"Control, threats and surgery that left scars": My life inside Jeffrey Epstein's "cult"

Article Information

By Chi Chi Izundu, Olivia Davies, and Will Dahlgren, BBC Investigations

Published 4 hours ago

Read time: 10 minutes

In the week following the death of convicted sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein, Anya (a pseudonym) opened the door to her New York apartment. She says Epstein's brother, Mark, was standing outside, telling her she had to leave.

Anya lived for years in one of the many apartments on East 66th Street in Manhattan, which Jeffrey Epstein used to house the women he assaulted. In an instant, she lost her home, but she survived a terrifying nightmare. Mark Epstein denies knowledge of his brother's misdeeds.

Anya says: "I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that I was assaulted for years. I wasn't chained to a door or anything, right? I wasn't locked in a basement. The chains were less obvious, but they were there."

Anya says Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges, described his operation as a "cult, with him as its leader."

Anya has given the BBC a rare testimony about her life as one of Epstein's "assistants," explaining how the financier was able to control many of his victims for a long time.

The "assistants" were a group of women, about a dozen at a time by Anya's estimate, who lived in Epstein's home, worked at his beck and call around the clock, and were regularly sexually assaulted by him.

Anya says they were lured to him with elaborate ruses and false promises of work, before he began coercive control over almost every aspect of their lives, exploiting any weakness he discovered.

She adds that he controlled their finances, dictated who they could meet, and psychologically humiliated them. He also obsessively monitored their bodies, and forced her to undergo unnecessary and disfiguring surgery.

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Sarah Kellen, another former assistant, corroborates the account of Epstein's control over her. She testified before the US House Oversight Committee earlier this year, explaining how Epstein presented himself as a savior to the assistants. She said: "He was skilled at undermining your ability to make your own decisions and have your own independence, making you more dependent on him."

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Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo, a clinical psychologist who has worked with victims of coercive control, says: "There is a common bias that makes people think that only children are most vulnerable to this type of coercion, but you can be exploited even as an adult. And you may be vulnerable to it."

"A completely contrived trap"

After Jeffrey Epstein's 2008 conviction for assaulting a teenage girl, whom he lured to his homes with the offer of work as a masseuse, he changed his methods. He began targeting mainly adult women, most of them from Russia or other parts of Eastern Europe.

Anya says she and many of the other women recruited still looked like teenagers, and she showed the BBC photos of herself from that time to illustrate this.

Anya grew up in Russia, which was emerging from communist rule, with strict parents who instilled in her the principle that "education is the key to success," she says. But opportunities were scarce, and after earning her university degree, she left Russia to work as a fashion model.

She worked in Europe for luxury brands such as Fendi and Chanel. She had friends, a support network, and a family she could travel to see whenever she wanted.

In her early twenties, she entered Epstein's orbit when she visited an agency in Paris and met talent scout Daniel Siad. He praised her intelligence, "which is unusual in the fashion industry," Anya says, and suggested introducing her to a friend of his with fashion connections: Epstein.

Image caption, Anya says Daniel Siad, the model scout, is the one who introduced her to Epstein.

Anya says she wondered what would have happened if she hadn't visited the agency that day, but she now believes she was deliberately targeted. She adds: "It was a completely contrived trap," describing Siad as a "professional trafficker."

Siad's name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files, a massive collection of documents related to the financier, released by the US government in January.

Siad's lawyer said he was unavailable for comment, but has previously denied any knowledge of the danger Epstein posed.

Anya adds that she first met Epstein in his spacious 18-room Paris apartment, decorated with photos of him with figures like Bill Clinton and other world leaders. She says she felt comforted by the presence of two other women, one Russian and the other Epstein's then-girlfriend from Eastern Europe.

She adds that Epstein asked Anya to undress so he could see her body for a photo shoot. She says the financier told her, while she stood in her underwear, that she was "not in good physical shape" and that she needed to "start exercising," calling her lazy.

Image caption, Epstein met Anya in his sprawling Paris apartment near the Arc de Triomphe.

Anya says such comments were common in the fashion world, and she believed his claims that if she worked hard, he would introduce her to the right people.

Anya adds that he asked her about her family, her interests, and "what I aim to achieve in life, why I chose modeling, everything that matters to me."

She says: "You don't get asked these questions in the fashion world." Several women have told the BBC that Epstein liked to know what mattered to them in order to later use that information against them.

He also addressed her concerns directly. She recalls him saying: "I see that you are smart and skeptical. I don't want to have a relationship with you."

Anya says this reassured her further. "I told myself: Oh my God, this man is amazing. He reads my mind."

"An elaborate luring operation"

This was just the beginning of a manipulation process that lasted many months, where Anya was deceived with empty promises and continuous deception.

Over about a year, Anya began exercising "regularly" to achieve the body Epstein wanted, she says. Lesley Groff, his executive assistant who managed his schedule, would email her asking about her progress, and Epstein would pressure her for photos, telling her not to "be shy" when he insisted on nude photos.

Eventually, Epstein arranged a meeting between her and Faith Kates, co-founder of the modeling agency Next Management, as he had promised, according to Anya. She adds that the meeting lasted no more than 30 minutes, and Anya was told that Epstein would inform her of the result.