in prison in 2019.

3:29They also relate to a bunch of just his personal communication. One of the most sort of scintillating pieces or genres of documents that have been released has been his personal emails in which he seems to have very extensive connections to American elites across a range of fields. You know, I think a big part of this story is just the sheer scale of the documentation that's being released. You know, the Justice Department uploads these documents to its website in massive tranches, and they're not labeled or indexed in any way. And so you have to sort of reverse engineer what you're looking at and where it came from.

4:07And Moira, we're speaking to you on Tuesday afternoon. There have already been so many revelations since Friday. Should we be bracing ourselves for more in the days to come? You know, there's a lot of sort of speculation surrounding what's incriminating and what's not, and I would urge a little bit of caution, but I also think what's going to happen is that some of the most interesting context and the most interesting revelations that are going to be discovered in these documents are things that still have yet to be found. You know, this is a massive amount of material. Some of it is very banal.

4:43There's not a very easy, quick way to separate out what's relevant, what indicates new or reveals new truth about Epstein's role during his life or his relationship with the elites or his conduct with underage children. So there's a lot to get through. I think we're going to discover quite a bit more. It's just a massive job. Obviously, we've got to say at this point that simply being in the Epstein files doesn't prove any wrongdoing. I think what has been clear when even the bits and pieces that I've been looking at over the last couple of days is that one of the most disturbing things really is the tone in which some of these men are discussing the young women who are also in these files and the tone of the emails between them.

5:28And I wondered if that was something that struck you too. Yes. So Richard Branson, the billionaire, refers in some of these emails to Epstein's harem. A few months ago, there was a release of a sort of like book of notes and reminiscences that was compiled for Epstein for his 50th birthday that included many references to young women, many vulgar sexual references, one drawing of Epstein sort of presenting a balloon to some little girls and then later being sexually serviced by naked women with the implication that they're the same people. As you mentioned, Annie, there's very little evidence necessarily to suggest that merely being in contact with Epstein made one a party to or complicit in these abuse of children.

6:23But I don't think anybody can look at these kinds of documents and the way that women are being discussed in Epstein's private communications and not wonder how much people knew. Yeah, it's interesting also this week that a lot of talk has been about the powerful men who were in these files, lots of talk about Mandelson, about the Clintons, but it can seem that the women who are really at the heart of this story are in some way not being talked about, are kind of almost being overlooked. And it seems that Todd Blanch and the rest of the Justice Department kind of hoped that this last load of files that were disclosed on Friday were kind of put an end to the discussion and speculation about Epstein and about who might be connected to him and what kind of activities they may have all got up together.

7:10But that didn't really happen, did it? Yeah, you know, I think there's one way of looking at this story. It's a very popular way of looking at this story that is about the bad behavior and embarrassment of powerful men, right? But there's a lot of people in this story who are implicated in the story who are not rich and famous, who are not particularly powerful. And that's these girls, now women, who were victimized by Epstein when they were very vulnerable and very young. You know, the Justice Department has justified its own delays in the release of these documents, saying that they needed to, among other things, redact name and images of potentially victimized people.

7:48But this latest release included the unredacted names and sometimes hundreds of times of alleged victims. The New York Times is reporting that some of the included unredacted material includes what seems to be sexually explicit material, including possibly child sexual abuse material. And these people, these people who were victimized by Jeffrey Epstein at a moment when he had a lot of money and they often had very little of anything, are being re-victimized by the process. And their dignity is being insulted by the notion that this is a story about the embarrassment of the powerful and not about the violence done to the less powerful.

8:31I think we owe it as journalists and as consumers of the news to treat these women with a little more respect than they were treated either by Epstein and his circle or now by the Justice Department.

8:48My name is Lisa Phillips and I'm a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. I was a young model in the early 2000s and my story starts there. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. We really, really appreciate your time today. So first off, could you take us back? Could you tell us about the first time that you met Jeffrey Epstein? I was a fashion model living in New York City. I was kind of living the dream. And so in early 2000, I booked a really cool job. It was like a cover of a magazine, a five-page spread with another model from my agency. She was a tall, beautiful Polish girl. We booked this really cool job, flew down to Tortola in the British West Indies.

9:31And when we had our day off, this other young girl said to me, hey, you know, my friend owns an island nearby and, you know, he's really great. He's a mentor of mine. He helped me to get my visa to work in the U.S. So, you know, kind of want to go see him since we're right here. And so I just agreed with her and I said, sure, let's go. This person sent a boat and we got on the boat and we went across the Caribbean and see. It was a beautiful day. I arrived on the island and spent a few hours just hanging out and went into the pool. And I met a couple other young girls there. They were younger than us.

10:07We were in our early twenties and there was a older man in the pool with one of the girls, kind of like canoodling and kissing and things. And I was like, oh, that's weird. Cause you know, it's always weird when you see super young girls with old men so but I just noted that and then um we got washed up and went to dinner and we all sat at this long table and had delicious food and that was the time when I met Jeffrey Epstein and what were your first impressions of him he walked in this kind of like charming person uh sat down next to me and it was all giddy and I could tell he knew the other girls really well and I felt really comfortable and so he kind of asked me about my aspirations and my goals and that I felt kind of comfortable and like he was kind of like a father figure.

10:58And, you know, he asked me a lot of questions about myself. And I had told him that I grew up the first few years of my life in Oxford, England. He was like, oh, he kind of perked up about that. Oh, wow. So, you know, he was like, do you want to meet a prince? And so I was like, okay. So what happened after dinner that night? So we went, you know, like we were going to sleep. Got in our pajamas or whatever, hanging out in the bed together, just the girls talking and stuff. And another young girl came to the door and said Jeffrey was ready for his massage. And I'll always remember those words, Jeffrey was ready for his massage.

11:35Because at that time, you know, I look like a woman now, but I was, you know, five feet, eight inches tall. Like I look like a little boy, you know. And so everybody knows that Jeffrey had a certain type of girls that were always around, and they were very young, fair, blonde type of girls. And, you know, I'm this mixed-race girl, and it looked kind of different. I mean, I had these little hands. I didn't, like, I'm not massaging that grown man. It was just like a fight back and forth. Like, I'm not massaging him. And she was like, well, you kind of, if he says we have to, we have to just go give him a massage, you know?

12:08And he did spend quite a bit of time teaching us how to do a proper massage. And then it just kind of turned dark. And then that's when Jeffrey did what he does and took out tools and things like that and sort of using them on her and I and wanting to do these things with us together. And it just became really dark and really weird. And we both looked at each other not knowing what to do. And we kind of just froze in the situation. It wasn't like a run out of the room kind of thing. I just didn't really know what to do, and I just froze. So there was a sexual assault on both of us that evening.

12:49And then, you know, as soon as it was done, we just ran out of there, ran back to the room, and just waited until the boat came in the morning, and then we just left the island as quick as we could. So that was my experience on the island. I'm so sorry. That's horrible. Really, really horrible. After this, you went back to New York and you continued your modeling career. How did your connection with Epstein continue? Everything changed once I got back. I do know that I had a completely different personality after the abuse because I just kind of had that feeling of shame and worthlessness that came over me.

13:29I didn't feel as a beautiful, strong, confident woman anymore. I kind of had a little bit of a mask on because I had a little secret that didn't make me feel good. And I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I know for sure they probably would have blamed me and said, you know, what did you do? Are you flirting? Or, you know, I just felt like people would say that. So I just went to a couple of those groups for like rape survivors. But that was like humiliating to even talk about it because I didn't really know how to explain it. How I ended up on the island, you know. You got to remember back then, nobody knew about Jeffrey Epstein.

14:06He wasn't a playboy. You know, he's very mysterious. And so everyone in New York kind of talked about him in kind of a good light. So, you know, think of it like a celebrity. Most people don't speak out with celebrities and stuff because nobody's going to believe you. So I just kept the pain and the shame inside and started hanging out a little bit. So kind of being a little bit of a socialite. And then also I was getting harassed by the secretaries that worked in Epstein's office, the ones that have immunity right now under the sweetheart deal they got in 2006. They've never had any criminal activity, but these women were relentless in calling the young girls.

14:43Called me every single week, telling me how amazing I was and how much Jeffrey wanted to meet me and see me again and how he wanted to help me out and all these things. They tried everything. And I just kept saying, no, no, no, not going back to see that creepy old man. No. And then just one day, like in the spring, maybe four months later, Jeffrey called me. He has a very distinct way of talking, so I knew who it was immediately. You know, it's a really fast way of talking and right to the point. Voice where you just like freeze. You know, he wasn't going to let me get away because I had seen somebody pretty important on the island.

15:18I know that now. I wasn't thinking that then. But he called me up and he said, you know, Lisa, I remember what you said on the island and that your ultimate goal was to become a Ford model. uh so i just went in and met the agents and within a short period of time i became a ford model so it sounds like he knew exactly what he needed to do to keep you in his orbit and i guess all of this power and wealth he had could also help you fulfill your ambitions well yeah of course i mean that's how any master predator works. You have to have a leverage over somebody. If I was just a couch potato at home eating, you know, eating potato chips, watching TV, what leverage are you going to have over me?

16:06Ambition is what most of them prey on, right? I didn't know that at the time. I just thought, oh, I have a goal. He says you can do this goal for me. And you also abuse me. Like, fuck you. Like, you abused me, so you owe me. I was just trapped in something that I didn't really know how to get out of with the man. And I could tell he was a powerful person. He knew powerful people who were also saying, oh, he's so amazing. And you have to remember all the young girls said, he's so amazing too, because the young girls at the time didn't talk about the abuse. Nobody talked about it. They just said, he's amazing.

16:40Trust me, I became one of those girls that said he's amazing later on. because I didn't talk about the abuse either. I mean, in my own reporting career, I spent about five or six years reporting on human trafficking and modern slavery. And I did dozens and dozens and dozens of interviews with sex trafficking survivors in all different types of situations and contexts. And it didn't matter if you were somebody who was dependent on drugs and needed somebody to just literally put a roof over your head. And the connection between all of them was this idea of coercion not being physical force, but this very complex emotional bond that comes with a power imbalance.

17:26It exerts a tremendous psychological hold over you, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. It's a major trauma bond. There has to be that good with the evil. You know, there has to be something that's dangling over you. And I like that you said that. It's all walks of life. I mean, I came from a really great family. I moved from an eight-bedroom chateau in Brussels, in Belgium. And a lot of the Florida girls, they came from hard backgrounds, came from drug addict moms, dads in jail. They went after these young girls that didn't come from a good life and really abused these underage girls and held that over their head because they needed money.

18:05And a lot of them will say they have this love-hate relationship with Jeffrey, too. Everyone kind of did because he was a charming, nice man most of the time. And he knew everybody. And he was behind the scenes. It was a kind of secret society. He was not a Donald Trump that was out there, gregarious, and wanting all the girls around him and having the pageants and all the things. He was the opposite. So that's why people trusted him. And he was quiet about things. And he got into your head. So you eventually get away from Epstein once you start realizing what he's doing to you and all the other girls.

18:41The last time I spoke to Jeffrey, I said, I kind of know what's going on here. And then just kind of just left New York City and went to L.A. And that's when all the stuff started coming out about Epstein.

18:54After those years and after I didn't speak to Epstein anymore, I went on, got married, had kids and went on with my life. and knew some things that were happening, but I didn't really pay attention to it. I wanted nothing to do with any of this. So I didn't pay attention to it for about 15 years. Then he died.

19:15And I remember when he died, I had this moment of all these emotions came back. Because now when your abuser dies, it's now all of a sudden you're free. And people are speaking out, You're paying attention. And their stories, every single one of the stories are exactly the same story that I had. But it was Virginia Giffray who spoke out that I saw. I remember that she was getting vilified for speaking out about Prince Andrew. He was Prince Andrew at the time. So I was like, okay, I'm going to support her. So I started reaching out to the Survivor Sisters in Virginia and spoke to her. We started adding up the dates and looking at the flight logs when they came out and things like that.

20:01And so I said, I want to support you. In the year 2000, I was taken to Jeffrey Epstein's island while on a photo shoot on a nearby island. Who I saw and what I experienced there was a glimpse into a very dark and disturbing world. Epstein's reach went to the very top of fashion, arts and entertainment. This did not just happen to underage girls in Florida. In New York City, hundreds of... And Lisa, you've gone on to become one of the many women who've publicly spoken out about this. You know, you stood on Capitol Hill, you've demanded transparency and justice. I was wondering if you could just take us through the moment that you heard that finally these files were going to be released and what your initial response was, because you fought along with all these other survivors for so long for this to happen.

20:54And when we came together, we all stood there and we told our stories and we actually said, you know, if you're not going to do something about it, we're going to do it. And also, I would like to announce here today, us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list. We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know. We got stronger together and we started fighting together. The media started taking notice and started interviewing all of us together. And the nation started waking up and saying, wait a second, this isn't right.

21:38If you're a survivor who wants to join us, please reach out. And to anyone who benefits from the current system, intentionally or not, remember this. Alone, yes, we are afraid. but together we are feared. Thank you.

22:02Every month that our nation gets stronger behind us and our nation wants to see the files. Everyone's crazy about, you know, connecting the dots and wanting to know who's out there because they believe us. They know there's other men involved. They know when Todd Blanche stands up there and says, oh, there aren't other men. There's no one to prosecute. they know it's BS. So we're fighting for it because we know.

22:31Todd Blanch, the deputy US attorney general, said on Friday that the review of the Epstein files was over and he hoped the survivors had got the closure they needed. Will more documents be released? There are a small number of documents, as I said on Friday, that we're waiting for a judge to say we're allowed to release because of a protective order. But this review is over. What was your reaction when you heard him say that? I hope the survivors get the closure they needed because he released a few more files. It's all based in nothing factual. Other men, there weren't other men involved. I mean, you just released two million files that showed a lot of other men involved.

23:15And like you said, maybe there isn't anything there to prosecute, but there is more to be delivered and to be found out what was really going on. What is it that you would ultimately want? Like, what does accountability on this mean to you? What would it look like to you? We really don't know what that is because we're getting toyed with. The files are coming out. They're not coming out. We're going to release some things. They don't release anything. They leave a bunch of survivor names on there with the emails and IDs and all their information, even though they testified as a Jane Doe, you think they're doing that on accident?

23:51It's calculated. They're trying to scare you. They're trying to scare the survivors. They're trying to get us to back down by saying, you know what? We have power back too. Here's your name. We're putting it all out there and upsetting us all over again. They're picking a pretty big fight because all of us have attorneys and all of us are concerned of what's going on. Many survivors are going to be there at the hearing coming up next week. I don't know what accountability looks like. We just want to expose all the bad guys at this point. Just expose them and embarrass them, get all the information out there.